creative writing about a eye

How to Describe Eyes in Writing (21 Best Tips + Examples)

Eyes are often hailed as the “windows to the soul,” capable of conveying complex emotions without uttering a single word.

As writers, mastering the art of describing eyes can elevate your storytelling.

Here is how to describe eyes in writing:

Describe eyes in writing by focusing on color, shape, and emotional depth. Use descriptive words like “captivating” or “luminous.” Phrases like “windows to the soul” add layers. Consider eyelids, lashes, and blinking for subtle emotional cues.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to describe eyes in writing.

1. The Color Palette: More Than Just Blue and Brown

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Color is usually the first attribute that comes to mind when describing eyes.

Going beyond the cliché blue and brown can bring your characters to life in vivid detail.

Try unconventional colors and make comparisons to set a mood.

For example, instead of saying, “She had green eyes,” you might say, “Her eyes were the color of freshly mown grass, evoking an undeniable feeling of rebirth.”

Different colors can invoke various emotions or suggest specific character traits.

“Eyes as gray as a stormy sea” could symbolize a tumultuous spirit or an adventurous soul.

Therefore, use colors not just as factual descriptions but as emotional or character-driven statements.

You can even mix colors for added depth, “His eyes were a mix of gold and brown, like a forest floor dappled in autumn sunlight.”

2. The Light Dance: Luminosity Unveiled

The way eyes catch light can describe more than just the setting sun or dim room.

It can tell your reader about the emotional landscape of your characters.

For example, eyes that “gleam like polished stones catching the midday sun” could portray a character in a state of clarity or revelation.

The luminosity of the eyes can also serve as a narrative device, enhancing the emotional undercurrents of a scene.

“Her eyes dimmed, mirroring the dwindling campfire, as she heard the sad tale” can infuse additional layers of emotion into the situation.

This can help the reader feel the gravity of the story along with the character.

3. Shape-Shifting: The Geometry of Gaze

The shape of a character’s eyes can be a playground for creativity.

From almond-shaped to round, the geometry of eyes can offer readers clues about a character’s disposition.

For instance, “Her oval eyes always had a dreamy look, as if she were perpetually lost in thought” can say a lot about the character’s daydreaming nature or thoughtful demeanor.

Don’t forget that eye shape can be dynamic, changing with emotional states or circumstances.

You might describe a normally cheerful character as having “eyes that narrowed into cold slivers when he heard the disparaging comment.”

This not only gives your characters depth but also builds a stronger emotional connection with the reader.

4. Blink Back the Emotions

Never underestimate the power of a blink in conveying emotional subtlety.

A quick blink can express surprise.

While slow, measured blinks could imply a character is deeply contemplating a decision.

For example, “She blinked rapidly, as if trying to ward off the tears that threatened to spill,” succinctly captures a moment of emotional vulnerability.

A single blink can also serve as a pivotal moment in the story.

“He blinked once, slowly, as if imprinting the scene onto his soul” not only adds emotional weight but also signals a significant moment.

5. Mirrors and Windows: Emotional Portals

Eyes can act as mirrors reflecting internal emotions or windows offering a glimpse into the soul.

A character’s gaze can speak volumes, revealing underlying feelings or thoughts.

“His eyes were impenetrable mirrors, reflecting nothing but deflecting everything,” suggests a stoic or guarded individual.

In contrast, eyes can serve as open windows, giving readers insight into a character’s emotional state.

“Her eyes were open windows to her joy, sparkling like stars on a clear night,” indirectly reveals the depth of her happiness.

Using this technique can convey complex emotions in a show-don’t-tell fashion.

6. Crinkles and Lines: The Etchings of Experience

The skin surrounding the eyes can be a treasure trove of storytelling.

Whether it’s laugh lines or weary creases, these “etchings” can reveal a character’s history or emotional state.

For example, “Her eyes were framed by lines that spoke of decades filled with laughter and resilience” provides a wealth of information about a character’s life experiences.

On the flip side, you can use the absence of these lines to highlight a different set of experiences or qualities.

“His eyes were alarmingly smooth, devoid of the wrinkles that often accompany age, as if time itself hesitated to mark him.”

This could signify a range of possibilities—from a sheltered life to a mysterious, age-defying character.

7. The Focus Factor: Where the Gaze Lands

Where a character focuses their eyes can indicate interest, discomfort, or even deceit.

“She couldn’t maintain eye contact and her gaze kept drifting to the floor,” could suggest a lack of confidence or that she’s hiding something.

Here’s another example: “His eyes locked onto the painting, absorbing every brushstroke as if trying to capture its essence.”

The focus of the gaze is telling of the character’s artistic interest.

Or perhaps a deeper emotional connection to the artwork.

Employ focus intentionally to add another layer of complexity to your characters.

8. The Invisible Force: Magnetic Attraction or Repulsion

Sometimes eyes don’t just look; they draw in or push away.

Describing this invisible force can add an ethereal quality to your characters.

“Her eyes seemed to pull him in, a gravitational force he couldn’t resist,” not only describes attraction but also gives it a nearly magical, irresistible quality.

Alternatively, eyes can repel, emitting an almost palpable energy that keeps people at bay.

“People avoided looking into his eyes, as if a simple glance could cast a dark shadow over their day.”

This can set the mood quickly and establish a character as menacing or tragically solitary.

9. Eye-talk: Silent Conversations

Eyes can often communicate messages that words fail to capture.

Describing these “silent conversations” can create emotionally charged scenes between characters.

For instance, “Their eyes met, and in that brief moment, a flurry of unspoken apologies and forgiveness exchanged.”

In a more humorous scenario, you might write, “A roll of her eyes spoke louder than words, a whole paragraph on why the joke was painfully unfunny.”

Use eye-talk to demonstrate the depth of understanding or the lack thereof between characters.

By doing so, you enrichen the personal dynamics in your story.

10. Motion and Emotion: The Kinetics of Eye Movement

The movement of eyes—darting, sweeping, flicking—can indicate a variety of emotions or thoughts.

“Her eyes darted around the room, like a hummingbird seeking nectar, but finding none,” could indicate anxiety or a feeling trapped.

Movement can also be slow and calculated: “His eyes slowly scanned the crowd until they landed on her. It was as though he had found what he was unconsciously searching for all evening.”

Here, the eyes act almost like a compass, guided by emotion or instinct to find a person in a crowd.

11. Veils and Shields: The Role of Eyelids and Lashes

Eyelids and eyelashes do more than just frame the eyes.

They act as veils or shields, expressing vulnerability or defense.

For example, “Her eyelashes were a curtain that she dropped quickly, hiding the turmoil that had briefly flickered in her eyes,” could indicate a momentary lapse in an otherwise strong facade.

On the other hand, “His eyelids lifted slowly, as if reluctantly allowing access to the secrets hidden in his gaze,” paints a vivid image of a guarded individual.

With eyelids acting as gatekeepers and eyelashes as intricate curtains, your description gains a theatrical quality.

12. Icy Stares and Fiery Glances: Temperature Imagery

Using temperature as imagery can add another layer of emotional context.

“Her gaze was icy, freezing everyone it touched, making even a crowded room feel lonely,” effectively conveys detachment and emotional coldness.

Alternatively, “His eyes burned with a fire that could ignite even the most dampened spirits,” suggests passion.

By assigning a “temperature” to your characters’ eyes, you’re doing more than describing.

You’re setting the emotional climate of your story.

13. Twin Moons: Symmetry and Asymmetry

Our eyes are often assumed to be symmetrical.

But describing a character with slightly asymmetrical eyes can add an interesting twist.

“Her right eye was noticeably larger than her left, as if it had seen more of the world and expanded with wisdom,” can introduce an element of uniqueness and intrigue.

Conversely, perfect symmetry can be used to highlight otherworldly beauty or artificiality.

“His eyes were symmetrically perfect, each a mirror image of the other, making him appear almost too flawless, like a sculpture.”

14. Distance and Depth: Proximity of Emotional Connection

The physical space between eyes can symbolize emotional distance or closeness.

“Her closely set eyes, like parallel lines that never meet, made it hard to decipher her emotions,” suggests a character who might be emotionally inaccessible.

On the flip side, consider: “His wide-set eyes seemed to embrace the world, absorbing its myriad colors and nuances.”

This description could indicate a more open, emotionally available individual.

The space between eyes can become a metaphorical playground for writers.

15. Transient Hues: Changing Colors

Some eyes change colors depending on the lighting or the character’s mood.

Describing this can add a mystical or unpredictable quality.

“Her eyes shifted from a deep blue to an oceanic green when she was lost in thought,” opens up a realm of questions and adds an element of unpredictability to the character.

Or you might write, “As he grew angrier, the brown of his eyes seemed to darken, like clouds gathering before a storm.”

Changing colors can make your character seem complex and intriguing, demanding the reader’s attention.

16. Windows or Walls: Transparency and Opacity

The eyes can be either transparent windows to the soul or impenetrable walls.

For example, “Looking into her eyes was like staring into a clear pond, where even the smallest pebble on the bottom was visible,” indicates transparency and vulnerability.

Contrastingly, “His eyes were like tinted windows—no matter how hard you looked, you couldn’t see inside.”

The latter communicates a sense of emotional fortification.

Transparency and opacity serve as tools to indicate how approachable or aloof a character is as a person.

17. Spotlighting: Single Eye Focus

Most descriptions involve both eyes, but focusing on just one can create an arresting image.

“Her left eye seemed to flicker with an inner light, commanding attention and distracting from her otherwise placid face,” can indicate a multifaceted character with hidden depths or asymmetrical qualities.

Or perhaps, “His right eye twitched involuntarily, belying the calm he otherwise projected.”

A focus on a single eye can serve to amplify emotion, make a character more memorable, or highlight an incongruity in their personality.

18. Eye Accessories: Glasses and Contacts

Glasses or contact lenses can be more than just functional.

They can offer insights into a character.

“Her thick glasses magnified her eyes to an impossible size, giving her an air of constant astonishment,” shows how glasses can be used to amplify a character trait.

Accessories become an extension of the character, revealing their choices, desires, or insecurities.

19. A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Artistic Imagery

Sometimes, describing eyes as artworks can be exceptionally evocative.

“Her eyes were like a Jackson Pollock painting, a chaotic blend of colors that somehow made sense,” can indicate a complex and unpredictable character.

Or perhaps, “His eyes resembled a Van Gogh sky, swirling with depth and endless hues of blue and yellow.”

Artistic comparisons not only make the description more vivid.

But can also provide an intellectual backdrop to your character’s emotional landscape.

20. The Art of Avoidance: When Eyes Are Hidden

There can be significant impact in moments where a character’s eyes are hidden—by hair, a hat, or even their own hand.

“His eyes were obscured by a mess of unruly hair, as if he was deliberately hiding from the world,” can suggest a character who is emotionally unavailable or in a state of internal chaos.

Conversely, “She covered her eyes with a hand, as if blocking out the reality before her,” could indicate denial.

Or, perhaps, a reluctance to face the truth.

The absence or obstruction of eyes can speak volumes, adding a layer of complexity to the narrative.

21. The Blink Code: The Tempo of Eye Movement

The rhythm and tempo of blinking can subtly express a character’s emotional state or intentions.

Rapid blinking might reveal nervousness, excitement, or distress.

Slow, deliberate blinks could convey thoughtfulness or calm.

The blink can be as revealing as any other aspect of eye description, acting as a silent Morse code that conveys underlying emotional states.

For example, “Her eyelids shut tightly and reopened slowly, as though she was steeling herself for what was to come. Each blink seemed to be a word in a private language of courage.”

Here is a good video about how to describe eyes in writing:

10 Elements of Eyes to Describe in Writing

To summarize, here are 10 elements (or traits) of eyes that you can describe:

• Color : The most obvious characteristic, but it can say a lot about a character. Blues, browns, greens, and grays each have their own set of associated traits and emotions.
• Shape : The shape of the eyes can lend personality cues. Almond-shaped, round, or narrow eyes can make a character seem mysterious, innocent, or intense.
• Size : Describing the size of the eyes can also give hints about a character’s personality. Large eyes might convey innocence or openness, while small eyes could suggest cunning or secrecy.
• Luminosity/Brightness : How bright or dull the eyes appear can reflect the character’s emotional state or overall personality. Luminous eyes might signify vitality or a strong spirit.
• Transparency : This refers to how “readable” the eyes are. Are they the proverbial “window to the soul,” or are they more like impenetrable walls?
• Intensity : The power of a gaze can say a lot. An intense stare may show determination, while a lack of intensity could signal disinterest or fatigue.
• Texture : While not immediately visible from a distance, up close the eyes may have specks, flecks, or distinct patterns that could add uniqueness to a character.
• Direction : Where a character is looking—averting their gaze, staring straight ahead, or looking down—can show their emotional state and add context to dialogue and actions.
• Movement : This includes blinking, winking, or any other eye movements. Rapid blinking might indicate stress, while slow blinking could indicate thoughtfulness or calm.
• Surrounding Features : Eyebrows, eyelashes, and even the skin around the eyes can contribute to the overall impression. Bushy eyebrows, long lashes, or dark circles can add depth to your description.

30 Best Words to Describe Eyes in Writing

Here is a list of words to help you describe eyes in your stories:

• Melancholic
• Almond-shaped
• Calculating

30 Best Phrases to Describe Eyes in Writing

When a single word won’t do, you’ll need phrases for describing eyes.

Check out this curated list of phrases for how to describe eyes in writing:

• Eyes like saucers
• Windows to the soul
• A storm brewing in his eyes
• Eyes bright with unshed tears
• A twinkle in her eye
• Eyes darker than midnight
• Eyes that held galaxies
• Deep pools of emotion
• Eyes like open books
• Eyes narrowed in suspicion
• Eyes as cold as ice
• An unreadable gaze
• Pools of molten gold
• A piercing gaze
• Eyes dancing with mischief
• Eyes filled with wonder
• A guarded look
• Eyes aflame with passion
• A faraway look
• An inviting gaze
• Eyes shimmering like the ocean
• A gaze that could cut glass
• Eyes soft with compassion
• A lingering look
• A flirtatious glance
• Eyes clouded with doubt
• Eyes gleaming with intelligence
• An intense stare
• Eyes that defy description
• Eyes closed in contemplation

3 Full Examples of Describing Eyes in Different Genres

Let’s learn how to describe eyes in writing by looking at full examples in various fiction genres.

In the dimly lit room, his eyes caught hers, and it felt as though time stood still.

They were deep pools of chocolate, rich and warm, promising sweet secrets and hidden depths. A soft light seemed to emanate from them, casting a gentle glow that could melt the iciest of hearts. It was as though his soul was laid bare, and she felt herself drawn into his gaze, an irresistible force pulling her closer to the love she’d been seeking all her life.

As she walked through the enchanted forest, her eyes changed to mirror her surroundings.

Normally a plain brown, they turned into a swirling mix of emerald and gold, as if her irises were tiny galaxies with stars twinkling within. The transformation was spellbinding, making her appear not just of this realm, but a creature of otherworldly beauty.

Those eyes held power—power to unlock realms and unleash spells, a mysterious allure that could not be ignored.

His eyes were like shards of ice, a piercing blue that seemed to cut through the dim light of the interrogation room.

Each glance was calculated, devoid of emotion, revealing nothing yet seeing everything. It was a look that had unnerved many—a gaze that had stared down threats and seen horrors that would break most men.

His eyes were the epitome of a human lie detector, missing nothing, ever vigilant, and deeply unsettling.

Final Thoughts: How To Describe Eyes in Writing

The best way to describe eyes is blending the tips, words, and phrases.

Also, connect the bigger plot and theme to your eye descriptions.

Of course, there is much more than eyes to describe in your story. Read the other guides on our site to learn how to describe, people, places, and scenes in your story.

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• How to Describe a Greedy Person in Writing (21 Best Tips)
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• How to Describe a Hug in Writing (21 Best Tips + Examples)
• How to Describe a Smile in Writing (700 Ways & Examples)

Writing Nestling

How To Describe Eyes In Writing (13 Steps You Need To Know)

In the realm of storytelling, the eyes are not just windows to the soul; they are portals to a character’s deepest emotions, hidden secrets, and unique essence.

Mastering the art of describing eyes in writing is akin to wielding a magic wand, allowing writers to paint vivid and evocative portraits that resonate with readers on a profound level.

From the sparkle of excitement to the shadow of sorrow, from the intensity of desire to the weight of wisdom, the eyes are a canvas upon which emotions and character intricacies are vividly rendered.

In this exploration of “How To Describe Eyes In Writing,” we embark on a journey to unlock the secrets of crafting eye descriptions that not only engage the senses but also breathe life into characters and narratives.

Join us as we delve into the nuances of eye descriptions, from anatomy and symbolism to techniques and ethical considerations, to enhance your storytelling prowess and captivate the hearts and minds of your readers.

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How To Describe Eyes In Writing

Describing eyes in writing can be a creative and detailed process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it:

Observe the Eyes

Take a moment to closely observe the eyes you want to describe. Pay attention to their color, shape, and any distinctive features such as freckles, scars, or unusual patterns.

Consider the Setting

Think about the context in which you are describing the eyes. Is it a romantic scene, a suspenseful moment, or a casual observation? The setting can influence the tone and depth of your description.

Start with Color

Begin your description by mentioning the color of the eyes. Use vivid and descriptive words to convey the shade. For example, “Her eyes were a deep, emerald green.”

Shape and Size

Describe the shape and size of the eyes. Are they round, almond-shaped, or something else? Mention if they are large, small, or average in size.

Expressions and Emotions

Consider the emotions or expressions conveyed by the eyes. Are they sparkling with joy, filled with tears, or clouded with sadness? Describe how the eyes reflect the character’s feelings.

Pupils and Iris

Mention the size of the pupils and the details of the iris. You can describe the pupils as dilated with desire or constricted in bright light. Highlight any unique features of the iris, such as flecks or a ring of a different color.

Eyebrows and Eyelashes

Don’t forget to mention the eyebrows and eyelashes. Are the eyelashes long and dark, framing the eyes beautifully? Are the eyebrows well-groomed or wild and expressive?

Eye Movements

Describe any eye movements that add depth to the character’s emotions. Mention if they blink rapidly, gaze intensely, or dart nervously around.

Comparisons and Metaphors

Use similes and metaphors to create vivid imagery. Compare the eyes to elements in nature or objects that convey a particular feeling. For example, “His eyes were as deep and mysterious as the night sky.”

Light and Shadows

Consider how lighting affects the appearance of the eyes. Describe how they catch the light, shimmer, or cast shadows. Lighting can enhance the atmosphere of your description.

History or Backstory

If relevant, provide some backstory or history related to the eyes. Have they seen hardship, witnessed important events, or undergone a transformation?

Overall Impression

Sum up your description with an overall impression. How do these eyes make the observer feel? What impact do they have on the character’s appearance and personality?

Editing and Polishing

Review your description for clarity and coherence. Make sure your choice of words enhances the reader’s visualization of the eyes and aligns with the tone of your story.

Remember that the goal is to engage the reader’s imagination and create a vivid mental image. Tailor your description to the character and the narrative to make the eyes an integral part of your storytelling.

Understanding the Basics

Understanding the Basics of describing eyes in writing is like peering through the keyhole into the soul of your characters. Just as the eye is the window to the soul, mastering the art of depicting this intricate organ opens a portal to the very essence of your storytelling.

Delve into the fascinating anatomy of the human eye, where the iris dances with secrets, the pupil reveals the depth of emotion, and the cornea reflects the world in a thousand shimmering facets.

Learn the genetic alchemy that weaves the tapestry of eye colors, each hue an enigma waiting to be unraveled.

With these fundamentals at your fingertips, you’ll transform mundane descriptions into vivid canvases that breathe life into your characters and invite readers to journey deep into the heart of your narrative.

The anatomy of the human eye

The anatomy of the human eye is a marvel of nature’s precision and complexity. At its core, the eye is a biological masterpiece, comprised of several intricate components working in seamless harmony.

The iris, like a curtain, regulates the amount of light that enters, its unique pigmentation bestowing individuality upon each gaze.

The pupil, a minuscule portal, dilates and contracts in response to varying light conditions, mirroring the ebb and flow of emotions.

The cornea, a crystal-clear dome, refracts light, allowing the world to be painted upon the canvas of the retina.

Meanwhile, the lens flexes and focuses like a camera, ensuring that images are sharp and clear. These elements, along with many others, combine to create the breathtaking phenomenon of vision, reminding us that the human eye is not just an organ; it’s a gateway to perceiving the beauty and wonder of the world.

The science of eye colors

The science of eye colors is a captivating journey into the genetic tapestry that defines our visual uniqueness. Eye color, the result of intricate genetic interactions, is a testament to the fascinating complexities of human inheritance.

While blue, brown, green, and hazel are among the most common eye colors, the possibilities are nearly endless, with variations and shades that make each individual’s eyes as distinctive as their fingerprints.

This intricate dance of genetics involves multiple genes, such as OCA2 and HERC2, which determine the type and amount of pigments in the iris. Environmental factors can also influence the final hue.

The science of eye colors not only unveils the mystery behind our gaze but also highlights the intricate symphony of our DNA, reminding us that even in the realm of genetics, diversity reigns supreme.

The Power of Vivid Imagery

The Power of Vivid Imagery in writing is the literary equivalent of a painter’s brushstroke on the canvas of the reader’s mind.

It’s the sorcerer’s incantation that summons the story to life, transforming mundane words into an exhilarating sensory experience.

