Her Eyes

Author's Note

Hello! This is CBB, author of Her Eyes. Once again, thank you for reading until the end of my first story on this app!!

I wanted to make an author's note to explain a few small details that I figured were important to the more literary side of my writing process as well as why I chose this pairing to begin with.

Why a leaf and a man?

I started this book (?) on a whim last year on January 1st, 2024 and planned for it to be a lighthearted, peaceful romance story with no conflicts between the couple. I know how hectic some Wattpad stories could be, and I wanted to give you guys a break from all the dark romance or heavy drama stories. I know I needed one for sure 😂

As for why I chose a dryad and a man, it all goes back to a very short clip I watched one day. It was a small leaf gliding atop a body of water within an open cave with sunlight pouring in from above. That's when the idea of a romance between a dryad and a man came to mind.

Initially, Nikolaos was supposed to be a traveling painter who discovered Esmae on the beach one day. They would travel the world, and it would be a simple discovery romance, but I felt that it would feel a bit impractical and hectic to write, so I changed it a bit, and here we are with Nikolaos as a college student and aspiring photographer.

For the title, Her Eyes, I wanted it to be something simple yet understandable. Halfway through, I thought of changing it to: With Columbines and Portokália (Oranges), but I scratched the idea because Esmae's eyes were really significant to the story.

I've seen a lot of comments relating my story to The Giving Tree, which I thought was so funny because I've never read that book in my life. I was so confused the entire time, wondering what the similarities were between my book and that one 😂

Character Design:

When it came to deciding the ethnicity of each character, I struggled a lot. I wanted Esmae to be SEA at first, but then realized that her discovering that and then having to travel back would be a longer and very complicated story to proceed with. Additionally, I wasn't sure how she would've landed in England if that was the case. Of course, I could've written a story where Nikolaos was traveling in Southeast Asia and discovered her... no, never mind.

As for Nikolaos, I knew I didn't want him to be Italian, since a majority of the male leads on this app tend to be of that descent. I definitely wanted him to have parents that were immigrants to England, which would've led to the constant arguing about what Nikolaos' future would look like.

I chose Greek for two reasons: his name is pretty freaking cool, and Esmae is a dryad.

If you don't know, dryads are creatures that originate from Greek mythology, and I happen to have a love for Greek mythology. it just made more sense for him to be Greek in this situation since he would understand what mythological creatures exist as a part of his culture's past.

It must be obvious by now, but Esmae's character design is based on a tree. Her brown skin is the bark, the freckles on her body the small spots and swirls you sometimes see, her green eyes the leaves that change in shades of green depending on the time of day, and her black curly hair being the shadow and shade of the tree. I wanted her to be nimble, but more like a newborn fawn, thus she was on the thinner side.

Her clothing choice comes from the fact that she doesn't like the feeling of the wind on her skin in the beginning of the story, and tight clothes are something she's never experienced before, thus, she dislikes them.

As for Nikolaos, he's not extremely muscular, but more toned. He does exercise and jog to stay fit, but he isn't big on bodybuilding, so he isn't wham. His heigh also makes him look slimmer, but he does have a fair amount of muscle on him. His plain clothing choice comes from the simplicity of not having to worry about matching colors. If you have three shades of monochrome, there's not much to ponder over, is there?