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the face

I've been talking about individual facial features up to this point, but of course you don't have to restrict yourself to eyes or mouth or chin. It's a mix and match kinda business, reading emotions from what the features do -- or don't do. To further complicate things, concrete details are often dabbed here and there among POV observations. Some examples:

"'Eli-eh-eli,' it was wheezing, its tiny, ugly baked apple of a face contorted by fear or frustration or hunger or something else that Skip couldn't understand. " Blessings: A Novel, Anna Quindlen

I couldn't resist using this, because I do so like Anna Quindlen's work and because this has got to be the best description of what a newborn baby looks like to a man who has no interest in it. Skip is repelled, but he's also engaged enough to take note of the things he sees in that ugly little face, and to try and interpret the emotions there.

"Jodie's face fell apart, her jaw sagging, her eyes widening." What Ever Happened to Janie? Caroline B. Cooney

First we've got the whole-face short-cut (her face fell); then the concrete details. The question is, do you need both? In this order? That depends on the context of the passage, but my first reaction is that less would be more, here.

"She had a happy, helpless expression on her face, which was flushed and hot." Middlesex : A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides

Another example of giving us a whole-face short-cut (the POV character interprets what he sees in her face as happy and helpless) and then the concrete details: flushed, hot. Again this feels a little overdone to me.

"Calvin's face lit up with hope, and his eyes, which had been somber, regained their usual sparkle." A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle

See? This is why you can't use sparkle. Many years ago when L'Engle wrote this classic story, it wasn't yet on the list of cliches to avoid. Almost as dangerous is the way Calvin's face lights up. These are good concrete details, but they are so routine that they have ceased to evoke the image or emotions they are meant to

"Her face, matching her voice, was chilled and rigid." Niccolo Rising, Dorothy Dunnett.

Here we have a good example of what a face isn't doing; there's no expression of the emotions you'd expect to see when someone important to you comes back after a long absence. Instead Marian has an iron grip on her emotions. Her facial expression (rather than individual features) is compared quite successfully to her voice -- something else to talk about at some point.

"His expression was blank and without dimples, and his mouth occupied less of its line than was normal." Niccolo Rising, Dorothy Dunnett.

Another example of details that establish a lack of emotion, or suppressed emotion.

I'm hoping to write a little about body language and hands, then about metaphor and simile, and then I'll see if I can construct a few dialogues that need to be layered, to show how that can be done. Bear with me a while longer.

March 20, 2004 09:56 AM

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