With the deft strokes of metaphor and the careful selection of adjectives, writers have the power to transport readers into the heart of their narrative.

It’s a symphony of the senses where readers can not only see the world but taste its colors, smell its emotions, and touch the intangible.

Vivid imagery is the key that unlocks the door to a realm where words cease to be mere symbols; they become a portal to a universe where imagination reigns supreme, and stories take on a life of their own.

The role of sensory language in eye descriptions

The role of sensory language in eye descriptions is akin to weaving a tapestry of perception that envelops the reader in a multisensory experience.

It’s the subtle art of not just telling the reader about the eyes but allowing them to feel the world through them.

With the right choice of words, a writer can make eyes shimmer like polished emeralds, glint with the warmth of a summer sunset, or smolder like the depths of a midnight abyss.

Sensory language invites readers to not only visualize but also feel the texture of an iris, hear the whispers hidden in a gaze, and even taste the emotions concealed behind a blink.

It’s a literary alchemy that elevates eye descriptions from mere visuals to a symphony of sensations, fostering a profound connection between the reader and the characters they encounter on the page.

Painting a picture with words: similes and metaphors

Painting a picture with words through similes and metaphors is akin to wielding a magic brush that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary in the realm of literature.

Similes are the luminescent stars that twinkle in the night sky of prose, likening one element to another, allowing readers to see, feel, and understand the subject in a whole new light.

Metaphors, on the other hand, are the bold strokes of genius that bridge the gap between two seemingly unrelated entities, creating a fusion of ideas that dances on the canvas of the imagination.

Together, these literary devices breathe life into the written word, turning mundane descriptions into vibrant, living portraits.

They are the language of the poet, the voice of the storyteller, and the enchantment that beckons readers to immerse themselves in the vivid landscapes of the writer’s creation, where words transcend their literal meanings and become a tapestry of wonder.

Selecting the right adjectives to enhance visual impact

Selecting the right adjectives to enhance visual impact in writing is akin to choosing the perfect brush strokes for a masterpiece.

It’s about meticulously curating a palette of words that will color the reader’s imagination with vivid and evocative images.

The selection of adjectives is more than just embellishment; it’s the essence of storytelling. A well-chosen adjective can transform a simple “blue eye” into a “deep sapphire gaze,” instantly conjuring a more vivid and nuanced picture.

The art lies not only in choosing descriptive words but in understanding their power to evoke emotions and resonate with the reader’s senses.

When wielded adeptly, adjectives breathe life into characters, landscapes, and scenes, allowing readers to not only see but also experience the narrative in all its rich and immersive detail.

Beyond Physical Appearance

Beyond physical appearance lies the enigmatic realm of character depth and storytelling magic. In the world of writing, eyes are not just windows to the soul; they are mirrors reflecting the intricate layers of a character’s psyche.

They bear witness to inner storms and quiet victories, revealing secrets that words alone cannot express. Beyond the hue and shape, eyes carry the weight of history, the scars of experience, and the dreams of the future.

They are the silent narrators of a character’s journey, conveying courage, vulnerability, love, and longing with the subtlest of glances.

When a writer delves beyond physical appearance and explores the profound narrative potential within a character’s eyes, storytelling transcends the superficial, inviting readers on an emotional odyssey that lingers long after the final page is turned.

Reflecting emotions and personality through the eyes

Reflecting emotions and personality through the eyes is a poetic dance of revelation in storytelling.

The eyes are the windows through which the heart and soul’s myriad hues spill forth. In their depths, we find the silent poetry of love, the tempestuous storms of anger, the shimmering oceans of sadness, and the radiant sunrises of joy.

They can be smoldering with mystery, sparkling with mischief, or harboring the wisdom of ages. A character’s eyes not only mirror their emotions but also serve as portals to their inner world, offering readers an intimate glimpse into their fears, desires, and aspirations.

The flicker of a gaze, the quiver of a lid, or the steadiness of a stare can reveal more about a character’s personality than pages of exposition ever could.

When words alone fall short, it is in the eyes that the true essence of a character is unveiled, creating an indelible connection between the reader and the narrative.

Symbolism and cultural nuances associated with eyes

Symbolism and cultural nuances associated with eyes form a rich tapestry of meaning that transcends linguistic and geographical boundaries.

Across cultures, eyes have been endowed with profound symbolism, serving as metaphors for enlightenment, knowledge, and perception. In the East, the “third eye” is a symbol of spiritual insight and higher consciousness, often depicted as an inner eye that sees beyond the physical realm.

Conversely, in Western literature and art, the “evil eye” represents malevolent intent and the power to curse. In Native American cultures, the concept of the “eye of the heart” is revered as a source of intuition and emotional understanding.

Eyes are also deeply intertwined with cultural expressions of beauty and aesthetics, influencing practices such as makeup, adornment, and body language.

Understanding the symbolic weight and cultural nuances associated with eyes is essential for writers, as it adds depth and authenticity to character development, and offers readers a gateway into the rich tapestry of human beliefs and traditions.

Creating depth through character development

Creating depth through character development is the alchemy that transforms ink and paper into living, breathing individuals within the world of a story.

It’s the process of infusing characters with the complexities of real human beings: their hopes, fears, contradictions, and aspirations. Just as in life, a character’s journey is not solely defined by their actions but by their inner struggles, moral dilemmas, and personal growth.

It’s about crafting characters who evolve, learn, and change, driven by desires and haunted by flaws. Readers are drawn into a story not just by its plot but by the emotional resonance of its characters.

In their depth, we find empathy, connection, and a mirror reflecting our own humanity. Writers who master the art of character development breathe life into their stories , inviting readers to embark on an intimate and unforgettable voyage through the hearts and minds of their literary creations.

Examples from famous literature

Examples from famous literature illuminate the enduring power of vivid eye descriptions. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” the enigmatic eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, looming over the Valley of Ashes, become a haunting symbol of moral decay and the watchful gaze of a judgmental society.

J.K. Rowling masterfully employs eye descriptions in the “Harry Potter” series, with Voldemort’s crimson, snake-like eyes serving as a chilling emblem of his malevolence. In “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, the haunting description of Boo Radley’s reclusive eyes through the eyes of Scout and Jem encapsulates the novel’s themes of innocence, prejudice, and compassion.

These literary examples showcase how authors harness the evocative potential of eye descriptions to enrich their narratives and create lasting impressions in the minds of readers, demonstrating that the eyes are not just organs but windows to the soul of a story.

Techniques for Effective Eye Descriptions

Techniques for effective eye descriptions are the secret incantations of the literary sorcerer, unlocking the deepest emotions and hidden depths of characters.

They’re the whispers that beckon readers into the intimate recesses of a character’s soul. From the choice of perspective, whether first-person intimacy or third-person observance, to the art of gradual revelation, where each detail is a breadcrumb leading to greater understanding, these techniques are the keys to creating memorable eye descriptions.

They allow writers to unveil secrets, convey emotions, and even advance the plot, all through the silent language of the eyes.

In the hands of a skilled wordsmith, these techniques transcend mere physical descriptions, forging a profound connection between the reader and the characters, leaving an indelible mark on the narrative and a lasting impression on the reader’s heart.

First-person vs. third-person perspectives

The choice between first-person and third-person perspectives in writing is akin to selecting the lens through which the reader experiences a story .

First-person perspective immerses readers deep within the psyche of a singular character, providing an intimate and immediate connection with their thoughts, emotions, and perceptions.

It’s a direct line to the character’s inner world, offering authenticity and empathy. In contrast, third-person perspective provides a panoramic view, offering insights into multiple characters’ thoughts and actions while maintaining a degree of narrative distance.

It grants writers the ability to build a complex, multifaceted world, weaving together the stories of various characters.

The choice between these perspectives is a strategic decision, each offering unique advantages and challenges, but both capable of crafting rich and compelling narratives that resonate with readers on different levels.

Incorporating eye descriptions into action scenes

Incorporating eye descriptions into action scenes is like adding a layer of visceral intensity to the narrative canvas.

When characters are caught in the throes of high-stakes moments, their eyes become windows into their determination, fear, or resolve.

Whether it’s the glint of a hero’s unwavering resolve or the widening of a villain’s malevolent gaze, eye descriptions can amplify the tension and emotion of the scene.

Readers, in these moments, are not just spectators but active participants, experiencing the adrenaline rush and emotional turmoil alongside the characters.

The subtle details of clenched lids, darting glances, or pupils dilated in shock can serve as powerful markers of a character’s internal state, allowing writers to convey depth and nuance even in the most action-packed sequences.

In the whirlwind of chaos, the eyes offer readers a grounding point, a profound insight into the characters’ humanity amidst the chaos.

Crafting Memorable Characters

Crafting memorable characters is akin to sculpting timeless works of art from the clay of imagination. It’s a delicate dance of inspiration and intention, where writers breathe life into their literary creations.

These characters are not merely ink and paper; they are the embodiment of dreams, fears, and aspirations. They carry the weight of their past and the promise of their future, and through their struggles, triumphs, and vulnerabilities, they beckon readers to walk beside them on the intricate journey of the narrative.

Like chameleons, they adapt and evolve, revealing facets of their personalities with every turn of the page, forging connections that endure long after the story ends.

In the alchemy of character crafting, writers wield the power to change lives, challenge perspectives, and ignite imaginations, leaving an indelible mark on the literary landscape and the hearts of readers.

Developing a character’s backstory through their eyes

Developing a character’s backstory through their eyes is a subtle art of storytelling, akin to tracing the lines of history etched into a person’s gaze.

Eyes, like ancient manuscripts, hold secrets and chapters of the past that can be unveiled to enrich a character’s narrative.

The subtle flicker of sorrow in their gaze might hint at a childhood loss, while the spark of determination may reveal a lifetime of challenges overcome.

The eyes can be a portal to the character’s memories, showcasing scars, joys, and sorrows that have shaped them into who they are today.

In this intricate dance of character development, writers weave the threads of past experiences into the tapestry of the present, creating a character with depth, resonance, and a compelling backstory that resonates with readers on a profound level.

Conveying inner turmoil, secrets, and hidden agendas

Conveying inner turmoil, secrets, and hidden agendas through a character’s eyes is a mesmerizing act of literary intrigue.

The eyes become a canvas of emotions and unspoken truths, reflecting the turbulence within. A character’s gaze may betray the weight of unshared burdens, the flicker of a concealed motive, or the torment of a carefully guarded secret.

In their depths, we witness the swirling storms of inner conflict, the silent battles of conscience, and the enigmatic web of desires left unspoken.

The eyes are the storyteller’s most potent instrument, revealing the complex layers of human nature that lie beneath the surface.

As writers master the art of portraying these inner landscapes through the eyes, they invite readers to become detectives, deciphering the mysteries and unraveling the hidden depths of their characters, forging an unbreakable bond between reader and narrative.

Evoking empathy and reader connection

Evoking empathy and reader connection through a character’s eyes is akin to forging an unspoken pact between writer and reader, where the boundaries of the page dissolve, and hearts converge in understanding.

The eyes, often described as the windows to the soul, become the bridge between worlds. When a character’s eyes reflect their vulnerabilities, hopes, and fears, readers can’t help but see a reflection of themselves.

It’s in those moments of shared humanity, when readers recognize their own struggles, joys, and imperfections mirrored in the characters’ gaze, that a deep and enduring connection is formed.

Through the artful depiction of eyes, writers invite readers not just to witness a story but to experience it intimately, forging bonds that transcend fiction and make the characters’ journey their own.

Case Studies

Case studies are like literary treasure maps, guiding us through the intricate labyrinth of storytelling with the wisdom gleaned from the literary masters who’ve walked the path before us.

They are the vibrant tapestries woven from the threads of imagination and inspiration, showcasing the brilliance of writers who’ve dared to push the boundaries of the written word.

These captivating narratives dissect the anatomy of storytelling, revealing the nuances of character development, plot twists , and thematic resonance with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel.

Through case studies, we delve into the hearts and minds of unforgettable characters, witnessing their trials, tribulations, and triumphs.

These explorations of literary excellence are not just academic exercises; they are invitations to embark on intellectual adventures, fueling our own creative fires and inspiring us to craft our own masterpieces.

Analyzing notable examples from literature

Analyzing notable examples from literature is akin to entering a hallowed hall of mirrors, where each reflection reveals a different facet of the storytelling gem.

It’s a journey of literary excavation, where we unearth the treasures hidden within the words of the great authors who have shaped the canon of literature.

Through the careful dissection of these masterpieces, we uncover the secrets of character development, narrative structure, and thematic depth.

These notable examples are not just stories; they are living classrooms, offering profound insights into the human condition, cultural nuances, and the enduring power of the written word.

As we analyze these literary gems, we become not only readers but also scholars, peering behind the curtain of the author’s intentions and craftsmanship, and in doing so, we enrich our own understanding of the art of storytelling.

Deconstructing successful eye descriptions

Deconstructing successful eye descriptions is like unraveling a finely woven tapestry, revealing the intricate threads that make them shine.

It’s a detective’s quest, a literary adventure into the art of crafting evocative imagery. By dissecting these descriptions, we uncover the secrets of metaphor, simile, and the precise selection of adjectives that breathe life into the eyes on the page.

We observe how authors employ sensory language to create an immersive experience and build emotional connections between the characters and readers.

Successful eye descriptions aren’t just words on paper; they are living expressions of the characters’ inner worlds, windows into their emotions, and vehicles for conveying themes and subtext.

Deconstruction unveils the alchemy of storytelling, inviting us to peer beyond the surface and learn from the masters who’ve mastered the craft of describing eyes with brilliance and resonance.

Discussing the impact of eye descriptions on plot and character development

Discussing the impact of eye descriptions on plot and character development reveals the profound influence that seemingly subtle details can have on the entire narrative landscape.

Eyes, as conduits of emotion and intention, hold the power to shape the trajectory of a story. The way characters perceive the world, the motives they hide or reveal through their gazes, and the evolving dynamics between them, all pivot around the descriptions of their eyes.

These visual cues become signposts in the reader’s journey, foreshadowing plot twists, revealing hidden agendas, and enriching the tapestry of interpersonal relationships.

By delving into the impact of eye descriptions, we uncover how the nuances of a character’s gaze can be pivotal turning points or subtle undercurrents that drive the narrative forward, creating a symbiotic relationship between the characters’ eyes and the unfolding story.

Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations in writing are the compass that guides us through the labyrinth of creativity , ensuring that our words bear the weight of responsibility and respect for diverse voices and perspectives.

It’s the moral anchor that reminds us that storytelling is not just an act of creation but also a reflection of our values and beliefs.

With every word we craft, we have the power to influence, inspire, or perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Ethical considerations challenge us to be conscious of cultural sensitivities, to embrace diversity, and to question our biases.

They prompt us to portray characters authentically, to avoid reducing them to caricatures, and to acknowledge the lived experiences of others.

In the realm of storytelling, ethics are not constraints but catalysts for thoughtfulness and empathy, reminding us that our words have the potential to shape minds, hearts, and even societies.

Avoiding stereotypes and clichés in eye descriptions

Avoiding stereotypes and clichés in eye descriptions is the hallmark of a discerning writer who refuses to settle for the ordinary.

Stereotypes, like overused tropes, can flatten characters into one-dimensional caricatures, robbing them of their authenticity and depth. In the world of eye descriptions, this means shunning tired clichés like “eyes as deep as the ocean” or “eyes that sparkle like stars,” and instead, embracing the unique nuances of each character’s gaze.

It’s about understanding that every pair of eyes tells a distinctive story, and it’s our duty as writers to do justice to that complexity.

By avoiding stereotypes and clichés, we honor the diversity of human experiences, allowing our characters to emerge as multifaceted beings with eyes that reflect the intricacies of their personalities, histories, and emotions.

The Revision Process

The revision process is the writer’s metamorphosis, where the raw ore of first drafts undergoes a refining fire to emerge as polished gems of storytelling.

It’s an act of alchemy, where words are transmuted into art. Like a sculptor chiseling away at a block of marble, the writer sculpts and reshapes sentences and paragraphs until they gleam with clarity and purpose.

It’s a dance of introspection and innovation, where each word is scrutinized, each scene dissected, and every character’s gaze scrutinized.

Through this meticulous process, the narrative deepens, characters grow more nuanced, and themes resonate more profoundly.

The revision process is where the magic happens, where a story is transformed from a rough sketch into a masterpiece, and where the writer’s dedication to craft shines brightest.

The importance of revising eye descriptions

The importance of revising eye descriptions in writing cannot be overstated. Just as a painter perfects each brushstroke to capture the essence of their subject, writers must refine and fine-tune their eye descriptions to encapsulate the true spirit of their characters. Revisions allow us to peel away layers of superficiality, to dive deeper into a character’s soul, and to ensure that each adjective, metaphor, and simile resonates with precision and impact.

Eye descriptions, being windows to a character’s emotions and personality, are powerful tools for reader engagement.

Through revision, we can evoke greater empathy, reveal hidden layers of complexity, and convey subtle shifts in mood or motive.

Ultimately, the well-revised eye description has the potential to transform a character from a mere figure on the page into a living, breathing entity that lingers in the reader’s mind long after the story has ended.

Fine-tuning eye descriptions for maximum effect

Fine-tuning eye descriptions for maximum effect is the writer’s quest for poetic precision and emotional resonance. It’s about sharpening the focus, like a photographer adjusting the lens for the perfect shot, until every detail is vivid and every emotion palpable.

Each word, each phrase, becomes a brushstroke on the canvas of the reader’s mind, painting a portrait that lingers in memory. It’s in the subtle nuances, the delicate balance of adjectives, and the cadence of the prose that we achieve the greatest impact.

Fine-tuning isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about conveying the character’s essence, their struggles and dreams, their history and destiny, all through the silent language of their eyes.

It’s in the meticulous revision of eye descriptions that we elevate them from mere words on a page to powerful conduits of connection, drawing readers into the heart of the narrative with every gaze, every flicker, and every unspoken emotion.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about How To Describe Eyes In Writing

How can i make my eye descriptions more captivating and unique.

To make your eye descriptions stand out, try to use unconventional comparisons and metaphors. Think beyond the typical “deep as the ocean” and experiment with unexpected analogies that suit your character or setting.

Should I focus on physical details or emotions when describing eyes?

Both physical details and emotions are important. Combining them can create a well-rounded description. Describe the physical characteristics first, and then delve into how those eyes reflect the character’s emotions or inner world.

Can you provide examples of how to describe unusual eye colors?

Certainly! For instance, describe violet eyes as “a shade between twilight and a pansy,” or golden eyes as “gleaming like molten honey under the sun.”

How can I describe eyes in a way that reveals a character’s backstory?

You can reveal a character’s backstory through their eyes by mentioning scars, wrinkles, or a haunted look that hints at past experiences. For example, “Her eyes held the weight of years gone by, etched with lines of wisdom and sorrow.”

What’s the best way to describe eyes in a suspenseful or mysterious scene?

In suspenseful scenes, focus on the intensity and movement of the eyes. Mention how they dart around, widen in fear, or narrow in suspicion. Describe them as “searching for answers in the shadows” or “hiding secrets behind a veil of uncertainty.”

Can I use the eyes to foreshadow events in my story?

Yes, eyes can be a subtle tool for foreshadowing. Describe them in a way that hints at what’s to come. For instance, you can mention “a glint of mischief” if a character is planning something mischievous.

How can I describe eyes in a romantic context without being cliché?

To describe eyes in a romantic context without clichés, focus on the unique qualities of the eyes and how they captivate the other person. Mention details like “their eyes met like two stars colliding in the night sky,” instead of using overused comparisons like “lost in their gaze.”

Is it essential to describe every detail of a character’s eyes?

No, it’s not necessary to describe every detail. Select the most significant and relevant details that contribute to the character’s depth or the story’s atmosphere. Less can often be more effective.

How can I convey a character’s change in emotions through their eyes during a dialogue scene?

Use eye descriptions in conjunction with dialogue tags and actions to convey emotions. For example, “Her eyes brightened with excitement as she exclaimed…” or “His eyes hardened with resolve as he responded…”

Can I use eyes to symbolize themes in my story?

Absolutely. Eyes can symbolize themes such as insight, deception, or connection. Describe them in a way that aligns with your story’s themes to add depth and symbolism.

Remember, the key to effective eye descriptions is to tailor them to your characters, plot, and the emotions you want to convey, and to keep your writing fresh and engaging.

In the art of storytelling, the eyes have proven time and again to be powerful conduits of emotion, character depth, and narrative resonance.

As we conclude our exploration of “How To Describe Eyes In Writing,” we find ourselves equipped with the tools and insights to transform mere descriptions into vivid canvases that captivate and engage readers.

We’ve navigated the intricate terrain of sensory language, metaphors, and character development, and delved into the realm of symbolism and cultural nuances.

We’ve also pondered the ethical dimensions of our craft, striving to represent diverse perspectives with sensitivity and respect.

Whether crafting eyes that shimmer with mystery, smolder with intensity, or glisten with vulnerability, the art of describing eyes allows us to leave an indelible mark on the tapestry of storytelling.

As we continue our literary journeys, may our newfound understanding of this subtle yet profound aspect of character portrayal enhance our storytelling prowess, leaving readers both enthralled and moved by the vivid worlds we create through the gaze of our characters.

