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eyes

If you are trying to get your reader to see emotion in your character's face (rather than telling them how the character feels), you'll most likely find yourself trying to articulate the look in somebody's eyes. Or at least, I'm just going to talk about eyes and eyebrows just now. Mouths, chins, all that will have to wait.

What do eyes do, anyway? It's a fairly short list I've come up with. Eyes or eyelids squint; narrow; roll; sparkle; flicker; skitter; jump; dart; flutter; tic; close; wink; go round, moist, teary, dry, wide. Note that I'm not talking about describing the eyes themselves, but the movements they are capable of.

So now you've got a character, call him Sam, and he's involved in a discussion with another character, Mrs. Kevorkian, and a third character, Sam's little sister Jean is watching Mrs. Kevorkian lecture Sam on the right way to raise a little girl. So it's Jean's point of view. We're hearing what Sam says, but it's Jean who is interpreting his facial expressions. From her we'll know if Sam is trying to be polite but is really angry, whether he's secretly or not so secretly amused, confused, embarrassed, surprised, affronted, disgusted. All this (in this exercise, at least) from what he does with his eyes in conjunction with what he says.

"I know a thing or two about raising girls," Mrs. Kevorkian said.
"Because you brought up six of them. Good girls, every one," said Sam.

The things Jean notices about Sam's eyes can do three things: give us some insight into Sam, make us understand the way Jean sees and relates to him, and provide some counterpoint and rhythm in the dialogue.

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, his gaze jumping between his watch and the door. "Good girls, every one."

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, his eyes glazing over. "Good girls, every one."

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, his left eyelid flickering. "Good girls, every one."

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, both eyes perfectly round and just a little too bright. "Good girls, every one."

How to interpret each of these possible additions would depend, of course, on the greater context: what we already know about Sam and about Jean and Mrs. Kevorkian. But you do get a sense, even from this much, of Sam as impatient, bored, provoked, or mischievious.

Of course, Jean might not notice at all what Sam is doing with his eyes; instead she might take note of his mouth and jaw, or his forehead, or his posture, or what he's doing with his hands. I'll see what I can do with the rest of his face tomorrow.

One more thing: this might be a place where the tag 'said' could be replaced by something else without being disruptive, as in: "Because you brought up six of them," Sam supplied, his left eyelid flickering. "Good girls, every one." This adds a little to the sense that Sam's pretty fed up with Mrs. Kevorkian's very predictable lectures.

March 17, 2004 04:04 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Deb at March 17, 2004 05:14 AM

Posted by: Sally at March 18, 2004 11:17 AM