Articles Tagged with write tips

Write Tip: Character Eye Color

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We all want our characters to be special, unique, stand out from the crowd. And often writers attempt to achieve this, in part, by giving them “piercing” or “soulful” or “wide” eyes of a lovely shade of blue, ice, green, violet, hazel, etc. Basically any color except that plain old brown.

Elizabeth Taylor was famous for her “violet” eyes. Is your character as fabulous as Liz Taylor?

But if you were given a peek into the slushpile, you would be a bit embarrassed to realize by giving your character such special eyes, you’ve actually made them quite ordinary. If we were to postulate eye color statistics based off of characters in submissions, the world would be made up of mostly green and blue-eyed persons with a good chunk of beauteous hazel/violet-eyed gals in one corner and steely, silver/amber-eyed hunks in another. (There would also be a looot of white people, but that’s a post for another day.)

I may sound like a broken record at this point, but write with awareness. Don’t default to the easy way. Your character’s uniqueness should not be shown through their eye color but rather through the situation they are in (the plot) and how they handle it. Their looks are a part of who they are, but not what makes them stand out. Their appearance should be realistic, for many reasons, number one so many different readers can relate to them.

This is not a rule, just a suggestion to consider. Unless their eye color is super important to the story (for example Alanna’s violet eyes in the Song of the Lioness series. Her magic is purple to match, and the blue-eyed prince’s magic is blue) consider defaulting to brown, especially when there are many characters in the story. Because brown eyes can still be attractive, unique, special, windows to the soul, etc. (full discloser, my eyes are brown). And because statistics.

Percentage of eye color in the world according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology:

  • brown 55%
  • blue 8%
  • hazel 8%
  • green 2%
  • silver (rare)
  • amber (quite rare)
  • violet (extremely rare)

TWO PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION HAS GREEN EYES. Something to think about. *While we are at it, two percent are red heads too. So that gorgeous green-eyed woman with the rich red hair? Reconsider. (I’m looking at you, romance writers!)

Love to hear opinions on this, agree, disagree?

Starting Your Novel With A Birth: An Agent Weighs In

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One of the more interesting aspects of our job is receiving a bulk of submissions that seem eerily similar. For instance the other day I read 3 submissions that had cell phones as main characters. I kid you not. But this post is not about the uncommon, but rather about the common.Lately I’ve been seeing quite a few novels open with a birth and although this is not a big bad thing, it didn’t work for any of these submissions.

Before launching that birth scene out into the submissionverse, pause a moment. Is it really necessary? Or is it a result of your subconscious? Three outside factors, not linked to your particular novel, may be the cause of that scene.

  • One, an opening scene with a birth usually means the mother dies (and very dramatically too). It’s an easy way to both begin your novel with action as well as develop the main character. Usually this main character is a hero of some sorts, and heroes often have tragic childhoods, something they have to overcome to make them stronger, wiser, better. How many famous orphaned heroes do we have in our stories? Batman, the Skywalker twins, Elsa, Potter, the list goes on and on. With so many famous orphans, has this classic storyline seeped into your novel? If so, introduce us to the hero in the beginning, not their parents who are going to die anyway.
  • Two, a birth signifies a beginning. Are you simply using it because you’re not sure where to start?
  • Three, and this is more personal, having recently given birth a month ago, I was given the forceful realization just how damn difficult labor and delivery is. It’s a crazy emotional painful rollercoaster that is completely unique. And what do we do as writers? We take life experiences and put them on paper. Write what you know and all that. So it’s not surprising if there is a deep desire to share your experience through the words of your novel. So consider whether the scene is just representing your ego, wishing to share your experience, or if it’s actually necessary to the story. Birth Humor

Ask yourself this. Why did you open your novel with a birth scene? Because more often that not, it’s unnecessary and actually prevents the story from moving forward. That opening scene is so important for laying the groundwork of the story and catching the reader’s interest. Make sure it’s a conscious decision. Because, just as in real life, the main character is not going to remember their birth and subsequently the reader is not going to care about it. So although it’s where their life began, it’s not where the story begins.