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How to describe eyes in a story: 7 simple tips

Learning how to describe eyes in a story without resorting to cliché helps set your writing apart from amateurish fiction. Many beginning authors over-rely on eye descriptions and eye color to create an impression of their characters. Here are 7 tips for talking about your characters’ eyes creatively:

• Post author By Bridget McNulty
• 16 Comments on How to describe eyes in a story: 7 simple tips

Learning how to describe eyes in a story without resorting to cliché helps set your writing apart from amateurish fiction. Describing eyes is a handy literary tool to show your character’s complex emotions. Many beginning authors over-rely on eye descriptions and eye color to create an impression of their characters. Here are 7 tips for to describe eyes in writing

How to write better eye descriptions:

• Avoid fixating on eye color.
• Make characters’ eyes contrasting or incongruous
• Use eye appearance or description, eg eye shape, to support story development
• Describe the eye area rather than just eye color
• Use eyes to communicate psychology
• Read examples of great eye descriptions from books
• Move beyond describing eyes in your story

Let’s unpack these ideas a little:

1. Avoid fixating on eye color

The color of a person’s eyes doesn’t tell us whether they are kind or cruel, an optimist or a pessimist. Often aspiring authors focus on the eyes more than anything else when describing characters. While this is a feature we notice (especially if a person has unusual, striking eyes), there are many other interesting facial features.

As an exercise, practice describing a character’s face . Describe their mouth, nose, brow, chin and ears. Find a simile or metaphor for each (e.g. ‘His mouth was a tight red knot.’)

One way to make eye description more interesting is to make characters’ eyes stand out in relation to character traits or other features:

2. Make characters’ eyes contrasting or incongruous

People’s appearances are often full of strange juxtapositions and contrasts. The man with the big, ruddy face might have small, delicate hands. One way to describe characters’ eyes effectively is to use them to create contrast. For example, a character who has a nervous temperament could have an intense, penetrating stare that one wouldn’t expect, given their nervous or avoidant behaviour. Or they might avoid eye contact altogether which can also be incongruous.

3. Use eye description to support story development

One reason descriptions of novel characters’ eyes sometimes reads as cliché is because authors describe eyes apropos of nothing. ‘She smiled and looked across at him with her emerald green eyes’ reads a little awkwardly because the character’s eye color is not particularly relevant. Drawing attention to it almost detracts from the key action here – the momentary connection between two characters.

However, you can use eye description effectively at key points of character development . For example, if a character witnesses a horrific scene, their eyes might seem vacant or otherwise haunted to passersby. In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , when the protagonist Raskolnikov comes to see an elderly pawnbroker at an unusual time, unarranged, Dostoevksy describes the pawnbroker’s eyes to reflect the changed conditions of their interaction and the woman’s awareness of this:

‘The door was as before opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp and suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness.’ ( Crime and Punishment , Chapter 7)

You could also use a character’s poor vision or a visual impairment as a plot point: perhaps because your character, the witness, has poor vision, it’s not clear if they were able to see the murderer properly. 

Use adjectives that describe how a character’s eyes look to support the tone and mood of a scene, drawing attention to story developments, as Dostoevsky does. Yet don’t over-rely on adjectives to create character impressions . Let actions and words speak too.

Master Character Description

Write better character description with the help of practical exercises and videos.

4. Describe the eye area rather than just eye color

To avoid clichéd eye descriptions, instead of describing color describe the eye area. For example, if there are bags or dark circles underneath a character’s eyes this conveys tiredness and/or anxiety. Eyes that are swollen, puffy or ringed with red indicate recent emotional distress. Narrowed eyes indicate hostility or suspicion. Half-closed eyes indicate drowsiness. Mischievous eyes can indicate a fun-loving person.

Describe the shape of the eye too: you could describe your character as having almond-shaped eyes, or hooded, or having a monolid (eyes that don’t have a crease), wrinkled, makeup smudged creating a panda-like effect. Eyes wide open could indicate innocence or naivety. Eyes aflame with passion conveys an entirely different range of emotions or state of being too. Take note of how eyes change in dim light, with the pupil growing big. You could just simply use a medical condition to describe eyes for example ptosis, which is an excessively droopy eyelid. 

When you get down to it, there are countless ways to describe eyes that show emotion and psychological state in addition to appearance. Make your eye descriptions do more work for your story.

5. Use eyes to communicate psychology

To follow on from the above point, think about how your eye descriptions create impressions about your characters’ temperaments and psychologies. For example, a character who blinks often might be a little nervous. On the other hand, a character who rolls her eyes often could be the cynical, ‘so over it right now’ teen. You could describe a compassionate person, let’s say a psychologist, as having warm brown eyes, for instance that look at other characters with interest and care. 

The important thing is not to overdo eye descriptions. If a character performs an eye movement such as rolling her eyes a few times it conveys her sarcastic nature. Yet if she does this every page, it can stale quickly. Use your discretion.

6. Read examples of great eye descriptions from books

It’s useful to keep a separate journal for character descriptions you love. That way, whenever you are trying to describe a character , you can page through effective descriptions and remind yourself what works.

Famous books are peppered with great eye descriptions. For example, in Crime and Punishment , Dostoevsky creates a suitably suspenseful and creepy tone when Raskolnikov’s family come to visit him at his lodgings and are watched suspiciously by the landlady as they enter:

‘[W]hen they reached the landlady’s door on the fourth storey, they noticed that her door was a tiny crack open and that two keen black eyes were watching them from the darkness within.’

The description is simple yet effective. The adjective ‘keen’ comes before the color ‘black’, as it should, being the more descriptive and informative of the two.

Although it’s not effective to simply describe eye color alone, many successful authors do describe eye color – even improbable colors as J.K. Rowling does when she describes the villain of Harry Potter , Lord Voldemort:

‘[His face was] whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils’.

Rowling, like Dostoevsky, places the most important, emotion-conveying descriptor first. Even though Voldemort’s eyes are ‘scarlet’, a non-standard eye color, they are first described as ‘livid’, conveying immense anger appropriate to a villain.

7. Move beyond describing eyes in your story

To truly describe characters brilliantly, describe aspects of your character that are most relevant to a given scene. For example, if a character is fleeing the scene of a crime, their eye color is scarcely relevant here. But describing their body language (as they attempt to slip past passersby unnoticed) or breathing can heighten tension.

As important as it is to know how to describe eyes in a story without using cliché, it’s even more important to have rounded character description skills.

Join Now Novel to create detailed character sketches using our guided prompts. Get helpful feedback on your character descriptions from your online writing community.

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• Tags characterisation , describing characters , writing characters , writing tips

By Bridget McNulty

Bridget McNulty is a published author, content strategist, writer, editor and speaker. She is the co-founder of two non-profits: Sweet Life Diabetes Community, South Africa's largest online diabetes community, and the Diabetes Alliance, a coalition of all the organisations working in diabetes in South Africa. She is also the co-founder of Now Novel: an online novel-writing course where she coaches aspiring writers to start - and finish! - their novels. Bridget believes in the power of storytelling to create meaningful change.

16 replies on “How to describe eyes in a story: 7 simple tips”

Good advice on what it is the character is looking at. I have told my listeners to do something similar in the past. Always describe what it is that the character’s five senses are telling them. You don’t have to use all of them and the sense of sight is a powerful one.

Rick Dean/Poor Richard’s Bloganac

I agree. I think the idea of watching your metaphors is also a powerful one.

This is really nice!

Thanks James!

I also have a tip. I noticed that a lot of people overuse the color of peoples eyes. They talk about how ‘ocean blue they are’ and always somehow worm the color of there ‘dazzling eyes’ into the chapter, which can be annoying, and feel a little unrealistic. It’s okay for the character to recognize how strange or beautiful another character’s eyes are, but not if it is all the time. It gets old and makes the story a little boring when all you know about the other character is the color of there eyes.

Completely agree with this, Katherine. Many writers use this in the attempt to create a sense of intimacy but it can be very cliched.

This is, hands down, the best information I’ve found on this subject! Re-Blogging on http:www.rijanks.wordpress.com

Hi Jan – thank you so much, that’s very kind. Will share your re-blog.

I like the ideas in this blog post. They’re great.

Thanks, Linda! Thank you for reading.

I want to describe a person, that can manipulate water or bend it. ( in other words, I want to describe a person with water powers.) But I don’t know how to do it professionally and smoothly, since I am not aiming to write a little fairytale about a girl with magical powers, I am trying to make it descriptive and appropriately written out, which I am very much struggling to do. I am hoping you could help me out and give me suggestion, since your advice on how to describe this subject in writing really helped me, if any viewers can give me suggestion i would very, very much appreciate it to.

Hi Prasha, Happy New Year! Thank you for your question, it sounds an interesting character power. I would say try to focus on the exact, precise detail. For example, the visual qualities of the water (the droplets, the motion, the way it reflects the light), the way your character concentrates to manipulate it (or any specific words they say that are part of executing their power over water).

Precise and specific details that describe the exact phenomena taking place will help to put your reader in the scene – movement, colour, sound. This is more impactful than, for example, if you were to just write ‘She used her powers to summon water’ as this relies more on broad, abstract ideas.

Literally never in all my years of trying to write have I seen something that is not only so in-depth as far as THE HOW of describing character features, but also expressed in a way that is completely tangible and digestible. This is essentially THE post I’ve been looking for. Outstanding. Thank you so much. -Billy

Hi Billy, thank you! I’m glad you’re finding our articles helpful and that this answered what you were looking for. Thanks for reading our blog and taking time to leave feedback.

I have a character in a book I am writing and I want to know if this is ok. “She looked over At Annika with deep blue eyes that reflected power and magic. Some people even say she was almost killed for that when she was born” (magic is outlawed)

Hi Madelyn, thank you for sharing your extract from work in progress. There are good elements here. I would suggest finding phrases that tell (for example, ‘…that reflected power and magic…’) and replacing them with words that show more (what is it about her eyes specifically that ‘reflects power and magic’? Is it something eerie or unnatural/supernatural about their colour/shape/intensity/her stare?

Keep going and good luck!

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65 Ways to Describe Sight and Eyes in Your Writing

Ever since William Shakespeare said:

“The Eyes are the window to your soul”

… people have been trying to decode ever glitter, wrinkle, squint, and gaze that passes from those orbs. When I read a description that catches my attention, I copy it down, using it later to remind me there’s more to a character’s eyes than ‘she looked’ or ‘his blue eyes’.

Here’s my list of 65 (and growing):

A note: These are for inspiration only . They can’t be copied because they’ve been pulled directly from an author’s copyrighted manuscript (intellectual property is immediately copyrighted when published).

• Eyed me as though his bullshit meter was ticking in the red zone.
• He blinked as his eyes adjusted.
• an alertness in the eyes, behind the glasses that sat crookedly on the nose
• Cold gaze fixed on the anxious young man
• Cast a skeptical eye
• Sure, we know that, said Herrera, taking off his glasses to inspect the lenses.
• Gaffan saw Marley’s eyes open wide in surprise and recognition.
• Eyes bleary from surveillance and the two-hour drive
• Vision narrowed to a pinprick
• Eyes clouded
• eyes locked on like magnets
• four pairs of eyes blinked in unison
• studied her with a predator’s unwavering attention
• blinked a couple of times

• eyes narrowed to slits
• Narrowed his eyes
• eyes locked in a shared understanding
• yellow rimmed eyes narrowing
• peer sightlessly at a wall
• eyes turned inward
• shook her head and stared at the pool
• Staring sightlessly into the darkness
• Stared off into the crowd but didn’t seem to see anything
• Stared into the distance
• Fixed expression
• Looked at a place somewhere over his shoulder
• focused on an empty space in the air between them
• eyes narrowed, she got a vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows. Her lips pursed slightly.
• Their eyes met, but he broke it off
• meaningful eye contact
• studied Hood with her level gaze
• risked a peek
• she screwed her eyes shut
• stared brazenly into her eyes
• opened her eyes wide
• dark eyes radiated a fierce, uncompromising intelligence
• rubbed raw eyes
• eyes felt scratchy and I was jittery with coffee and raw from sleeplessness.
• His eyes flickered past me.
• His eyes were never still and he never looked at me except in passing
• Caught her peeking at Hawk sideways out of a narrow corner of her right eye.
• Watching the bystanders from the edge of his vision
• Looked him over with the respect men who have not served give those who have

• Ferret-like eyes
• Dark eyes smoldering
• Lined from squinting into too many suns
• Eyes were dark pools of fear
• looked like hell—purple bags under her eyes,
• eyes carried a mixture of shock and barely contained anger
• bright eyes of an optimist
• one eye clouded with a cataract
• wounded eyes
• his body felt heavy
• eyes were dark, cupped by fleshy pouches
• wire-rimmed glasses
• Slate-blue eyes
• Dark solemn eyes
• Spark in his grey eyes
• Steely-eyed
• Huge blue eyes that gave her a startled look
• black circles beneath her eyes had become bruises
• Wide-spread aquamarine eyes
• brown eyes wearing reading glasses
• Piercing stare
• Close set black eyes
• Watery blue eyes
• Memorable only for his bleak eyes
• Nets of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes
• Eyes flat as little pebbles
• Steely eyed
• long eyelashes
• laughing eyes
• predatory eyes
• Eyes were red-rimmed from allergies
• Under heavy lids; heavy-lidded
• Sensitive brown eyes
• Eyes sunk into his sockets
• Competitive, fixed, dead-eyed, and querulous stare of people who weren’t getting far enough fast enough
• I’ve-seen-it-all eyes
• bedroom eyes, dark hair falling into them
• Crows feet radiated from corners of eyes
• the light fades from his eyes until they are dark and empty
• eyes were brown in the middle and bloodshot everywhere else
• stared through him
• Looked left and right before starting
• Pingponging his gaze between A and B
• His glance, as conspiratorial as a wink
•  eyes watched her the way a tiger watched a bunny
• Shadow passed over his eyes
• Flicker in his eyes
• Said without looking at him
• looked for a common theme, a thread of some sort
• She frowned–couldn’t recall the incident
• Heard little and cared less
• Hovering over her shoulder
• His eyes flattened
• His face hardened in concentration
• Thinking about my conversation with the old detective
• shot a look over the top of his glasses
• Squinted at the sun
• Arched an eye brow
• Looked at me with a strangled expression
• Bushy eyebrows
• eyebrows of white steel wool
• a single bushy bar above the eyes

More descriptors for writing:

Lots of them

48 Collections to Infuse Your Writing

What is a ‘Hacker’

Copyright ©2022 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

Jacqui Murray  is the author of the popular prehistoric fiction saga,  Man vs. Nature  which explores seminal events in man’s evolution one trilogy at a time. She is also the author of the  Rowe-Delamagente thrillers  and  Building a Midshipman , the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy .  Her non-fiction includes over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, reviews as an  Amazon Vine Voice ,  a columnist for  NEA Today , and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction,  Savage Land,  Winter 2024 .

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150 thoughts on “ 65 Ways to Describe Sight and Eyes in Your Writing ”

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So interesting!

Like Liked by 1 person

Thank you! It’s easy to fall into the traditional color/size/that sort, but there is so much more to eyes than that. Which–of course–you understand, with your interest in music.

Thank you again for this wonderful reply 💝

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There is no copyright on most if not all of these. You may have copied them from a particular manuscript but the phrases themselves have been used thousands of times…”arched an eyebrow” , “Cast a skeptical eye” – c’mon…look at these phrases…they are all quite generic.

You are right–just an abundance of caution. Thanks, Vicki.

I think they’re pretty neat, Jacqui.

I absolutely love this list. Thank you so much. I’m always searching for lists. One of my favorite lists is finding words to use instead of said.

Glad you found it helpful!

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Jacqui, Can’t comment on just one post — I find something helpful in your posts on matter the subject. For now, the “eyes” have it. Thanks, also on commenting on my posts and for your regular blurbs. Mask up and enjoy the holidays.

I have quite a collection of masks these days! Thanks for the greetings, Nancy!

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Thanks for visiting.

Hi Jacqui, I just got your last book from Amazon and I started to read it. When the Thames is finished I will write about it, as promised. Joanna

Thank you, Joanna! I’d love that. But don’t rush. Your series on rivers is fascinating.

Very useful to many budding writers. Thank you, Jacqui, for your comments about the posts on my blog naturetails.blog I am back home from the hospital but still not very well. Nothing serious. Joanna

I’m so sorry to hear that, Gaby. It’s awful to be sick, especially now.

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Love this! Very helpful.

Thanks! Glad this was helpful.

Wow thanks!! These are worth remembering – or at least remembering where they are.

Pretty amazing how many ways there are to discuss ‘see’!

Reblogged this on Home – SFH and commented: This is such a good list for anyone need good sight words!

Thanks for sharing!

wow amazing list , Thank you for compiling it very useful to me !

I am so amazed by the creativity of writers. These really caught my attention.

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I will look at this list when I’m writing 🤔 my eyes would read. She looked through her red itchy eyes and decided he was a hunk. But what could she do about it at 61 and wrinkled skin. Go to Walmart for Gold Bond!

Like Liked by 2 people

Hehee. You and me both!

I think you are amazing with the wealth of words you provide.

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Just found this – these are great! My eyes are wide with admiration….

I see what you did there!

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Hi Jacqui, Thank you for liking my poem, I love writing poetry…and playing around with words::my passion! Add people and I’m made up! I enjoyed your lists and ideas; thank you.. To think there are only 26 letters in the English language. Isn’t it amazing what us writers do with them. Magic! Best wishes. xx

Well, Nature has us beat. Only 4 bases for DNA and look at all the variation. Yikes!

Thanks goes to you for promoting my work as a powerful Psychic spiritual healer in usa and for liking my blogs, let me live my number here +27634299958 whatsapp. THANKS

Like Liked by 3 people

Thanks for visiting me, too!

Love this! Thanks for taking time away from your writing to visit my blog!

Fun visit, Lily. I’m new to #authorstoolboxbloghop and am enjoying all the new writers I’m meeting!

I’m looking for some advice. I want to describe the look someone gives another person when the former is deliberately feigning interest in a way meant to convey mockery and contempt. I’ll try to give a brief example.

Person A says something person B finds ridiculous or uninteresting.

Person B, being a jerk, makes a sarcastic remark to the effect of “wow, how fascinating!” while giving person A a look that matches her attitude.

It’s all about body language…and the fact that it’s nearly 6 am and I am struggling to be descriptive! Thanks for your help.

Snide? Or dismissive? Or like you just stepped in a cow turd?

Hmm… Let’s see what anyone else has to offer!

some great ideas in this list Jacqui to stimulate the imagination. also, a good reminder about copyright 🙂

I’m pretty paranoid about copyrights. I’m perfectly happy paying for images rather than worrying they’re in the public domain.

exactly. i bought 5 images recently from shuttlestock. not very expensive.

Also technically you can’t copywriter a phrase you didn’t make up. “Narrowed his eyes” is on this list and I’m sure that’s been used thousands of times in manuscripts for many, many years. Copying a whole paragraph that a phrase is imbedded in is wrong, but using common phrases in your writing but putting it in your own context is not violating a copyright.

You’re absolutely right. Good to point this out!

“Eyed me as though his bullshit meter was ticking in the red zone.”. Awesome.

I’ve felt that way myself at times!

Seriously, this is a great list!

Great examples. You had me at the first one.

Yeah, I like that one too. It evokes some good mental images.

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This is excellent! Thanks.

Thanks! They are all quite authentic.

Thank you Jacqui! it was helpful..

I love hearing that, Vijaya.

This is a thorough and useful list, Jacqui. Thank you. 🙂 — Suzanne

I get a lot of inspiration from this one. Thanks, Patricia.

I love posts like this, Jacqui. They make me reach beyond the self-imposed limits of my little grey cells 🙂

Every time I prepare to write “he squinted” or “his ferret eyes”, I check this list. I can do so much more with eyes!

I’ve bookmarked it and will be using in the future 🙂

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Brilliant Jacqui thank you. The eyes are such a crucial element in connection with someone. Eyes meeting across a crowded room has been the start of many a wonderful romance…..

Thanks so much for sharing this post on your blog, Sally. It’s been fun hearing the feedback.

Pleasure Jacqui. x

Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady .

Thanks for the reblog!

Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog .

Thanks for the reblog, Chris!

Welcome, Jacqui – great info 😃

It’s in august company on your blog.

THANK YOU, Jacqui ❤️

Reblogged this on Plaisted Publishing House and commented: Awesome writing tips for Sight and Eyes 🙂

Fantastic list, thank you!

My pleasure.

Excellent, Jacqui. Thanks for sharing.

These definitely inspire me when I get stuck. Thanks for visiting.

Haha! Love the 1st one, I have to use that on my hubby. LOLz

Oh yeah. I use it a lot on mine!

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Awesome write-up. I wonder if a person used some of these phrases in their own book or novel would it be considered plagiarism? I posted earlier but I wrote the wrong address.

It could be–and some of them are so outstanding, genre readers would recognize them for where they came from. Not worth the risk!

thanks for your response. But I think it depends. As I look over some of the words in sight, I already have them in my book and chances are some of the phrases are in other books. Phrases like “Eyes turned inwards”, “Looked him over”, “Blinks several times”, “Squinted into the crowd.” In my novel I used, “His eyes darted back and forth.” coming to find out that the phrase is used in over 15 other novels that I found and I am sure there are more. I’m sure there are probably other phrases that I use in some of these books as well. Can I call it plagiarism if I see phrases I used in my book?

I guess it depends on the complexity of the sentence.

You are right–those types of general phrasing is pretty much public domain. Good to point that out!

Thank you! This is perfect for when I’m sitting there thinking, ‘how should I say?’ which causes me to stop and think too long and uh-oh I wind up in the writer’s block zone!

Thanks exactly what it does for me, too. Inspiration.

Well, isn’t that thorough. i love the first one about the bullshit meter.

We’re so far beyond ‘beady eyes’ aren’t we?

This is so much help. Thank you.

My pleasure!

Wow, so many ways to describe and possibly we still have even more things the eyes express. Magical are the eyes, small organs with great power. Thanks miriam

That is true. I think that veil with just the eyes showing is a perfect example.

Reblogged this on lampmagician .

Thank you so much for sharing. Sometimes my thoughts gets stuck and I need something to give it a kick start. 🙂

That is exactly what these lists are for. Sometimes, I just read the dictionary, find great words that evoke an image that leads to a plot point. I love writing.

If only I had a photographic memory … as long as I didn’t have to sacrifice my busy, sometimes all over the place, creative mind. 😳

This was such a help. Thanks for sharing!

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Thank you so much! These will definitely help me in my writing!

Great writer tips. Thanks for your recent visit to my blog.

These are fun, aren’t they?

This has helped me so much! I always get stuck describing how characters ‘look’ at certain things. Thank you!

It’s amazing how many ways you can say the same thing. Glad you like these.

it was of great help for me.. beautifully expressed…

Thanks! And, I’m sure the cute dog doesn’t hurt it’s read-me value.

no it didn’t… rather its my favorite breed so its just an add on cuteness & more expressive 🙂

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Awesome list!! Thanks for sharing 😀

and a free cute dog picture–what could be better!

Excellent… Being language my second language you have no idea how this post helps me, dear Jacqui… Best wishes! Aquileana ⭐

I bet many of them seem quite odd to you. I’m highly impressed with your writing skills.

Exactly!… But I am learning with your post!… Oh and thank you, Jacqui!… I’d humbly say that I feel I have made considerable improvements! … Best wishes! Aquileana 😀

Reblogged this on quirkywritingcorner and commented: Can someone explain the copywrite law when it comes to using common phrases? I’ve used quite a few of these in my writing and even my nurse’s notes. I did not think using a common phrase would be considered infringement.

My old eyes can’t ‘see’ as much as your young ones and writing brain can Jacqui. You’ve given me so much great tips over the last couple of years, I wish I knew long time ago. These are the ones came at a critical juncture of my [nonsensical?] book. Thanks for your help Jaqui. Arun from over the pond.

I see your eyes laughing! Ah, you are the master of subtle humor, Arun.

You know, I’m always scratching my head and pulling at my hair trying to think of others ways to say “looked”. These will help. Thanks.

And ‘saw’. These aren’t like changing the tag, ‘he said’. They aren’t supposed to be invisible. Gee, it gets hard sometimes.

These are great. Eyes are so expressive and are a must to mention when writing.

They are. Shoulders, feet–they can be ignored, but not what’s communicated with eyes.

With this post Jacqui “The ayes have it”! You are such a great resource, thank you.

Fabulous as always, Jacqui. Thanks so much. Something to chew on. ❤

Chomp chomp!

Great post. I was reminded tonight how important expressive eyes are while watching the Voice.

Since so much of communication is the body, it makes sense we should be aware of what’s being said.

Thanks, Jacqui. This should prove very helpful.

So much more expressive, aren’t they?

Great tips! Thank you so much for sharing! Have a lovely week 🙂

Lots of ways to say, ‘he saw’, aren’t there?

Yes, quite! Thank you. Very useful tips 🙂

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Writers in the Storm

A blog about writing.

Character Eye Descriptions: The Window to Your Story

By Sharla Rae, @SharlaWrites

Rather than using clichéd or common descriptions, why not use "explicit" eye descriptions to give your reader a real peek into a character’s psyche?

I’ll touch on eye color, movement, and appearance and, of course, I have some helpful lists to inspire ideas.

  Eye color

It’s a given that writers mention eye color as a character feature . Color can be mentioned every so often to remind readers what the character looks like. But! Don’t hit them over the head with it.

Besides using eye color as a facial feature it can sometimes be used to identify who is speaking especially if the color distinctive.

Blue eyes widened and she threw up both hands. “Now hold on a minute.” OR Her amber cat eyes narrowed. “xxxx”

A character might have plain old blue or brown eyes and that’s fine. But why not use color terms that say something about the character or what they're thinking?

• Eyes like silver lightning: sharp, doesn’t miss a thing, spirited, quick-witted
• Gunmetal eyes: sounds like a lethal male, perhaps emotionless
• Glacial blue: Can suggest nationality, or cold personality, angry expression
• Milk chocolate eyes: sounds yummy, soft, warm
• Chips of emerald ice: sharp, cold heated
• Faded azure lace: an older person with blue eyes, lace suggests a woman, perhaps homey

Here’s a great eye color list that will help you describe “who” your character is. This is one of the best I’ve seen to date and includes pictures.

Want to know the most common and rare eye colors in the world? The following are listed from most common to least.

• Amber and Black [rank about even according to which resource you’re looking at]
• Red or Pink [mostly in albinos]

Just for fun here’s a website that tells you the meaning of the color of your eyes.

  Eye Appearance

  Eye appearance/shape isn’t too difficult to write -- round, almond, bug-eyed, beady, sloe-eyed, hooded, upturned/cat, downturned etc. We might also include how the eyes are placed on the face: close-set, deep-set, monolid , protruding etc.

Certain eye conditions or disorders can affect eye appearance and are excellent descriptors. You may not want to use the scientific terms but the descriptions of the terms are also useful. See my list below.

Appearance also includes emotional expression and often involves the eyebrows.

Appearance frequently blurs lines with eye movement and more often than not demonstrates emotions and personality. You'll see examples of this in the lists below.

Eye Movement

Is it just me, or do eye movements mess you up too?

No doubt you’ve heard or read something like: her eyes traveled/fell down the stairs where he stood.

The eyeballs rolled down the steps? Believe it or not, this is a common mistake. And yes as a newbie writer my crit group had a good laugh on me with such a mistake. Words like “gaze,” “visage,” "glance," fixes the problem.

A tiresome descriptor for eye movement are the over-used look, looked and looking. If our eyes are open they are looking and it really doesn’t say much more than that. There’s nothing wrong with using look but never varying with more explicit substitutes is boring and causes echoes .

Try: gaze, glance, surveyed, glared, raked, searched, watched, scanned etc. You’ll find lots of these in the lists below. Notice, too, that some have very specific connotations.

As mentioned above, eyebrows are very much a part of eye movement and play an important part in expressing emotion. Blinking eyelashes show emotion too but at the risk of sounding silly, don’t overuse this one.

And now for my lists. These include eye movement, appearance/expression, disorders and conditions, eye parts and types of eyeglasses.

Anchored her attention on Angry gaze sliced Assessing Blinked owlishly Blinking with feigned innocence Brow furrowed as his mouth turned grim Brows knitted in a frown Bushy brows beetled Cocked a brow in surprise Dragged his hawkish gaze Drilled her with Eyed him demurely/boldly Eyes caressed Eyes crossed in exasperation Eyes retraced their path to Eyes rolled skyward Eyes wandered Flayed him with Focused on her lips Followed as the model passed Gawking at girls Gaze cruised her figure Gaze dipped to her Glance flickered Glanced sideways Glare traveled with unnerving thoroughness Glared daggers [overused] Inspected the cabin Inventoried his surroundings Lashes swept up and she blinked Leveled a glowering look Lingered over the script lines Lowered her eyes/opened Narrowed to crinkled slits One heavy brow slanted in strong disapproval Penetrating gaze probed Perusing the sea of faces in hopes of Plugged his eyes back into their sockets Pried her eyes off the hunk Probing visual caress Raked with disdain Searching the depths Shifted her angry glare to Shot him a disgusted glance Sighted out the corner of her eye Slammed her eyes shut and hummed the pain Squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth Squinted Staring fixedly Strange pale eyes darted Studied with piercing scrutiny Subtle wink Swung her restless gaze Tracking the other man’s gaze Unglued her eyes from him Unrelenting stare Up went his brows Violet eyes strayed to the Watched until distance obscured Wrenched his gaze

Eye Expression and Appearance [Some of these cross over with Movement]

Moon-eyed Sloe-eyed Burned fanatically Devoured her beauty Eyes implored A look designed to peel his hide All-consuming Almond shaped Appraising glance Astute gaze Avid eyes attested to his quick wit Beady rat eyes Beseeching Bewildered Blazed like torches Boomerang brows like Ayatollah Khomeini’s Bright with age Bug-eyed Bulging with fright Chaotic, helter-skelter eyebrow—like his mind, unsystematic and fickle Cold/cool/chilly/icy/frigid Commanding visage Cross-eyed Crudely insulting stare Deep set beneath heavy black brows Disapproval gleamed in her eyes Dissatisfaction plowed his brow Disturbing smoke-hued Elliptical eyes with heavy lids Eyebrows like checkmarks Eyes all gooey with Eyes like a shark Feline eyes Flashed with gaiety/anger etc Flat black, dispassionate as bullets Frankly assessing Get a load of those blinkers Gleam of deviltry Glittering with Green flinty rocks Hallows of madness Hard as nails Heart-stopping eyes Held hostage by his eyes Intent and unwavering/riveted Irritated visage Liquid pools of Luminous glow of happiness Magnetic Mellow as the sky at sunset Narrowed to slits Nebulous gaze / unreadable New moon-shaped Penetrating blue of his eyes Possessed the power to make her Rheumy old eyes Sardonic/disdaining/skeptical/mocking Sharp with intelligence Slits for eyes Sliver of emotion in those cool eyes Sloped down at the corners like a sad pup Small evil eyes Sneaky close-set eyes So tired his eyeballs seemed to sag out Steeply arched brows Sunken in the head Sympathetic Tears of remorse flooded The dark mystery of his eyes Triangular brows/always surprised Twenty-twenty vision Veiled expression of Visionary eyes Visual exploration of Watery eyes Where did you get those peepers Wild and frightened Wore spectacles/glasses/winkers

Eye Disorders and Conditions [You might like this website ]

• Astigmatism : causes fuzzy or blurry vision due to irregular curve in eye lens or cornea.
• Gimlet-eyed : sharp and piercing
• Goggle-eyed : bulging, rolling or staring
• Megalophthalmic : unusually large eyes, often a congenital condition-think goldfish
• Strabismaic : eyes are not properly aligned. Sometimes Cross-eyed or walleyed
• Walleyed : eyes diverging instead of focusing simultaneously on the same point; eyes turned outward away from nose; also used to define a wild irrational staring, glare or fierce look
• Cross-eyed : converging strabismus, eyes turning toward the nose
• Diplopia : double vision
• Cataract : opacity of the lens of the eye, cloudy
• Glaucoma : hardening of the eyeball, often resulting in poor vision or blindness
• Leucoma : disease of the eye in which the cornea becomes white and opaque
• Pinkeye : highly contagious form of conjunctivitis-eye appears rimmed in pink, bloodshot, often swelled and sometimes full of pus.
• Nystagmic : eyeballs moving rapidly and involuntarily
• Ablepsia : lack of sight; blindness
• Farsightedness : ability to see objects at a distance more clearly than close objects
• Nearsighedness :(shortsightedness, myopia) see objects only at close distances
• Cornea : transparent covering of the iris that produces refraction needed to focus image on retinea
• Eye socket: hollow of bone in face holding eyeball
• Eyeball : globe of the eye
• Iris : colored circular muscle in front of eye that controls amount of light that enters the eye
• Retina : inner layer of the eye wall composed of nervous tissue stimulated by light to send impulses to the brain.
• Optic nerve : nerve that sends sight impulses from the eye to the brain
• Pupil : round contractile aperture in iris of eye, regulating light into the eye
• Vitreous humor : jelly-like material that fills eyeball and forms its shape
• Eye lashes : hair around the eyes

Eye Corrections [A good overview of modern lenses ]

Note: Although it’s not exactly known when eye glasses were first invented, they appear in a 1352 painting.

• Aviator : sunglasses with oversized lenses; associated with pilots
• Ben Franklins : glasses with small ellipitcal, octagonal or oblong lenses worn on the middle of the nose; in slang often referred to as granny glasses
• Bifocals : glasses having split lenses to improve both near and farsightedness
• Contact lenses : lenses worn directly on the eye
• Eyeglasses or spectacles or winkers : worn to correct vision; lenses set in frames that hook behind the ears
• Horn-rimmed : glasses with dark or mottled brown frames; frames are usually heavy
• Monocle: single lens used over eye for correction
• Lorgnettte : eyeglasses on a long handle
• Lorgnon : (French – pince-nez) eyeglasses that clip onto the nose; framless, circular lenses that set on the bridge of the nose
• Loupe:  magnifying glass generally held in the eye and used by jewlers

Now let's have some fun. What are some of the funniest mistakes you've made with eye descriptions or eye movement? What is your biggest pet peeve?

About Sharla

When she’s not writing and researching ways to bedevil her book characters, Sharla enjoys collecting authentically costumed dolls from all over the world, traveling (to seek more dolls!), and reading tons of books. You can find Sharla here at Writers In The Storm or on Twitter at @SharlaWrites .

eye photo credit: Brittany Greene via photopin cc

51 comments on “Character Eye Descriptions: The Window to Your Story”

That was great! Thanks for all the information!!!

Great, Sharla - This helps. I have to remind myself though, not to overuse 'eyes'. Better to intersperse other body movements to express emotion as well, or my scene gets boring....and I run out of terms! Hard to write fresh with 'eyes' - it's all been done!

STELLAR list, Sharla. This goes in my "keepers" email folder for when my brain goes AWOL on eye descriptors. Thanks!

Thanks Gloria. Glad you dropped by.

Great reminders. I am annoyed by the 'moving eyes' too.

Yes, it's easy to echo just the word eyes. I'm glad you brought that up!

Reblogged this on Daphodill's Garden and commented: Great tips to expand on eye descriptors.

Thanks for the Reblog!

Perfect timing with this wonderful information! I'm deep into revisions and looking for fresh ways to show emotions, using both eyes and body language. One question. If eyes can't travel or fall, how do they caress? 😉

A character's eye expression can soften and the gaze can caress.

Brilliant advice, thanks for sharing 🙂

Great post, Sharla!

Another great post...bookmarking it! The "eyes" have it...best blog and writers ever!

Thanks. I almost used The Eyes Have It as a title. 🙂

Great minds, and all that, Sharla.

Awww...thanks a bunch! This comment is a great way to start my day. 🙂

Great post! Thank you. This will take our manuscripts from dull to delicious. =)

Thanks stopping by Sally!

Great collection of eye-related description. 🙂 As long as a person doesn't use the eyes too often to describe, this can be powerful. It's an easy area to overuse, especially with emotion.

True. Too much of a good thing is never good.

Terrific post! So many things to remember. I smiled at your dropping body parts. A writing instructor long ago made fun of those things--Like you, he pointed out eyes--and heads--that drop a lot. Thanks for the great lists. Tweeted/shared.

Thanks Barb. The body parts thing is always touchy. A time or two I've read where an author forgot that both arms were already occupied and wrote in a third arm accidentally.

Reblogged this on jbiggarblog .

Thanks for the reblog!

Great list Sharla Rae, sometimes I get stuck on watched, gazed, searched. Nice to see som many great options, 🙂 I reblogged so I could save this list

This is a keeper! Lord, I love lists!! Thanks for the great post.

I love lists to Barb. Glad you enjoyed these.

This was great Sharla! Lovely of you to take the time to write all this down for everyone. Very helpful. Goes on my blog keeper shelf. 🙂

Thanks Kathleen. I love lists for brainstorming ideas.

Bookmarking this! I have such a hard time describing eyes and eye movement. Thanks.

It's funny. Eyes and their movement sounds like it should be easy but really not, esp. when you want to show more than just the obvious. Thanks for Laurie for stopping by.

Thanks for sharing! This is most definitely going to come in handy when I have a brain-freeze.

I hate brain freeze's because most of the time I'm not even eating yummy ice cream when they happen. 🙂

Sharla, you never fail to provide us with amazing lists of alternatives to the ho-hum. Thanks, this is another keeper 🙂

Welcome. I'm knocking around for another list already.

This is such a great article. And the lists are fantastic. Thanks!

Thanks for stopping by Veronica.

You are so the queen of lists, Sharla. And all are awesome. I'm saving this with the others. Thanks so much for sharing. I'll do the same.

Really eye-opening post. Nicely done. Thanks.

Your welcome and do share! It's the best way we writers can help each other.

Fantastic post.

Great post. I'm saving this. Would you mind if I reblogged it on Everybody Needs A Little Romance next Friday?

Stephanie, I'd be honored if you reblogged it. Thanks!

Thanks for this informative post on eyes! It's a keeper!

Hands down (!) the most comprehensive discussion of this topic anywhere. I wrote an "eye moment" just last night. Now I'm inspired to go back and punch it up.

Thanks Eric. Sometimes I wonder about myself and my lists so this kind of comment makes it all worth while. 🙂

Great post. It's a keeper. Thank you!

What a wonderful resource. I've shared with my writer's group. LOVE it.

I would add, some other eye accessories, too, like: Sunglasses Cheaters Shades Sunnies Glares Specks

~ Tam Francis ~ http://www.girlinthejitterbugdress.com

This is a wonderful, unusual and very useful post. Thanks so much. My characters seem to glance and gaze a lot too much for my liking (they're far too nosy) so it's great to have your lists.

I really needed this. Thanks for posting it. I always run out of other ways to say "glance" and "look."

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Master List of Physical Description for Writers

I created this list of ways to describe people

because physical description, when done well, helps the readers see characters in their minds. But sometimes when you’re in the middle of writing, it can be hard to think of physical adjectives and distinguishing features for characters. I find that describing facial features can be especially tricky!

That’s why I created this long list of physical characteristics. It’s kind of like a character description generator, and it’ll help you when you’re trying to think of how to describe a character’s appearance.

Eyes – General

 For all the words about describing facial features, I’m focusing more on physical descriptions rather than emotional expressions, though there’s a little crossover! You can also check out my long list of facial expressions.

heavy-lidded

fringed with long lashes

with sweeping eyelashes

with thick eyelashes

By the way, this post on how to describe (and not describe) the eyes of an Asian character  is really great. Check it out.

Eyes – Color

Brown is the most common eye color by far. Green is quite rare.

chocolate brown

cocoa brown

coffee brown

sienna brown

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cornflower blue

Arctic blue

glacial blue

crystal blue

electric blue

slate blue / slate gray

storm blue / storm gray

silver / silver gray

concrete gray

gunmetal gray

Skin – Color

Josh Roby made a great chart of skin tones and descriptor words, and I got a lot of these words from him. You can get that here .

The quote from N.K. Jemisin interested me: “I get really tired of seeing African-descended characters described in terms of the goods that drove, and still drive, the slave trade—coffee, chocolate, brown sugar. There’s some weird psychosocial baggage attached to that.” 

cream / creamy

rose / rosy

Skin – General

Some of these are better for the face, and some are better for other parts of the body.

translucent

luminescent

with large pores

weather-beaten

Face – Structure

heart-shaped

high forehead

broad forehead

prominent brow ridge

protruding brow bone

sharp cheekbones

high cheekbones

angular cheekbones

hollow cheeks

jutting chin

pointed chin

receding chin

double chin

dimple in chin

visible Adam’s apple

People don’t write much about noses, but they can be distinguishing features for characters!

Cupid’s bow

straight teeth

gap between teeth

gleaming white teeth

Facial Hair (or lack thereof)

clean-shaven

smooth-shaven

mutton-chop sideburns

a few days’ growth of beard

five o’ clock shadow

Hair – General

I threw a few hairstyles in here, though not many.

shoulder-length

neatly combed

slicked down / slicked back

buzzed / buzz cut

widow’s peak

Hair – Color

There are some repeats here from the eye color section!

salt and pepper

charcoal gray

brown sugar

tawny brown

toffee brown

Titian-haired

strawberry blonde

butterscotch

sandy blond

fair-haired

Body Type – General

average height

barrel-chested

heavy / heavy-set

pot-bellied

full-figured

leggy / long-legged

broad-shouldered

sloping shoulders

stubby fingers

long fingers

ragged nails

grimy fingernails

ink-stained

This list and many more are in my book Master Lists for Writers: Thesauruses, Plot Ideas, Character Traits, Names, and More . Check it out if you’re interested!

And if you don’t want to miss future writing posts, follow the blog, if you aren’t already — there’s a place to sign up on the lefthand side of the blog. Thanks for stopping by, and happy writing!

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127 thoughts on “ master list of physical description for writers ”.

Thanks, Bryn! This list has sparked a spark in my brain. I haven’t seen one of those for a while. I was getting worried I’d lost my flint!

I’m so glad you like it!

I love this, do you mind if we share on our blog WritersLife.org ?

Thanks for the positive feedback! You can’t reproduce it on your blog, but you can share an excerpt of 200 words or less plus a link to my site.

As a new novel writer all I can say is thank very much for sharing with us this wonderful list.

Ah you’re welcome! Thanks for visiting!

This is amazing! Thank you very much!

Thanks for the kind words–glad it seems helpful!

Reblogged this on looselyjournalying.

Reblogged this on Of Fancy & Creativity .

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Aw thank you for this it helped so much! I’m 15 and I’m trying to write a novel and this was sooooo helpful so thank you a billion 🙂 Best wishes.

Ah you’re welcome! Thanks for stopping by. Good for you for working on a novel, and good luck–I bet it will go great!

Hi, Bryn Thank you for doing these lists. They helped me a lot. Can you make a list on how to describe emotions like sadness or anger.

It’s funny you should ask 🙂 There’s a list like that in my book MASTER LISTS FOR WRITERS coming out this fall! I haven’t officially announced it yet, but hey 🙂

You can get a free copy when it comes out if you agree to give it an honest review. SIgn up for my newsletter if you’re interested!

Reblogged this on Kalynn Bayron and commented: Yes! This is great!

Was just looking for this type of lists.Great work.

This is so helpful.

I love your blog, btw. Your posts are informative and/or inspirational.

Are you on any social medial where I can follow you?

Oh, thank you so much! I just checked out your blog — I love the dream casting post! http://sbhadleywilson.com/blog/pull-ideal-cast-2/

I’m @BrynDonovan on Twitter, just followed you!

VERY helpful. I need to get basic descriptions of people done and out of the way to move on with plot. This quickens any details that might have taken me a long time to think through, or strain a sentence. Yuck. I know my females characters would pay attention to lots of physical details. not so with the males. Thanks!

Oh, so glad it’s helpful! That’s always what I’m trying to do with my lists — speed things up. I hate getting stuck on a detail and losing my momentum 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!

godsent list! Bryn, I wish you more brains.

Reblogged this on Jessica Louis and commented: This list is beyond helpful. Who knew there were so many eye colors!?

Thanks Bryn your list was amazing. I’m an aspiring writer and it really helped me a lot. When I can I’m going to get a copy of your book. I think it would help me become a better writer. My genre of choice is erotic, but it is so hard to get out there, but I’m hopeful one day I will. It’s what I love to do and I’m going to keep trying.

Hi Beth! Thank you so much for the kind words. If you do get the book, I hope you like it! And good luck on writing erotica — I’m doing a “WIP Wednesday” this Wednesday where you can share a bit of your work in progress, if you like 🙂

That would be great. I have some short stories publish on a site called Literotica. I have some editing issues that I’m trying to work out, nothing a few classes wouldn’t help. How do I share my work.

I am so sorry! I missed this comment before. The next WIP Wednesday on the blog is Dec. 2… if you’re following the blog you’ll see the post! (The follow button is on the righthand side of this page.) Hope your writing’s going well 🙂

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Reblogged this on PRINCE CHARMING ISN'T HERE and commented: what an amazing list! I always have a hard time describing features! words sometimes fail me!

i loved this list! thank you so much for making it! 🙂

So glad it was helpful!

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Thank you! This is so helpful to have for reference. Occasionally I’ll have a particular word in mind and can’t think of it, and I can usually pop over here and find it right away!

I absolutely love your master lists. They have helped me so much in diversifying the words I use when I’m writing. 🙂

Ohhh thank you! That is so great to hear. 🙂 Hope your writing projects are going great!

Thank you, and they are. I’m just about to publish a works I’ve been working on for the past couple of months, which is so exciting. XD Hope all your writing projects are going great as well. 🙂

What a wonderful and thorough list Bryn. Thanks for sharing it! I will at some point ‘link back’ to this fabulous article (I’ll let you know when I do.) I’m new to your site, but will certainly be back for more! I’m fascinated to learn that you’re also a home-grown KC girl. =0) Although, I remarried and moved to California 9 years ago, KC still tugs my heart-strings.

Hey, so glad you like it! Yeah, Kansas City is a special place. Come visit anytime 🙂 And thanks for visiting my blog! — I LOVE your username, by the way. Made me smile.

thanks for following my blog!

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Reblogged this on A Blissful Garden and commented: I find this very important!

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Thanks for sharing this list! It is amazing and so helpful !

I’m going to save this as a favorite. You always provide great information Bryn. Continue with your success.

Oh, thank you so much, Christopher! I really appreciate the kind words. So glad you like this!

This list is so complete! I haven’t worked on fiction in a long while, but lately I’ve been wanting to get back into it. I know this is going to be a great help when i sit down to create my characters!

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This is absolutely perfect for aspiring writers so that we don’t have to use Microsoft Word synonyms that tend to nit have what we’re searching for. Your introductory paragraph about readers falling in love with characters’ personalities and not theit physical attributes was spot on. Thank you thank you, thank you!

Chunny! Thank you so very much for the kind words. I’m so glad you found it helpful!!

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This is amazing! Thank you! I hope it’s alright if I use this as a reference in a blog post for character development.

Hi Jacquelyn! So glad you like it. That’s fine, just please link to the post!

I read this over and over, thank you for creating this! Can I just ask, when thinking of clothing and how to describe it, what are some things you would put? (I’m making a book draft and have never needed clothing described to me as much as now)

Thank you! It’s so important that we don’t reuse the same words too often, so this will help a lot with that problem.

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Thanks for helping me. It really made a big difference of helping me come up with something.

Hi Joseph! Sorry for the delayed reply! I’m so glad you liked it. Thanks for the kind words!

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Your book “Master Lists for Writers” has helped me incredibly. I’ve always wanted to be a romance writer but didn’t have the nerve until now. I am currently working on a short story about a college girl who is assaulted by a classmate. It was based on a dream I had a few nights ago. I haven’t developed how she gets her revenge on him. I know the story line seems dark but the dream stuck with me so much, I felt the urge to turn it into a story. Thank you again for your awesome book. What a great resource

Rhonda! Thank you so much for the kind words. I am so happy that the book is helpful, and even gladder that you’re going for it and writing! Sending you best wishes on your story!

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Great advice in this post, Bryn! Thank you.

Used this for school! It was really helpful!

Oh yay! So glad it was helpful!

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This is a great list! So comprehensive, and just what I was looking for. I struggle with physical descriptions of people and have a tendency to write the same kins of attributes. So this list is fab!

This is great!

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keep up the good work

Hey thanks 🙂

This is so helpful!!!!!

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Tiptoeing out there to publish my first book (I’ve been writing a long time). This post helped so much. Thanks!

oh my gosh, thank you! You have put a lot of effort in this list. I def appreciate it 🙂

Thank you I´m always using this when I´m creating new characters.

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Incredibly helpful! Thanks a lot :3

Thank you for sharing this!

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More extensive than my general list. My wizened goatee and elder Fu Manchu thank you for sharing your time and devotion to the craft.

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Very useful for ready reference. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mohan! So glad you liked it!

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I’ve been writing for a while, mostly for fun, but this was the one thing I could never get down, but this list is great! all around solid, and incredibly useful, I see myself using it every time I need to make a new character, good job!

You’re a legend! This is fantastic, thank you!

Hahaha, thanks for the kind words! 🙂 Glad it’s helpful!

I am following your prompts and valuable advice for writing a fantasy teen fiction novel. I think you are amazing. You might not know it but I was able to clear hundreds of my doubts through your help. Please keep up the good work and providing your valuable support to all of us upcoming writers.

Hey, thank you so much for the kind words—you made my day! It’s wonderful to hear that you’re working on YA fantasy. I’m so glad I could help, and I wish you every success!

I honestly would not recommend this as good writing advice. The focus is too much on describing someone’s physical features using analogies for food. That is not a good thing, it becomes trite and overdone. If used sparsely it’s okay but almost every word in this list is food related.

Hi, Larissa! Thanks for taking your valuable time to share your opinion.

You have done a great job preparing this Master List. Those who think such precise words for describing someone hurt their sensibilities, move on to another URL. I appreciate every bit of your effort.

Hi, Pradeep! I am so glad you like the list. Thanks so much for commenting!

Bryn, I love your master list book and use it all the time!

Ohh, thank you so much! I’m so glad it’s helpful!

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This is a godsend. I owe you my soul.

I work 20 hours per day, (regular business and writing the memoir). Just ordered the Master List–seems like having my own research assistant. I may be able to get 5 hours sleep now. Thanks

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No jaw descriptions? ;(

You saved my day with your wonderful, descriptive words! Now I’ve found the perfect features for my handsome male character. Thank you!

That is a lot of hours for books but I guess if you keep pushing it will happen.

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Hi Bryn, thanks so much for this information! I always appreciate your lists because I like comprehensive material all in one location as a reference (then if I decide to break the rules, at least I know what the rules are “supposed to be” first!). Have you considered making comprehensive lists of creative writing genre conventions (tropes, archetypes, settings, devices, etc.)?

Hello, and thank you for the valuable and useful information. I agree with Eleanore regarding the list of genre conventions. I’m more than pleased I found you website.

Thank u so much ❤️ that was so helpful

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Eye Description Generator – Reveal over 70,000 eye description to make your character fascinating

Eyes are the windows to the soul, or so they say. If you’re looking for fresh ideas for the eye colour, shape, and mood of your character’s eyes, then try this eye description generator. Perfect to give inspiration to creative writers, be it for writing novels, short story or poetry. This tool generates character details to help with your book.

Welcome to the Eye Description Generator

As authors and writers, we’re always looking for new and interesting ways to describe our characters and keep our language fresh. This little tool will give you a jolt of inspiration, to picture your character and their appearance in a variety of different way.

Here you will find over 70,000 eye descriptions . Use these rich words to help discover new characters for your fiction. All you have to do is press refresh to get another description. Why not use these ideas to help write a new flash fiction?

Eyes description generator

With each random roll of the eye description generator, you will find something new. Some eyes descriptions will sound like fantasy, some like hot romance, others like cosy mystery. And yes, some will sound down right bizarre. It’s a computer, not an artist! Just quick Fresh again until you find the perfect pair of eyes.

Do you have any other fiction generators?

If you found this useful, you might also want to try the character generator , and the Six Word Wonder generator .

What is the eye description generator and how does it work?

The eye description generator takes words that describe a person or characters eyes and mixes them together in random, new ways. This can be the color, shape, mood or emotion seen in their eyes. You get a real sense of the looks of a new character to help with your creative prose. Writing is all about using details to create a world. Each description gives you new detail to help flesh out your character.

The tool has access to a database of eye descriptors and randomly throws them together. As a result, the appearance descriptions will sometimes seem odd or unhelpful. The best way is to keep refreshing the description until you find an eye description that works for your story or character.

Of course, you could just read a long list of adjectives, but this tool helps you look on words with fresh eyes.

If you are more stimulated by images, why not scroll through thousands of interesting eyes ?

What examples are there of output from the eye description generator?

Here’s a few examples of descriptions thrown up by the random, artificial intelligence of the eye description generator.

This character has long lashed, elephant grey eyes.

I love the poetic meeting of the long-lashed with elephant grey. Reminds we of Dumbo.

This character has shimmering, ice blue eyes.

What could be a better description of Daniel Craig’s eyes?

This character has sunken, concrete grey eyes.

The imagery of sunken concrete really gets me with this one. This strikes me as a heartless beast of a character.

This character has feline, chocolate brown eyes

Sounds like the lover in a particularly steamy romance

This character has squinty, fog grey eyes.

I immediately picture an old, confused granddad, working on some crazy inventions.

Should I just copy and paste one of these descriptions into my story?

You can take one of these descriptions and add it to your story. But… My recommendation is to look at many descriptions and cherry-pick your favourite elements. And use this to trigger other ideas about the type of character. With those eyes, what would their hair be like, or their personality. What about their age?

Are these descriptions from the eye description generator free to use?

Yes. Go for it. It’s great to receive credit or a link back if you enjoy using the tool. But the tool is completely free for you to enjoy.

List of 200 characters from the eye description generator.

To save you the trouble of hitting refresh, I’ve listed out two hundred different characters from the eye description generator and their eye descriptions.

Enough of the eye description generator – what’s next?

If you find an ideal description for you characters eyes, feel free to share it in the comments and what imagery it brings to your mind.

I have built a few other tools to help authors and writers bring new life to their stories. Enjoy them.

5 thoughts on “Eye Description Generator – Reveal over 70,000 eye description to make your character fascinating”

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This character has sorrowful, muddy brown eyes.

This character has bloodshot, red-raw eyes.

This character has penetrating, cork brown eyes.

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Best Ways To Describe Eye Color In Writing

Eyes are the windows to the soul. A common saying and in day-to-day life, we have learned to not discern a person’s personality or quirks based on their eye color. However, when we are writing, there is a lot more freedom. And eye color is a great way to define your character, give the reader hints about their characteristics or journey within your story.

The selection to choose from is also greater in writing than in eye colors that occur naturally. Purple eyes? Red eyes? No problem!

Let’s have a look at how we can express different eye colors even better than just name-dropping the color.

Best Terms for Black Eyes

Black is an eye color chosen for people that are supposed to seem more secretive and mysterious. A character with black eyes can be very passionate and deep, loyal and intuitive. It’s also often an expression of a very powerful (sometimes hidden) energy.

In a negative context, they can make a character appear non-trustworthy, insect- or reptile-like, and downright evil. Characters with black eyes often have sinister intentions or something to hide.

To vary the description of black eyes you can use the following terms:

• coal (black)
• pitch black
• velvety black

Best Terms for Blue Eyes

Blue eyes are quite common in most newborns, however, it often changes within 2 weeks after birth. This has lead to blue eyes being associated with youth and youthfulness, and innocence. People with blue eyes are usually described as calm and peaceful. They seem to be especially attractive to other characters, too.

In a more negative context, a character with this eye color can literally be blue-eyed, detached from reality, gullible, or even stupid.

Instead of just writing “blue eyes”, try one of these:

• arctic blue
• electric blue

Best Terms for Brown Eyes

Brown is the most common eye color worldwide. Brown-eyed characters are often self-confident and independent, strong and determined. They are seen as trustworthy by other characters, and as exuding an air of warmth and security.

On the other hand, a brown-eyed character can appear brutish or simple, boring, and even dumb.

There are many wonderful tones of brown you can use, such as:

Best Terms for Gray Eyes

Gray eyes are usually reserved for older characters. But they can also express wisdom and gentleness in younger characters. Usually, these characters appear to be sensitive and analytically.

On the less favorable side, gray-eyed characters are seen as bland and boring.

Consider the following descriptions when a character has gray eyes:

• cloudy (gray)

Best Terms for Green Eyes

Usually, green eyes are seen as mysterious and given to characters that are close to nature. They are often described as curious, passionate, and generally positive and happy.

On the darker side, they are linked to jealousy or representing poison.

Different green hues can be used to describe green eyes:

• forest green
• olive (green)

Best Terms for Other Eye Colors

Eyes that show both green and brown color are commonly called hazel eyes. People with hazel eyes are seen as spontaneous, adventurous, and competitive. The two-toned quality can also indicate mood swings, however.

Shows the eye more green color, the character can appear more mischievous. If the color leans more towards the brown side, the character appears more approachable.

Red eyes usually don’t occur naturally in humans, except for in albinism. Thus, it’s more of a fantasy color. In animals, it’s more frequent. Red eyes are often associated with courage, strength, ambition, and power. However, it’s also used to express rage and anger, a lust for revenge, and associated with dark intentions and evil.

Depending on what you want to use it for, the following terms can be used for red eyes:

Violet Eyes

Purple or violet eyes are extremely (!) rare. Thus, they fit more into a fantasy context – or if your character is using contacts. A very sophisticated and spiritual color, characters with violet eyes are often associated with royalty and riches, or divination and clairvoyance. Since it’s a very powerful color, this eye color is often used for leaders, royals, or oracles, and witches.

The following terms can be used for eyes of this color:

• ultramarine

Usually, white eyes are considered blind. A character’s eyes turn white or are white if they are not able to see out of them (or one of them) anymore. The limitation here, however, is only measured by your creativity.

Instead of “white”, you can also use these terms:

Yellow Eyes

In animals, a yellow eye-color is quite common. Consider cats, dogs, predator birds, snakes, and the like. Thus, characters with yellow eyes are often associated or compared to a certain animal, taking over their features or characteristics.

There are a few nice term you can use to describe yellow eyes:

Heterochromia

Of course, you have the option to give your characters two differently colored eyes. While this occurs in the natural world, heterochromia is still rare in humans. It can be used to express a duality in a person’s character. Often, these characters are seen as especially significant, mystical, magical, supernatural, or simply special.

20 of the Best Words to Describe Eyes, Windows to the Soul

By: Author Hiuyan Lam

Posted on Last updated: October 20, 2023

Categories Vocabulary Boosters

When writing or talking about eyes, you’re going to have to describe them because it is inevitable. Most people will stick to describing eyes by color, but that is positively boring and too common.

There are better words to describe eyes that you can use, and they are not too difficult to put into your writing. For your next writing assignment, you can use some of the following words to describe eyes below.

Words to describe eyes: for blue eyes

For green eyes

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  It doesn’t seem difficult at all to describe any color of eyes, and it shouldn’t be.   Whether you have a limited scope of English or a wide one, there are some simple words to describe eyes that you can use for a more detailed description of someone. You can use any of these examples above for inspiration.  

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Last updated on Feb 14, 2023

10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You’ll Love)

A lot falls under the term ‘creative writing’: poetry, short fiction, plays, novels, personal essays, and songs, to name just a few. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art. So instead of defining what creative writing is , it may be easier to understand what it does by looking at examples that demonstrate the sheer range of styles and genres under its vast umbrella.

To that end, we’ve collected a non-exhaustive list of works across multiple formats that have inspired the writers here at Reedsy. With 20 different works to explore, we hope they will inspire you, too. 

People have been writing creatively for almost as long as we have been able to hold pens. Just think of long-form epic poems like The Odyssey or, later, the Cantar de Mio Cid — some of the earliest recorded writings of their kind. 

Poetry is also a great place to start if you want to dip your own pen into the inkwell of creative writing. It can be as short or long as you want (you don’t have to write an epic of Homeric proportions), encourages you to build your observation skills, and often speaks from a single point of view . 

Here are a few examples:

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This classic poem by Romantic poet Percy Shelley (also known as Mary Shelley’s husband) is all about legacy. What do we leave behind? How will we be remembered? The great king Ozymandias built himself a massive statue, proclaiming his might, but the irony is that his statue doesn’t survive the ravages of time. By framing this poem as told to him by a “traveller from an antique land,” Shelley effectively turns this into a story. Along with the careful use of juxtaposition to create irony, this poem accomplishes a lot in just a few lines. 

“Trying to Raise the Dead” by Dorianne Laux

 A direction. An object. My love, it needs a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening. I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.

Poetry is cherished for its ability to evoke strong emotions from the reader using very few words which is exactly what Dorianne Laux does in “ Trying to Raise the Dead .” With vivid imagery that underscores the painful yearning of the narrator, she transports us to a private nighttime scene as the narrator sneaks away from a party to pray to someone they’ve lost. We ache for their loss and how badly they want their lost loved one to acknowledge them in some way. It’s truly a masterclass on how writing can be used to portray emotions. 

If you find yourself inspired to try out some poetry — and maybe even get it published — check out these poetry layouts that can elevate your verse!

Song Lyrics

Poetry’s closely related cousin, song lyrics are another great way to flex your creative writing muscles. You not only have to find the perfect rhyme scheme but also match it to the rhythm of the music. This can be a great challenge for an experienced poet or the musically inclined. 

To see how music can add something extra to your poetry, check out these two examples:

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

 You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well, really, what's it to ya? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah 

Metaphors are commonplace in almost every kind of creative writing, but will often take center stage in shorter works like poetry and songs. At the slightest mention, they invite the listener to bring their emotional or cultural experience to the piece, allowing the writer to express more with fewer words while also giving it a deeper meaning. If a whole song is couched in metaphor, you might even be able to find multiple meanings to it, like in Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah .” While Cohen’s Biblical references create a song that, on the surface, seems like it’s about a struggle with religion, the ambiguity of the lyrics has allowed it to be seen as a song about a complicated romantic relationship. 

“I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie

 ​​If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark

You can think of song lyrics as poetry set to music. They manage to do many of the same things their literary counterparts do — including tugging on your heartstrings. Death Cab for Cutie’s incredibly popular indie rock ballad is about the singer’s deep devotion to his lover. While some might find the song a bit too dark and macabre, its melancholy tune and poignant lyrics remind us that love can endure beyond death.

Plays and Screenplays

From the short form of poetry, we move into the world of drama — also known as the play. This form is as old as the poem, stretching back to the works of ancient Greek playwrights like Sophocles, who adapted the myths of their day into dramatic form. The stage play (and the more modern screenplay) gives the words on the page a literal human voice, bringing life to a story and its characters entirely through dialogue. 

Interested to see what that looks like? Take a look at these examples:

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.” 

Arthur Miller acts as a bridge between the classic and the new, creating 20th century tragedies that take place in living rooms and backyard instead of royal courts, so we had to include his breakout hit on this list. Set in the backyard of an all-American family in the summer of 1946, this tragedy manages to communicate family tensions in an unimaginable scale, building up to an intense climax reminiscent of classical drama. 

💡 Read more about Arthur Miller and classical influences in our breakdown of Freytag’s pyramid . 

“Everything is Fine” by Michael Schur ( The Good Place )

“Well, then this system sucks. What...one in a million gets to live in paradise and everyone else is tortured for eternity? Come on! I mean, I wasn't freaking Gandhi, but I was okay. I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a medium place! Like Cincinnati. Everyone who wasn't perfect but wasn't terrible should get to spend eternity in Cincinnati.” 

A screenplay, especially a TV pilot, is like a mini-play, but with the extra job of convincing an audience that they want to watch a hundred more episodes of the show. Blending moral philosophy with comedy, The Good Place is a fun hang-out show set in the afterlife that asks some big questions about what it means to be good. 

It follows Eleanor Shellstrop, an incredibly imperfect woman from Arizona who wakes up in ‘The Good Place’ and realizes that there’s been a cosmic mixup. Determined not to lose her place in paradise, she recruits her “soulmate,” a former ethics professor, to teach her philosophy with the hope that she can learn to be a good person and keep up her charade of being an upstanding citizen. The pilot does a superb job of setting up the stakes, the story, and the characters, while smuggling in deep philosophical ideas.

Personal essays

Our first foray into nonfiction on this list is the personal essay. As its name suggests, these stories are in some way autobiographical — concerned with the author’s life and experiences. But don’t be fooled by the realistic component. These essays can take any shape or form, from comics to diary entries to recipes and anything else you can imagine. Typically zeroing in on a single issue, they allow you to explore your life and prove that the personal can be universal.

Here are a couple of fantastic examples:

“On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years” by Min Jin Lee (Literary Hub)

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. 

This deeply honest personal essay by Pachinko author Min Jin Lee is an account of her eleven-year struggle to publish her first novel . Like all good writing, it is intensely focused on personal emotional details. While grounded in the specifics of the author's personal journey, it embodies an experience that is absolutely universal: that of difficulty and adversity met by eventual success. 

“A Cyclist on the English Landscape” by Roff Smith (New York Times)

These images, though, aren’t meant to be about me. They’re meant to represent a cyclist on the landscape, anybody — you, perhaps. 

Roff Smith’s gorgeous photo essay for the NYT is a testament to the power of creatively combining visuals with text. Here, photographs of Smith atop a bike are far from simply ornamental. They’re integral to the ruminative mood of the essay, as essential as the writing. Though Smith places his work at the crosscurrents of various aesthetic influences (such as the painter Edward Hopper), what stands out the most in this taciturn, thoughtful piece of writing is his use of the second person to address the reader directly. Suddenly, the writer steps out of the body of the essay and makes eye contact with the reader. The reader is now part of the story as a second character, finally entering the picture.

Short Fiction

The short story is the happy medium of fiction writing. These bite-sized narratives can be devoured in a single sitting and still leave you reeling. Sometimes viewed as a stepping stone to novel writing, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Short story writing is an art all its own. The limited length means every word counts and there’s no better way to see that than with these two examples:

“An MFA Story” by Paul Dalla Rosa (Electric Literature)

At Starbucks, I remembered a reading Zhen had given, a reading organized by the program’s faculty. I had not wanted to go but did. In the bar, he read, "I wrote this in a Starbucks in Shanghai. On the bank of the Huangpu." It wasn’t an aside or introduction. It was two lines of the poem. I was in a Starbucks and I wasn’t writing any poems. I wasn’t writing anything. 

This short story is a delightfully metafictional tale about the struggles of being a writer in New York. From paying the bills to facing criticism in a writing workshop and envying more productive writers, Paul Dalla Rosa’s story is a clever satire of the tribulations involved in the writing profession, and all the contradictions embodied by systemic creativity (as famously laid out in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era ). What’s more, this story is an excellent example of something that often happens in creative writing: a writer casting light on the private thoughts or moments of doubt we don’t admit to or openly talk about. 

“Flowering Walrus” by Scott Skinner (Reedsy)

I tell him they’d been there a month at least, and he looks concerned. He has my tongue on a tissue paper and is gripping its sides with his pointer and thumb. My tongue has never spent much time outside of my mouth, and I imagine it as a walrus basking in the rays of the dental light. My walrus is not well. 

A winner of Reedsy’s weekly Prompts writing contest, ‘ Flowering Walrus ’ is a story that balances the trivial and the serious well. In the pauses between its excellent, natural dialogue , the story manages to scatter the fear and sadness of bad medical news, as the protagonist hides his worries from his wife and daughter. Rich in subtext, these silences grow and resonate with the readers.

Want to give short story writing a go? Give our free course a go!

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Perhaps the thing that first comes to mind when talking about creative writing, novels are a form of fiction that many people know and love but writers sometimes find intimidating. The good news is that novels are nothing but one word put after another, like any other piece of writing, but expanded and put into a flowing narrative. Piece of cake, right?

To get an idea of the format’s breadth of scope, take a look at these two (very different) satirical novels: 

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality — all simply store workers. 

Keiko, a thirty-six-year-old convenience store employee, finds comfort and happiness in the strict, uneventful routine of the shop’s daily operations. A funny, satirical, but simultaneously unnerving examination of the social structures we take for granted, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is deeply original and lingers with the reader long after they’ve put it down.

Erasure by Percival Everett

The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it.  

Erasure is a truly accomplished satire of the publishing industry’s tendency to essentialize African American authors and their writing. Everett’s protagonist is a writer whose work doesn’t fit with what publishers expect from him — work that describes the “African American experience” — so he writes a parody novel about life in the ghetto. The publishers go crazy for it and, to the protagonist’s horror, it becomes the next big thing. This sophisticated novel is both ironic and tender, leaving its readers with much food for thought.

Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction is pretty broad: it applies to anything that does not claim to be fictional (although the rise of autofiction has definitely blurred the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction). It encompasses everything from personal essays and memoirs to humor writing, and they range in length from blog posts to full-length books. The defining characteristic of this massive genre is that it takes the world or the author’s experience and turns it into a narrative that a reader can follow along with.

Here, we want to focus on novel-length works that dig deep into their respective topics. While very different, these two examples truly show the breadth and depth of possibility of creative nonfiction:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts. In death, they transcend the circumstances of this place that I love and hate all at once and become supernatural. 

Writer Jesmyn Ward recounts the deaths of five men from her rural Mississippi community in as many years. In her award-winning memoir , she delves into the lives of the friends and family she lost and tries to find some sense among the tragedy. Working backwards across five years, she questions why this had to happen over and over again, and slowly unveils the long history of racism and poverty that rules rural Black communities. Moving and emotionally raw, Men We Reaped is an indictment of a cruel system and the story of a woman's grief and rage as she tries to navigate it.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

He believed that wine could reshape someone’s life. That’s why he preferred buying bottles to splurging on sweaters. Sweaters were things. Bottles of wine, said Morgan, “are ways that my humanity will be changed.” 

In this work of immersive journalism , Bianca Bosker leaves behind her life as a tech journalist to explore the world of wine. Becoming a “cork dork” takes her everywhere from New York’s most refined restaurants to science labs while she learns what it takes to be a sommelier and a true wine obsessive. This funny and entertaining trip through the past and present of wine-making and tasting is sure to leave you better informed and wishing you, too, could leave your life behind for one devoted to wine. 

Illustrated Narratives (Comics, graphic novels)

Once relegated to the “funny pages”, the past forty years of comics history have proven it to be a serious medium. Comics have transformed from the early days of Jack Kirby’s superheroes into a medium where almost every genre is represented. Humorous one-shots in the Sunday papers stand alongside illustrated memoirs, horror, fantasy, and just about anything else you can imagine. This type of visual storytelling lets the writer and artist get creative with perspective, tone, and so much more. For two very different, though equally entertaining, examples, check these out:

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

"Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure." 

This beloved comic strip follows Calvin, a rambunctious six-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger/imaginary friend, Hobbes. They get into all kinds of hijinks at school and at home, and muse on the world in the way only a six-year-old and an anthropomorphic tiger can. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is, Calvin & Hobbes ’ popularity persists as much for its whimsy as its use of humor to comment on life, childhood, adulthood, and everything in between. 

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell." 

Comics aren't just the realm of superheroes and one-joke strips, as Alan Moore proves in this serialized graphic novel released between 1989 and 1998. A meticulously researched alternative history of Victorian London’s Ripper killings, this macabre story pulls no punches. Fact and fiction blend into a world where the Royal Family is involved in a dark conspiracy and Freemasons lurk on the sidelines. It’s a surreal mad-cap adventure that’s unsettling in the best way possible. 

Video Games and RPGs

Probably the least expected entry on this list, we thought that video games and RPGs also deserved a mention — and some well-earned recognition for the intricate storytelling that goes into creating them. 

Essentially gamified adventure stories, without attention to plot, characters, and a narrative arc, these games would lose a lot of their charm, so let’s look at two examples where the creative writing really shines through: 

80 Days by inkle studios

"It was a triumph of invention over nature, and will almost certainly disappear into the dust once more in the next fifty years." 

Named Time Magazine ’s game of the year in 2014, this narrative adventure is based on Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. The player is cast as the novel’s narrator, Passpartout, and tasked with circumnavigating the globe in service of their employer, Phileas Fogg. Set in an alternate steampunk Victorian era, the game uses its globe-trotting to comment on the colonialist fantasies inherent in the original novel and its time period. On a storytelling level, the choose-your-own-adventure style means no two players’ journeys will be the same. This innovative approach to a classic novel shows the potential of video games as a storytelling medium, truly making the player part of the story. 

What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow

"If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes, and appreciate how strange and brief all of this is." 

This video game casts the player as 17-year-old Edith Finch. Returning to her family’s home on an island in the Pacific northwest, Edith explores the vast house and tries to figure out why she’s the only one of her family left alive. The story of each family member is revealed as you make your way through the house, slowly unpacking the tragic fate of the Finches. Eerie and immersive, this first-person exploration game uses the medium to tell a series of truly unique tales. 

Fun and breezy on the surface, humor is often recognized as one of the trickiest forms of creative writing. After all, while you can see the artistic value in a piece of prose that you don’t necessarily enjoy, if a joke isn’t funny, you could say that it’s objectively failed.

With that said, it’s far from an impossible task, and many have succeeded in bringing smiles to their readers’ faces through their writing. Here are two examples:

‘How You Hope Your Extended Family Will React When You Explain Your Job to Them’ by Mike Lacher (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

“Is it true you don’t have desks?” your grandmother will ask. You will nod again and crack open a can of Country Time Lemonade. “My stars,” she will say, “it must be so wonderful to not have a traditional office and instead share a bistro-esque coworking space.” 

Satire and parody make up a whole subgenre of creative writing, and websites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Onion consistently hit the mark with their parodies of magazine publishing and news media. This particular example finds humor in the divide between traditional family expectations and contemporary, ‘trendy’ work cultures. Playing on the inherent silliness of today’s tech-forward middle-class jobs, this witty piece imagines a scenario where the writer’s family fully understands what they do — and are enthralled to hear more. “‘Now is it true,’ your uncle will whisper, ‘that you’ve got a potential investment from one of the founders of I Can Haz Cheezburger?’”

‘Not a Foodie’ by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Electric Literature)

I’m not a foodie, I never have been, and I know, in my heart, I never will be. 

Highlighting what she sees as an unbearable social obsession with food , in this comic Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell takes a hilarious stand against the importance of food. From the writer’s courageous thesis (“I think there are more exciting things to talk about, and focus on in life, than what’s for dinner”) to the amusing appearance of family members and the narrator’s partner, ‘Not a Foodie’ demonstrates that even a seemingly mundane pet peeve can be approached creatively — and even reveal something profound about life.

We hope this list inspires you with your own writing. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, let it be that there is no limit to what you can write about or how you can write about it. 

In the next part of this guide, we'll drill down into the fascinating world of creative nonfiction.

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The Perspective From Inside a Character

A writer and I were recently exploring ways to write from a character’s point of view, as if the writer were on the inside of the character looking out through the character’s eyes and experiencing story events through the character’s senses.

This is the perspective we try to tap into when we use first-person and deep third-person POVs.

The perspective is literally an insider’s perspective. We see story events not only from inside the story, but from inside the body, the mind, and the heart of the viewpoint character.

In deep third or first-person POV, you don’t want descriptions of people, objects, places, or events to sound like they’re coming from an impartial observer, from a watcher. You don’t want to give readers the view from a tracking camera, movie-style. Instead, you want to write in ways that show the character going through the events. That is, the focus is not on watching but on experiencing.

A few ways to look at the difference:

experiential rather than observational

close and intimate rather than distant

in the moment rather than outside looking in (or on)

participant rather than watcher/observer/reporter

insider vs. outsider

_____________________________

When movies show memories of a person’s experiences—you know, the flashback to an earlier event that shows what happened purportedly from the character’s memory and viewpoint—the details of the event are seldom if ever actually from the point of view of the character. Characters can’t see what happened to them from outside their bodies—they experience what happens from the inside, through their eyes and senses, and not in the way that an observer would experience those events.

We don’t see our bodies flung backwards when someone punches us—we feel the sensation of flying back, the inability to control our moving body, the pain in our jaw. We don’t see the wall behind us moving closer—we might see objects rushing past in our peripheral vision.

It’s all about perspective.

We don’t see our hair artistically floating around our heads in slow motion, though we may be blinded when our hair streams forward across our eyes as our body is compelled backwards.

We don’t see the expression on our face, the wide O of a mouth, the eyes stretched open or squeezed shut.

When we’re the ones experiencing an action, we have no idea what we look like. And characters in our stories can’t know either. Not if the POV is first person or deep third.

We don’t experience events in our lives as though we’re watching a movie or gazing into a mirror. We live events looking out through our eyes, making sense of what’s happening through prior experience and knowledge. We don’t watch, we live. We don’t observe, we experience. We live inside our bodies and experience the world through our senses, making sense of what’s happening with our minds and being moved emotionally through our feelings.

And when we write first-person or deep third POVs, we need to write our characters’ reactions and perceptions from that same viewpoint.

What does a character experience when he moves through a party? He doesn’t see himself looking cool, trying smoldering glances on the women. He doesn’t see himself weaving smoothly between groups as if pushing through a maze that opens before him and closes behind him when he passes. His steps and the movements of those around him aren’t choreographed the way movements are for actors in a movie.

He doesn’t see the way his hair sticks up in the back. He doesn’t see what happens behind him as he pushes his way across the room—the glare from the man whose foot he stepped on, the woman gasping when another woman backed into her as she kept track of our character’s passage across the room, the character’s former girlfriend glaring at him because she sees where he’s headed and it’s far away from her.

Our character can try to look cool as he strides across the room and pushes through the crowd, but he can only tell us about his experience from behind his eyes and inside his head and body, not offer the descriptions of someone else watching him.

I’ll say it again—this character is a participant rather than an observer. He’s living  events just as a real human would. He’s not watching, he’s participating.

Now, a first-person narrator could experience and  offer observations, if he’s telling his story to someone. Yet he still can’t see himself moving through space and events the way that a camera can capture someone moving through space.

Choosing a close narrative perspective means that you give up other options for your storytelling.

When we look outside ourselves through our eyes and from the perspective of our bodies, when we rely on our thoughts, our experiences, and our knowledge base, we are limited. We can’t see ourselves the way that others see us. We can only feel ourselves as ourselves, feel ourselves in the space we occupy.

A character in deep third shouldn’t report that he smiled sardonically. How would he know? He can try to paste on a certain type of smile, but he can’t see himself—he doesn’t know what he looks like. He knows what he’s trying to do and what his face feels like to him—knows how he feels emotionally, as well—but he can’t know what he looks like. He can’t report what he looks like.

And most of the time he shouldn’t be concerned with how he looks.

Yes, we do sometimes wonder how we look or how we come across to others; that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying that in general, we are simply living, moving through the events of our lives without resorting to offering observations that an outside observer might make.

We can’t see what an outsider sees, and we’re usually more concerned with what we’re feeling, thinking, wanting, and needing than how we appear to an observer (especially when there’s actually no observer). This means that a character’s responses should originate from inside him.

How odd would it be for a man to walk around reporting on his smile or his manly stride or his twinkling eyes? It would be a bit unusual, would it not? So why make our characters so unrealistic? If you’re using a character’s close viewpoint to tell the story, stick with that and don’t try to impose an outsider’s view on top of the character’s.

Word Choices

This means that word choices also have to be appropriate. A woman chasing after her car—moments ago stolen by a carjacker—isn’t going to mention her lithe and shapely legs pumping energetically or her running mascara creating Halloween-perfect tracks down her prettily flushed face.

Not only can she not see those things, she wouldn’t be noticing them at this dramatic moment and she wouldn’t be using such words to describe herself.

She can’t see. She wouldn’t notice such details under the circumstances. She wouldn’t describe herself the way others would.

Deep POV allows a writer to share the most intimate thoughts, dreams, and feelings of a character, but at the same time, that option automatically excludes other observations. Unless your character is paranormal in some way—able to travel outside himself—if you’re using a close POV, you can’t also write descriptions from a perspective outside that character’s head and body. Not unless you give another character viewpoint duties and have her describe the first character.

For our victim of the carjacking, she could feel her legs tiring and growing heavy as she races after her car. And she might be having trouble seeing through the goopey mess of the mascara that’s turning into a smeary paste when mixed with her tears, but her perspective is of necessity different from that of a person watching her. She relates events as they affect her, from the insider’s perspective.

She’s not an impersonal reporter, but a very interested participant.

This insider’s perspective is the great strength of first-person and deep third POVs in books. Movies almost always have to show from the outside what happens to a character. Putting the camera inside a character’s head and behind his eyes can be dizzying and disconcerting for viewers. It can be done, but that technique can never be as effective as writing a character from the inside. Why? Because even if a camera moves inside a character and looks out, that camera can’t give us a character’s thoughts, feelings, and sensory experiences the way a character can so easily share them in words.

Yes, a movie might give a character’s thoughts via voiceover, but it can’t convey emotions and responses to sense stimuli the way written fiction can.

Movies are great; we can get a marvelous sense of place and what it might feel like to go through the events taking place on the screen. But books can provide still more. Movies and films can give us visuals and sound, but the written word can give us a character’s inner life and experiences. Plus, the written word allows readers to color the scenes and decorate the setting as they see fit, without having to rely on the imagination of set decorators, directors, and property masters.

Use that ability to tap into a character’s inner world to make your stories realistic. Use the peculiarities of the written word and long fiction to give readers an experience as close to real life as possible.

Note : You don’t have to use first-person or deep POV—your story may work better as a more observational story. And that’s perfectly fine. Use the omniscient or a more distant third-person POV if that’s your choice and what the story demands. But if you’re going for a close narrative distance, use all the options available to you. Exploit techniques that will bring readers into the story world and inside the character.

_________________

Worry less about what your character looks like as he travels through your story’s events and be more concerned with what he’s experiencing. Help your characters draw the reader deep.

•  share character thoughts, plans, embarrassment, expectations, and secrets

•  share a character’s uncertainties

•  help readers experience the story world—how does the ground feel under the character’s feet? what does the smell of fresh-brewed coffee do for a character? what does an empty house sound or feel like to a character?

•  show a character trying to make sense of his world given all that he knows and expects and experiences

•  use word choices that reflect the person experiencing an event rather than the word choices of a person reporting the event

•  think passionate engagement rather than dispassionate observation

Let’s consider an example.

Mark tripped over the sleeping dog and cartwheeled down the stairs.

Does Mark know what he tripped over? Maybe. Maybe he saw the dog at the last minute. But he didn’t see himself cartwheeling, so why would he use such a word? (It is a great verb.) He didn’t see the signature cartwheel feature, arms and legs extended in a star shape, so how would he describe the fall from inside his head and body, and through his experience? Maybe—

Mark groaned when his hip banged into the wall and his head crashed into the floor at the base of the stairs.

Mark groaned when his body slammed into the floor after he bounced down the stairs.

Mark banged a tender body part into every one of the thirteen steps—yeah, he counted—after he tripped over something that let out a squeal just before he did. So he’d either squashed Emily’s favorite doll, or one of the kittens was gonna need some TLC. He’d check as soon as he could move without passing in.

How about you try a couple? Can you make these sound less like the observations of a watcher and more like the experiences of the person living through the action/event? Choose words that reflect the character and not an observer. Provide details that reveal what the character experiences and not what outsiders see.

Juanita stomped toward her ex, grim determination clear in her set features and in her deliberate strides.

Kena left a trail of gasping salespeople in her wake as she pushed herself closer and closer to the boss and his assistant. Her dress billowed behind her, creating the impression of a ship’s figurehead driving into the wind.

Timmy’s face fell when he learned that school had not been canceled due to snow after all.

Getting into the head of a character can take practice. Consider closing your eyes and imagining yourself as your character rather than trying to imagine what your character looks like from the outside as she moves through her story space. You might not get to see your character in 3-D glory, but you just might be able to feel what the character feels as she stands or sits or walks.

Keeping your eyes closed, imagine the feel of tears or wind on your cheeks, the bracing cold of snow blowing into your face. Get a sense of what the ground feels like under your feet or the way a small room constrains your movement (or makes you feel safe).

Practice writing from inside a character. Consider the body, the mind, and the emotions. Consider what a character experiences and not only what he looks like.

If you choose first-person or deep third-person narration, you forgo being able to share a comprehensive 360 degree perspective. But your readers gain insights into your characters. They gain a sense of urgency and of immediacy because what happens to the character can feel like it’s happening to them right at that very moment.

Readers don’t have to be mere observers; they, like the characters, can walk through the story as participants.

Related posts:

• Viewpoint Character and the Need to Choose Wisely
• Claustrophobia—Don’t Imprison Readers in a Character’s Head
• Deep POV—What’s So Deep About It

Tags: character , perspective , POV     Posted in: Beyond the Basics , Writing Tips

Posted in Beyond the Basics , Writing Tips

29 Responses to “The Perspective From Inside a Character”

Oh thank you, thank you for this.

You put in words what I’m doing in my current novel. I knew that this particular style was what I needed, but it’s nice to know it actually has a name and exists somewhere else than in my head (I actually haven’t found any novel using this style yet–do you know any?).

I personally have a hard time with modern novels where heroins describe their various outfits, their hair, their smile and every single expression that they can’t see on their faces (especially in first person) It takes me out of it.

Writing the story from a deep character’s perspective is a lot of fun. You are with them and experience what they feel and think. There’s also the added bonus (or disadvantages) of discovering the world as they see it. They don’t over describe people they already know or places they live in. You discover details as they go, not as a whole (at least in my case).

It’s quite a challenge when it’s time to write some back story where it would make little sense for characters to tell themselves what they went through earlier in their lives. It requires invention and different ways to bring this info in. Dialogue is a good way to do it. Adding little bits here and there helps too as they can muse on a particular thought (a sentence or two). Like that the back story is there but sprinkled instead of coming in chunks.

One other added benefit in first person is that it reduces the use of “I” exponentially. As the characters experience the world, I find that the need to refer to themselves all the time is not as essential and relieves the narration quite a bit from too much self-contemplation. Ironic when we are in their heart and body but true.

Thanks again for this refreshing post. I’m still learning and by no means an expert in that style, but it’s very encouraging to see that I’m not alone using it.

Catherine, I’m glad that this was helpful. You mentioned a lot of the major issues to check when you’re using deep third POV or first-person POV. Those are issues that always need to be checked and rechecked. Thanks for listing them the way you did—other writers can be sure to check their own manuscripts for those issues. I’m with you on reducing the use of the word I in first-person narration, especially at the beginning of paragraphs.

For more on deep POV, you may want to read this two-part series . And here’s an article that deals with specific questions about deep POV . And here’s an older article on the common problems with first-person narration .

Ugh this is what I need to work on. For some reason I find it so hard, like where do those inner thought details come from? I’m confident when it comes to describing a scene as an observer, dialogue, and some internal dialogue here and there, but I can’t go deep with a rambling thought monologue for paragraphs. Any more tips to help?

Wow! This has to be the best article about how to do deep pov I’ve ever seen. There are so few articles on this narration that it frustrates me greatly. This is so detailed; great! Am so bookmarking this. Thank you for making this this will be a great guide for all of us to look to when needed.

Jessica, I’m glad the details proved useful. You might have already read the articles, but check the links I included in my comment to Catherine. There’s good info in those articles as well.

Thanks for letting me know this one hit the spot for you.

This is how I’m doing it so far.

Excerpt from chapter 52 – Soul Tear:

“Betrayer! Worthless betrayer, you will die in pain!” Nathanael yelled. He screeched as the box pulled him in. He dug his heels into the ground. His eyes flashed a dead-end white, he looked straight at her.

He couldn’t be that weakened … expecting me to save your butt? The gods arms became thinner yet and his fingers disappeared into the box.

Kar looked at her with a pleading in his face she’d never seen before. Have I been wrong all this time? There wasn’t any more time to to think.

She ran at Maxwell and punched him in the stomach. Maxwell groaned, but still held the box. He shifted it to one hand and then backhanded her she flew over the hill and landed into a snowbank over a hundred feet away.

Her vision doubled. She rocked from side to side and rolled out of the frigid snow, much was wedged in the armor and ran cold down her back. She shivered and tried to stand up, the winds snatched what little warmth there was left and she fell unable to even bend her fingers.

What do you think, is it finally in deep pov? I think so and actually got a feel for that hard to pinpoint down thing called: “style”. 😛 Ah-ha ^-^

Granted it needs an edit, I’m week when it comes to commas and spelling. Jumbled jumping letters anyone? Still, this chapter is still a draft so is allowed to be a little messy.

I think this website more so then others, has helped me grow with this pov. <3

Yes, you definitely included some indicators of deep POV. Those thoughts let us know that we’re hearing what your character is thinking, and the word choice and attitude give us details about the viewpoint character. Keep plugging away with exactly those kinds of phrases. Give us access to your viewpoint character again and again.

*Fist pump* Woo, great I just wanted a little affirmation that I’m on the right track.

53 chapters so far! (I keep them at around 2k words or so when possible. They … just feel right. So probably like 25 chapters if it was a 1980’s book XD) Once it’s done, I’m going to search for any “nothing”: Chapters and see if my charicters are spinning around doing nothing.

I have a little cash for once so Beth Hill, do you have any books on amazon that need another reader, and a nice comment?

Have you gotten The Magic of Fiction yet? If not, of course I recommend it. I don’t have anything else coming out for a while.

Not yet. Okay, I’ll take a look at it.

Jessica, you can see inside the book at Amazon, but if you enter “excerpt” into the search box here at the blog, you’ll find a handful of excerpts from the book.

Thank you for this one, Beth. As a realist, I want to communicate my characters’ feelings and thoughts through their viewpoint and not some omniscient deity. It’s where my introverted nature came in handy, as I quietly and closely observed people who otherwise thought I was plotting something nefarious. Translating those “deep POV” ruminations into coherent, plausible verbiage is where the real challenge lies. You’re asking (commanding) readers to step out of their comfort zones and into the minds and personalities of your characters. And, while it may be enticing from the outset, it can be unnerving to some. Ultimately, though, it will make your story more appealing and entice your readers to want more.

Exactly, Alejandro. It’s very enticing for readers. They get so much more than just a report of events.

Coherent and plausible—we should all tape that to our monitors as a constant reminder. Thanks for sharing with us.

Okay, this topic again…

I’ll quote my favourite section, where Beth actually says:

“Note: You don’t *have* to use first-person or deep POV – your story may work better as a more observational story. And that’s perfectly fine. Use the omniscient or a more distant third-person POV if that’s your choice and what the story demands…”

Ah… but if only such a simple choice was still open to all of us today. Whereas, in fact, the modern publishing establishment (editors, agents, etc.) seem to be constantly pressuring aspiring authors to subscribe to 1st-person/deep3rd-person POV more and more.

One of my editorial consultants even dismissed omniscient POV as being ‘rather old-fashioned and not used much anymore’. And that’s despite the fact that my own novel actually cried-out to be allowed to be written in (the more traditional) omniscient – because it’s set in a world & time which the modern reader is totally alien to. Therefore, it’s the author’s duty to *explain* to the reader all those elements of the story which modern readers won’t (trust me, they really won’t) understand if left to their own devices. They’d just get confused and give up unless I helped them into the story. And you can’t do that from the restricted perspective of 1st-person POV. That’s what omniscient POV should be for.

Another of my editorial consultants tried telling me to ‘show-not-tell’ a bit more, (using less of an omniscient POV) citing Jane Austen as (supposedly) being on one of the best ‘showers’ of all time. She then went on to quote a line from Sense & Sensibility, where Mrs. Dashwood allegedly displays her snobbishness in the way she admires someone else’s affluence by owning a ‘barouche’. Yes… but I had to counter by pointing-out that this novel (like all of Austen’s) was written not only 200 years ago, but for a specific section of society (those who could afford barouches… and the servants required to drive them) who might actually have known what the heck a ‘barouche’ was. But today? (No, nor me, either… and it’s no good if you have to stop reading your novel to go and look up some arcane term, now is it :-))

Point being that if your novel is set even further into the past than Austen’s (and consequently, you cannot even rely on the contemporary knowledge of your (modern) readers to know all the technical terms applicable to the day) then the author has a duty to be an ‘omniscient narrator’ in order to fill in any gaps in the reader’s understanding (be that social, historical, geographical or whatever).

I guess that’s why most historical novels always were… erm… historically… written in omniscient POV.

And the other point is that it’s all very well for a ‘Mills & Boon’ style romance to be written in 1st-Person POV (by either character) because it’s kind of a given that both parties will end up ‘living together happily ever after’. Therefore, it’s necessary for both the main characters to survive till the end of the story (unless it’s a ‘Wuthering Heights’ kind of twisted romance – but then, nobody would call that ‘Mills & Boon’, anyhoo).

However, if you are instead writing a gritty historical epic, where the protagonist(s) face jeopardy every day of their lives, and if you are furthermore allowing it to be ‘true to life’, then sometimes, it just so happens that the protagonist(s) *don’t* survive to the end of the story. In fact, I believe that brings us full-circle back to ‘Wuthering Heights’ again; and just try imagining *that* story written from the POV of Cathy! There, you see… impossible!

Hence when my second editorial consultant also tried telling me to ‘rewrite the entire novel in 1st-person POV’, I had to point-out to her, yet again, that since my protagonists face jeopardy every day of their lives, it would be rather ‘giving the ending away’ to write it through their eyes. If only for the simple reason that they would *have* to survive till the final page, in order to finish telling their story. Which would then undermine all the jeopardy which I might try putting them through in the intervening pages and kill the tension in the story stone dead. Well, as an author, you want the reader actually to *care* about *whether* the protagonist survives *or not*, don’t you, and to worry about them making it from one chapter to the next? In the real world, people do sometimes die halfway through something, and as a dramatic author, you should constantly be aware of that possibility – and make your reader constantly aware of it, too!

And so *that’s* why we still need omniscient POV to tell a realistic story – whether it’s about people who lived 200 – or 2,000 – years ago or about characters who might die any minute (or may even be dead already :-)) And no, the example of ‘American Beauty’ does *not* work in that regard (despite somebody on this list having tried citing it to argue in favour of dead characters narrating their own story in 1st person POV, recently). Dead men can’t write! No more than ‘white boys can jump’ (believe me, I’ve tried – the latter, not the former, for obvious reasons:-))

It’s a bit like the opening of David Copperfield: ‘I was born’. Yes, a bit of a truism, perhaps, since we all of us are, one way or another. But he might also have gone on to say: ‘And nor was I dead, yet!’ Since both cases are rather necessary for anyone to be in a position to put pen to paper. I mean, it’s not rocket-science. But then, neither does it seem to be very fashionable to point out such inconvenient existential facts in today’s rather cuckoo publishing environment…

Regards, Steve

Steve, I’m sorry that you’ve gotten so much flak for your choice of POV. On the other hand, I have the feeling that it’s helped you solidify your position. Not every POV is the best choice for any one novel, not even the POV du jour. If you can marshall your points and arguments, you’ll not only be able to argue your position with others, but you’ll be able to use the details of those points to strengthen your story. If you have to use omniscient because of A, B, and C, then make sure your use of A, B, and C is strong and consistent. If you tell others why you chose omniscient, be able to point out in the text how your choice was the right choice to create the effect or mood or feel that you wanted and that the story needs. When you show others the effect you created, you solidify that choice once again for yourself.

No, omniscient isn’t terribly popular today, but it’s still needed for epics and for stories that feature large casts and/or great time spans.

For other stories, do keep in mind what you give up. For many genres, readers want that intimacy that only first person and deep POV can give. If a story would be stronger with closer insights of the main character(s), omniscient might not be the best choice. If, on the other hand, the accent is on the scope of the story’s events and/or on the story world, getting up close and personal with a couple of characters may run contrary to the strengths of the story.

As for dead men tell no tales, more than one novel has been written in the POV of a dead person or ghost. The Lovely Bones was a recent one, but lots of paranormals have no problem with the dead (vampires and ghosts) telling stories. Of course, I know that that’s not exactly what you had in mind. Stories do take on a different feel when we lose the narrator halfway through. Also, we take different expectations with us when we read first-person stories—we don’t expect that the narrator will die as he or she is telling the story. While writers are free to do anything, that has always seemed like a cheat to me.

Keep us updated on your situation.

Okay Beth, a (shorter, this time) update:

Yes, my story is an epic, with a lot of characters (hence the need for Omniscient). But it’s amazing how many modern best selling authors get away with (or indeed, are encouraged by their publishers to use) 1st person POV in historical epics set in times of unrest; even in 400 page novels which are only the first of a trilogy, yet. So that’s 1,200 pages of precarious jeopardy which we – as readers – are then expected to believe the protagonist is going to survive, virtually unscathed, while telling their *own* story. And for me, that just kills any dramatic tension stone dead on page one, because it’s giving the ending away (as I keep trying to point out to anyone who’ll listen – but the publishing industry seems blissfully unaware 🙂

Anyhoo, having been battered by the editorial demand of not being allowed to stick to Omniscient throughout, yet not wanting to be restricted to the very limiting 1st person POV either, I’ve had to try to reach a kind of compromise. Because not wanting the story to be ham-strung by the restricted POV of just a single character, I’ve had to argue with editors that – if they don’t want me to use Omniscient – they’re going to have to allow me to dip in and out of the different characters for each scene, to tell the story from everyone’s POV (and not just one). That works for me okay, and the editors (grudgingly) agreed to it, but it means me having to use ‘hard’ POV separator symbols (similar to scene-separator symbols) to ensure that there’s no danger of readers complaining about ‘head-hopping’ between characters. (Even though, to me, it ought to be obvious which character’s POV is being viewed at any one time, and I’ve never had the slightest problem with other authors exploring multiple POVs, either. But if some people have problems with ‘head-hopping’, then you have to ensure against that accusation 🙂

So my current compromise of a combination of omniscient scene-setting and dipping into various discrete 3rd person POVs is a bit like what J.K Rowling used… and she did okay. Though, like almost every other successful author, she was ignored by many editors & agents to begin with. But on whom is that really a judgment… her or the modern publishing industry?

Cheers, Steve

Good to hear. I bounce around between characters and their viewpoints, a lot of time dialog driven. talk about driving editors mad. I rarely step and narrate. So and so drove somewhere to meet someone, or character x waited outside the krud burger for x, tapping the table in time ot random passing radios. That’s it. The rest of time it’s the characters talking, getting to something, how the world looks to them on the way to somewhere. All this first and third and deep and slight is pigeonholing. what is it called when the characters tell their own stories and “I” might make it into dialogue, but never “then I started the whole world crying and became a pirate!” or (Apologies to Robert B Parker) “What day was that?” I said. Said? With a ? The guy was rich and famous, but still…I asked said? To me the characters tell the story and “I” am not one of them. “I” am not a detective or a rock star or an angry feminist, “I” and simply trying to tell their stories. So what is that pigeonhole?

I always appreciate Steve’s measured and polite rants and observations. Just when I thought the internet had killed common courtesy.

Okay, Beth … I’ll give it a go: From your, “Juanita stomped toward her ex, grim determination clear in her set features and in her deliberate strides,” we might write: “Juanita’s ex watched in fear and trepidation as she stomped toward him/her, her glaring eyes and determined strides warning him/her that she meant to harm him/her.” OR “Juanita’s burning anger was interrupted by a fleeting flash of satisfaction at the utter fear in her ex’s eyes as she stomped toward him/her.” Hmmm …

Peter, the second example is on the right track—I feel like I’m getting information about Juanita from Juanita herself. In your first example, I’m not sure who the viewpoint character is. It isn’t Juanita; were you showing us the moment from the viewpoint of the ex? If so, that person probably wouldn’t refer to himself as Juanita’s ex. That’s an observer’s report, not the wording of a person reporting about his own life. This can be tricky, deciding which words work for the viewpoint character.

Do you want to try that one again, giving us the report from Juanita’s ex?

Thank you, Beth … with your coaching, I can see the problem. Ok … “In fear and trepidation, I watched as Juanita, my ex, stomped menacingly toward me, evil in her eyes.” Hmmm … this is not easy!

Excellent tips here, Beth. I can’t thank you enough for all you do to assist authors with writing. I’ve shared this online and am studying it to try and commit it to memory. I’ll also try some of the exercises to become better at adding the emotion and insight to first person narratives.

Did you try any of Beth’s suggested sentences (from above), Victoria? I’d be very interested to see what others did with them! Cheers!

I thought of a question concerning deep POV. Is it okay to summarize a scene, like at the head of a chapter, to catch readers up, rather than have everything acted out in live scenes?

Right now, I got feedback that I’m 100% showing, which isn’t true by a mile, LOL, but if I need to cut some words, that would be my approach.

That feedback came from a “non-fan” of deep POV, who none the less liked the story.

Thanks so much for all your help to us writers. I send people here all the time!

Best wishes!

This is really enlightening for me as I refine a short story. I’ve mixed observational and experiential third-person, some passages describing my protagonist from the outside and some delving deep into the heroine’s psyche. I’ll have fun re-examining especially the observations, but I am struggling a little . . . the heroine is loosely based on my sister, and somehow I feel that my observations as her sibling shed some kind of light. Example:

Tassie is a skinny, windblown child, hair roughly the color of and thickness of ripe hay in the morning light. She slips away like quicksilver. Outside in the summer, she leaves a trail: first one shoe, then the other, then her socks, then her sunsuit that unties at the shoulders, then finally her underpants. This girl does not like to be surrounded by clothes. “Theresa,” her mother shouts. She is in trouble when her mother shouts that. It takes everyone a while to find her, and so for several minutes at least, Tassi is intact. . . .

I think I can rework this, as long as I can let go of the validity of my point of view as her sister. It’ll be a fun exercise. Fervent thanks for clarifying this cloudy element!

I am trying to write a narrative for an assignment of an online class…so doesn’t have much help there. I got lot of help from you, so thank you very much. I am not sure if I can email you my whole narrative for help but at least can you help me wiht one part I am totally confused about. I am writing about boys in my neighborhood as i ride my bicycle as a middle school kid. One vignette is a flashback where I remember how one boy bullied my friend. But since that friend is not described anytime earlier in narrative, I am not sure if I should use past tense (as I am using to narrate my flashback…and is that okay if my narrative is present?) or should I use present tense (xxx is a short chubby boy…) even if the flashback is past tense, to describe the character?

Thank you in advance for the help!

So … in any scene while the first person (the hero) is speaking (“I ran at him, threatening to ….”, I cannot have any omniscient commentary in that same scene, but I can have it in other scenes, correct?

hello so… can I get access to editing this page? Cause it’s so longgg

this really helped

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Writers After Dark

—Life Through the Eyes of Storytellers—

Using Body Language in Your Novel, Part Two—Eyes, Pupils, & Eyebrows

They say that our eyes are the “windows to the soul.” Isn’t that sweet? Yes, yes it is. Which is why this would be a fantastic place to practice some poetry, but instead, how about we exploit this little tidbit to benefit our writerly lives? Let’s explore the eyes—in the art of using body language in fiction.

It’s undeniable that our eyes are very special, but what exactly do we see when we stare into someone’s eyes? Information about their emotional state, that’s what. Can you imagine what damage this type of knowledge can do in the wrong hands? Oh boy!

For the villains, they can manipulate, hurt, and deceive. For the heroes, they can help, console, or protect. OR vice versa! Hey, it’s not mutually exclusive, and that’s the beauty. As the reader, you can get an insight on the emotional turmoil they’re all going through. And as the writer, well, you hold all the power, don’t you? But with great power comes great responsibility . . . err . . .

With all that power, don’t go crazy adding visual expressions every other paragraph. Save them to enhance crucial moments in your story.

Here are some body language “tells” to further enhance your characters’ emotions:

Part Two: The Eyes

“When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Categories:

* Aroused, Bedroom, or Doe Eyes . Sexual desire is a common cause of pupil dilation. So to indicate arousal in your character, go ahead and describe dilated pupils peeking through her lashes in the dim light. Or, you know . . . use your own wording. * Blinking Eyes . Use this when your character is nervous or troubled about something. When the blinking rate goes up, it indicates lying, stress, or sometimes arrogance. On the other hand, rapid blinking also flutters the eyelashes and can be a shy romantic expression. * Calculating Eyes . Described as eyes that move from side to side or looking down, use it to indicate your character is processing information or planning something—good for villains. It’s also much harder for a person to maintain eye contact while making calculations, so keep that in mind.

* Closing Eyes . When it’s for more than a second or two, this may indicate he’s lied to you, since this is a type of defense mechanism. But it can also be used by visual thinkers so they can better see the internal images without external distraction.

* Damp Eyes . This can be used to indicate anxiety, fear, sadness, suppressed weeping, exhaustion along with redness of the eyes, or if your character has been crying recently. * Darting Eyes . Have your character’s eyes dart back and forth or side to side to indicate insecurity or distraction. You can also use it to showcase your character being uncomfortable, and/or that he’s looking for an escape route. * Drooping Eyes . Described as a lack of eye blinking, or what we call a “blank stare” on the person’s face. Use it to indicate your character is bored or tired. “Dress it up” with your character glancing at her watch, yawning, or with a repetitive finger or foot tapping to drive it home!

* Friendly Twinkle . This can be used to put other people at ease—either readers, or one character to another to show positive interest. A friendly twinkle in a character can help break the ice, make a character like another or feel comfortable, appear to be a welcoming person, or give others a cue to their fascinating personality.

* Following Eyes . If your character is following someone around with her eyes, it can indicate she’s either interested in or scared of that person.

* Glancing . Use this to indicate your character’s desire, attraction, disapproval, or suspicion. Dress it up with a smile to suggest interest, or add in a frown to indicate suspiciousness and hostility.

* Gazing Eyes . Looking up and down at a whole person can be used to indicate your character is sizing them up, either as a potential threat or as a sexual partner.

* Shielded Eyes . Covering or shutting the eyes can indicate your character’s attempt to block out someone or something he doesn’t want to hear.

* Staring . This can be used to indicate your character’s interest, shock, disbelief, surprise, or aggression of something or someone.

* Squinting Eyes . This can be used to indicate discomfort, stress, an assessment of something or someone, uncertainty, tiredness, and even anger. If your character receives a squinted eye expression right after he says something, it could mean the person doubts his words, or disagrees with him. Squinting can also be used by a character who is lying so the other person can’t detect their deception.

* Looking Up . Have your character look upward to indicate she’s thinking, or that she’s bored or being judgmental.

* Looking Down . Have your character look down at someone as an act of power and domination. Or have them looking down but avoiding the other person as a sign of submission, or to indicate guilt.

* Looking Sideways . Looking to the left can indicate your character recalling a sound. Looking to the right can indicate that they are imagining the sound.

* Looking Down and to the Right . This can be used to indicate internal dialogue or emotions. If you had a character talking to himself, this would be his visual expression. In some cases, his eyes will also look down to his right if he’s going to lie.

* Looking Down and to the Left . This can be used to indicate recollection of smell, taste, or feeling. For example, if your character was abducted and she was asked to describe what she remembered about the place she was being held, her eyes would move in this direction.

* Looking Up and to the Right . This can be used to indicate recollection of images or the imaginative construction of something—in other words: lying. If she’s looking upward and to her right, she’s accessing her imagination and is making it up.

* Up and to the Left . Looking upward and to the left can indicate recalling a memory. If she’s describing something she’s seen, she’d look upward and to the left— truthfully accessing her memory.

Eye Contact:

Eye contact between two people is a powerful act of communication and may show interest, affection, or dominance.

* Prolonged Eye Contact . Use this to indicate your character might be lying. In trying to avoid looking shifty-eyed, some liars will purposefully hold their gaze a bit too long. They might also stand very still and unblinking.

* Limited Eye Contact . Use this to indicate your character is feeling insecure. Or, she might also be lying and trying to avoid the lie being detected.

This is the one part of the eye where we have no control. Dilation happens automatically since we have no conscious control over our pupils, and can be used to showcase your character’s true emotion, especially if they’re trying to hide it.

* Pupil Dilation . To indicate excitement, or when they’re around people they like or admire, have your character’s pupils dilate . It can help in showcasing a character’s loyalties. Pupils also dilate when it is darker to let in more light, so next time your character is in a dark room, like a club or dimly lit restaurant, you can describe your character’s eyes as dilated.

* Pupil Contraction . You can have your character’s pupils contract to indicate disgust, anger, irritation, annoyance, or when your character isn’t attracted to someone. Also, people with small pupils can appear threatening or just unfriendly, so use this tidbit to enhance a scene.

* In general, dilated pupils are positive while constricted pupils are negative.

* Lowered Eyebrows . This can be done with a lowered head, which can conceal the eyes. It can indicate deception, annoyance, and can be a sign of a dominant person.

* Raised Eyebrows . This can indicate surprise, cynicism, fear, discomfort, openness, and as a sign of attraction.

* Middle-pulled Eyebrows . Described as being pulled together. This can be used to indicate your character is angry, frustrated, or confused. It can also indicate intense concentration.

* Eyebrow “Flash.” Described as a quick repeated up-and-down movement. This can be used to indicate your character’s recognition and greeting of someone. (More effective for me: if they’re pretending they don’t know the person, but are betrayed by their eyebrows.)

So there you have it! Some extra details to use for your characters’ eyes and eyebrows. Be sure to come back in the next few weeks for more body language tips for your novel.

See Part One—Facial Expressions here.

Coming up next: posture, arms, shoulders, legs, and feet.

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Published by S. Katherine Anthony

S.K. Anthony (Shanny) is a writer, a reader, and make-stuff-up-er who lives in New York. She is an award-winning author and a podcaster. When she isn’t busy with her toddler twins, S.K. finds herself being transported into the world of imagination. Well, either that or running away from spiders . . . she is convinced they are out to get her! View all posts by S. Katherine Anthony

22 thoughts on “Using Body Language in Your Novel, Part Two—Eyes, Pupils, & Eyebrows”

Great information. Thanks for sharing.

Like Liked by 1 person

Yay, Kphoenix! Glad you liked it! 🙂

Another helpful post! Thanks! 😉

There you are! I missed you this week lol I measure our posts by you, if you like them, then we can breathe lol. 😛 ❤

LOL! You guys are awesome! 😉

Playing catch-up this week. Had a cover reveal, then hid out in the writing cave. Word count was over 11K and I actually like about…six words. 😀 😀

There just isn’t enough coffee!

Enjoy the weekend!

Reblogged this on Felicia Denise, Author and commented: The eyes have it! 😉

As usual, you’re the best! Thanks for sharing, Felicia! 😘

[…] via Using Body Language in Your Novel, Part Two—Eyes, Pupils, […]

Fantastic post! Very helpful.

Hey! As my namesake, your opinion counts double lol Glad you found it helpful, and thanks for stopping by, Kat! 😉

This is great! I’ll keep it in mind, thanks!

Awesome! Glad you liked it! 😀

[…] Eyes (descriptions and meanings behind actions) […]

Thanks for this post! I had my looking up and to the right confused with my looking up and to the left as a ‘tell’ for lying…back to editing!!! 🙂

Yay! Glad I was able to help! Thanks for stopping by, Anne! 😀

[…] See Part Two—The Eyes here. […]

[…] See Part Two—Eyes, Pupils, & Eyebrows here. […]

Pupils are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. A good rule of thumb is a contraction of the eye is a sympathetic response and dilation is parasympathetic (sympathetic is activation of fight or flight, parasympathetic is deactivation) excellent description of how the eyes mirror the true inner thoughts. And in case anyone is wondering, sexual excitement is parasympathetic in nature. Also don’t forget the effects of drugs, someone on opiates will have constricted pupils so through that in on your opiate addicted super sleuth.

Exactly!!! Thanks for the extras. I had a long section on pupil dilation, but had to make the executive decision to cut it since the post was already long lol

Great way to summarize it, JT! 🙂

No problem sweetie, just my Healthcare knowledge slipping out.

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Search for creative inspiration

19,890 quotes, descriptions and writing prompts, 4,964 themes

eyes - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

• light brown eyes
• light green eyes
• look and appearance
• whites of eyes

When the bond of love is made, my eyes give free passage to my soul.

Eyes that love you will catch your soul, even if you weren't aware of its falling.

Eyes will tell the truth whatever society permits.

I listen to eyes because they speak so much truth.

Eyes speak in emotion, the language of the soul.

From those eyes came a sense of home.

In the eyes is the "I' - the inborn soul of the baby heaven-given.

She reached out with her eyes has honestly as a babe reaches with open arms.

Even in the night his eyes lit the way, he was a seer, of that we were sure.

The eyes come as perfect flower buds freshly opened in the dawn.

Eyes that see are the greatest blessing, for they are as orbs that shine lights and make even the realisation of what healing must happen... possible.

In this early dawn your eyes are the dew, scattering the nascent rays, ever illuminating my soul.

They say the eyes are windows, the thing is, my love, I can see through them. I can see your pain and your gentleness just the same. I see how every emotion comes together to form the art of your soul. It forms a picture I see in an instant and comprehend with full depth. So, I see you, I do. When I say that your eyes are beautiful, its the truth, for it's not about colours or shape, it's about the loving sweet essence that is so clearly there.

He had eyes as open and honest as any child, a warmth and safety. In that moment I found my home, my place to find company when the cold winds blew.

He squinted at me through hardened eyes that once had been my salvation, but now they brought only the unfounded accusations of a jealous lover. Their color had only yesterday reminded me of my sea-port home, gazing out to where the blue of the ocean blended into the blue of the sky, now they were simply chilling. Every muscle in his face was tense and without a word he communicated intense mistrust, anger, despising. Now he stood between me and the only exit, glaring, seething, clenching his fists rhythmically...

Her eyes have frozen over like the surface of a winter puddle, robbing them of their usual warmth. She's in there, I know it, but it's like she just took a huge step back from life. I want to reach in and tell her it isn't hopeless, but she won't believe me. I want to rekindle her heat but her insides are too damp with uncried tears. I always knew she had pain inside, but now its visible on her face and I wish it would go away. I know that's a selfish want, people have a right to their pain, they don't ask for it - it just arrives like the gift you never wanted.

She looks at me like the fire in her eyes has been dowsed with ice water, if anything it makes the blue more pale. I'm not used to it, it unnerves me. I want her to give freely like she always does but she won't. It's like she just crawled right back inside some invisible shell and no matter how hard I try she's unreachable. She moves her eyes more slowly, like they're heavy, an effort to move. I want to crack my usual jokes but I know she won't laugh. I'm standing right next to her but she might as well be on the moon.

In her renewed silence, only her eyes glow. They aren't yellow like a comic book cat, but the softest of blue - like they soaked in the spring sky only hours ago and are now letting it radiate out gently into the twilight.

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Mind’s Eye Writing: The Closed-Eye Exercise

My name is Debbie, and I am passionate about developing a love for the written word and planting a seed that will grow into a powerful voice that can inspire many.

Have you ever found yourself staring out into the distance, lost in thought, only to realize that you’ve unknowingly been composing stories or poetry in your mind? You may not be aware of it, but you possess an incredible ability known as “mind’s eye writing.” This fascinating phenomenon allows us to harness the power of our imagination and translate our thoughts into vivid, detailed narratives. In this article, we will delve into the art of mind’s eye writing and explore one particular exercise that can further enhance this skill: the closed-eye exercise. So, grab a comfortable seat, close your eyes, and let your mind’s eye take you on a creative journey you never thought possible.

What is Mind’s Eye Writing?

How does the closed-eye exercise work, unleashing your creativity with the mind’s eye writing technique, exploring the benefits of the closed-eye exercise, tips for practicing mind’s eye writing effectively, enhancing your writing skills through the closed-eye exercise, overcoming challenges and finding inspiration in mind’s eye writing, taking your writing to the next level with the closed-eye exercise, frequently asked questions, the way forward.

Mind’s Eye Writing is a unique and powerful technique that taps into the depths of your imagination to unlock new levels of creativity in your writing. It encourages you to visualize vivid scenes, characters, and settings in your mind’s eye, allowing you to bring your ideas to life with unparalleled detail and richness. This technique is not just about putting words on the page; it’s about painting a picture with your words, captivating readers with your storytelling abilities.

With Mind’s Eye Writing, you become the director of your own mental movie, immersing yourself in the story you are creating. By engaging all your senses, you can describe the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures with such precision that your readers will feel like they are right there with you. It sparks your creativity and unleashes your storytelling potential, enabling you to write with greater depth and authenticity.

• It helps you connect with your intuition and access untapped ideas.
• It enhances your ability to create vivid descriptions that captivate readers.
• It strengthens your storytelling skills and makes your writing more engaging.
• It stimulates your imagination and encourages outside-the-box thinking.
• It allows you to explore different perspectives and develop a deeper understanding of your characters.
• It brings a unique and personal touch to your writing style.

Incorporating Mind’s Eye Writing into your process can transform your writing from ordinary to extraordinary. So, close your eyes, let your imagination take flight, and discover a whole new world of storytelling possibilities!

Step-by-step guide to the Closed-Eye Exercise:

Interested in improving the power of your mind? The Closed-Eye Exercise might just be what you need! This exercise involves visualizing specific images or scenarios with your eyes closed, engaging your mind in a unique way. Here’s how it works:

• Find a quiet and comfortable space: Pick a spot where you can relax and focus without distractions. This will help you fully immerse yourself in the exercise.
• Get into a comfortable position: Sit or lie down in a position that allows you to be at ease, ensuring that your body and mind can fully relax without any discomfort.
• Close your eyes and take deep breaths: Close your eyes gently, allowing your body and mind to relax. Take a few deep breaths, inhaling deeply through your nose and exhaling slowly through your mouth.
• Choose your visualization: Decide on the image or scenario you want to visualize. It could be a peaceful beach, a lush forest, or even achieving a personal goal. Let your imagination run wild!
• Engage your senses: As you visualize, try to engage all your senses. Imagine feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin, smelling the crisp scent of nature, hearing the waves crashing on the shore. The more vivid the experience, the better!
• Practice regularly: To reap the full benefits of the Closed-Eye Exercise, make it a regular part of your routine. Set aside some time each day to engage in this practice, gradually improving your ability to visualize and connect with your mind’s power.

With consistent practice, the Closed-Eye Exercise can help enhance your creativity, boost focus, reduce stress, and promote a sense of calm. Remember, the key lies in allowing your imagination to take the lead while fully immersing yourself in the experience. So go ahead, close your eyes, and unlock the potential of your mind!

Are you ready to tap into the limitless realm of your imagination? Look no further than the Mind’s Eye Writing technique! This revolutionary approach allows you to unleash your creativity and transport yourself into a world filled with unique stories, vivid characters, and captivating narratives.

So how does it work? With the Mind’s Eye Writing technique, you engage all your senses, weaving together sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures to create a truly immersive experience. Close your eyes and envision yourself in the setting of your story – feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, hear the rustling of leaves in the gentle breeze, smell the sweet fragrance of blooming flowers. Let your imagination run wild as you bring your story to life with every detail in mind.

• Unleash your inner artist: The Mind’s Eye Writing technique allows you to tap into the artist within you. By visualizing every aspect of your story, you can effortlessly paint a vivid picture in the minds of your readers.
• Escape to new dimensions: In the realm of your imagination, there are no limitations. Let your mind wander and explore uncharted territories . Create fantastical worlds, envision extraordinary beings, and embark on infinite adventures.
• Experience writing like never before: The Mind’s Eye technique is not just about putting words on paper; it’s about immersing yourself in a creative experience. Lose yourself in the magic of your own imagination and watch as your writing flourishes.

When it comes to improving visual acuity and relieving eye strain, the Closed-Eye Exercise is a game-changer. This simple yet effective technique involves closing your eyes and performing a series of deliberate eye movements and relaxation exercises. By engaging in this practice regularly, you can experience a wide range of benefits that extend beyond just your eyes.

One of the key advantages of the Closed-Eye Exercise is its ability to reduce eye fatigue. After spending long hours staring at screens or engaging in visually demanding activities, our eyes tend to become strained and tired. By closing your eyes and allowing them to relax, you give your ocular muscles a chance to rest and rejuvenate. This results in improved focus and concentration, making it easier to perform visual tasks with precision and accuracy. Moreover, this exercise also promotes better blood circulation to the eyes, ensuring that they receive essential nutrients and oxygen to function optimally.

When it comes to practicing Mind’s Eye Writing, there are several helpful tips you can follow to enhance your experience and ensure maximum effectiveness. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• Create a quiet and peaceful environment: Find a comfortable space where you can relax without distractions. Dim the lights, play soothing music, or meditate before you begin.
• Clear your mind: Take a few deep breaths and let go of any stress or worries. This will help you focus your attention and tap into your imagination more easily.
• Set specific intentions: Before you start writing, make sure to set clear intentions for your session. Think about the specific information or images you want to explore or the emotions you want to evoke.
• Use all your senses: Engage your senses fully while writing. Imagine the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the environment or scene you are describing.
• Practice regularly: Consistency is key when it comes to Mind’s Eye Writing. Aim to practice at least a few times a week to strengthen your mental imagery skills.

Keep in mind that effective Mind’s Eye Writing takes time and practice to develop. Allow yourself to explore and experiment with different techniques to find what works best for you. With patience and dedication, you will find yourself delving deeper into your imagination and experiencing the power of this creative practice.

Are you looking for a fun and effective way to boost your writing skills? Look no further than the Closed-Eye Exercise! This unique technique allows you to tap into your creativity and improve your writing abilities in an engaging and imaginative way. So how does it work?

When practicing the Closed-Eye Exercise, simply close your eyes and visualize a scene or scenario in your mind. With your eyes shut, you are free to let your imagination run wild and paint a vivid picture. Once you have a detailed mental image, start describing it in writing. Let your mind guide your pen as you bring the scene to life on paper.

• Enhanced descriptive skills: The Closed-Eye Exercise encourages you to rely solely on your imagination and descriptive abilities. As you visualize your chosen scene, you will naturally focus on sensory details such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. This exercise hones your descriptive writing skills, enabling you to create more vivid and engaging narratives.
• Increased creativity: By embracing the power of imagination, the Closed-Eye Exercise stimulates your creative thinking. As you weave intricate stories based on your mental imagery, you’ll find yourself exploring new ideas and unique perspectives. This practice helps break through creative blocks and allows you to develop a distinct voice in your writing.
• Improved focus and concentration: Closing your eyes during the exercise promotes a heightened state of concentration. With fewer distractions from the external world, you can fully immerse yourself in the scene you are visualizing. This focused mindset carries into your writing, helping you stay engaged and maintain flow throughout the process.

Unlock the full potential of your writing skills with the Closed-Eye Exercise. Set aside some dedicated time every day to indulge in this imaginative practice, and watch your prose flourish like never before.

Mind’s Eye Writing, a powerful technique that taps into the creativity and imagination of the writer, has the potential to help overcome various challenges and ignite inspiration. Whether you’re facing writer’s block, struggling with self-doubt, or simply seeking a fresh approach to your writing, this method can provide the solution you’re looking for.

By closing your eyes and visualizing vivid scenes in your mind, Mind’s Eye Writing allows you to connect with your senses and explore new perspectives. It helps you dive deep into your imagination, transporting yourself into the worlds you create. The ability to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch within your mind’s eye opens up a plethora of possibilities, enabling you to describe settings, characters, and emotions with incredible detail that captivates your readers.

• Overcoming Challenges:
• Conquer writer’s block by accessing your mind’s eye to generate new ideas and storylines.
• Break free from creative rut by exploring unconventional scenarios and perspectives.
• Combat self-doubt by using the technique to vividly imagine success and boost confidence in your writing abilities.
• Finding Inspiration:
• Discover a wealth of inspiration by immersing yourself in dynamic and visually stimulating mental environments.
• Unleash your creativity by accessing the limitless possibilities of your mind’s eye.
• Enhance your storytelling by engaging all senses, making your writing more immersive and captivating.

Whether you’re an aspiring author, a seasoned writer, or someone who simply enjoys putting words on paper, embracing Mind’s Eye Writing can revolutionize your approach and help you overcome challenges that may hinder your creative process. By harnessing the power of your imagination, you can tap into a wellspring of inspiration that will breathe life into your writing and captivate your audience.

Are you looking for a fun and innovative way to enhance your writing skills? Look no further than the Closed-Eye Exercise! This exercise aims to tap into your creative subconscious and bring out a whole new level of imagination and storytelling in your writing.

How does it work?

• Step 1: Find a quiet and comfortable space where you won’t be interrupted.
• Step 2: Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to relax your mind and body.
• Step 3: Visualize an intriguing scene, a captivating character, or an unresolved conflict – anything that sparks your creativity.
• Step 4: Begin writing immediately after opening your eyes. Don’t overanalyze or censor your thoughts, let them flow freely onto the paper.
• Step 5: Embrace the unexpected twists and turns that your imagination takes as you write. Don’t be afraid to experiment and step out of your comfort zone.

Why should you try it?

The Closed-Eye Exercise allows you to bypass your conscious mind’s limitations and dive into the boundless realm of your subconscious. This practice can yield remarkable results by unlocking hidden writing potential and unearthing unique story arcs that you might not have discovered otherwise. By closing your eyes, you eliminate external distractions and let your mind wander freely, fostering a deep connection with your own creativity. It’s an excellent technique to overcome writer’s block, spark inspiration, and inject new life into your writing.

Q: What is mind’s eye writing? A: Mind’s eye writing, also known as closed-eye exercise, is a technique where one writes without looking at the paper or screen, relying solely on their imagination and inner visualizations.

Q: How does mind’s eye writing work? A: Mind’s eye writing involves closing your eyes and allowing your thoughts and ideas to flow freely. By shutting off external visual distractions, you enhance your ability to tap into your creativity and inner world.

Q: Why is mind’s eye writing beneficial? A: Mind’s eye writing can be immensely beneficial as it helps to unlock deeper aspects of imagination, boosts creativity, and strengthens the connection between thoughts and words. It allows for the exploration of unique perspectives and encourages a more personal writing experience.

Q: Can anyone practice mind’s eye writing? A: Absolutely! Mind’s eye writing is accessible to everyone regardless of their writing ability or experience. It is an inclusive exercise that encourages self-expression and personal growth.

Q: How can I start practicing mind’s eye writing? A: To begin with mind’s eye writing, find a quiet and comfortable space where you can sit or lie down. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let your mind wander. Start describing what you see in your mind’s eye, whether it is a person, a scene, or an abstract concept. Let the words flow naturally without worrying about grammar or structure.

Q: Are there any tips for enhancing the mind’s eye writing experience? A: Certainly! Some useful tips include practicing mindfulness to quiet external distractions, setting aside dedicated time for this exercise, using sensory cues to trigger visualization, and experimenting with different writing tools like pen and paper versus digital platforms.

Q: Can mind’s eye writing be used for different types of writing? A: Absolutely! Mind’s eye writing is versatile and can be applied to various writing genres such as fiction, poetry, memoirs, or even academic writing. It adds a unique flavor to the creative process and helps to infuse depth and authenticity into your work.

Q: What are the potential challenges of mind’s eye writing? A: The primary challenge lies in effectively translating your visualizations into words, as sometimes the imagery in our minds can be complex or abstract. However, with practice, it becomes easier to bridge the gap between the mind’s eye and the written word.

Q: How can mind’s eye writing improve my overall writing skills? A: Mind’s eye writing nurtures your imagination, enhances your descriptive abilities, and cultivates a stronger connection between your thoughts and words. Over time, this practice can lead to improved storytelling techniques, richer character development , and a greater fluidity in your writing style.

Q: Any final tips or advice for those interested in exploring mind’s eye writing? A: The key to mind’s eye writing is to embrace the process and allow your imagination to wander freely. Don’t worry about perfection or judgment; simply trust in your ability to create. Remember, it’s all about unleashing your unique creative potential and enjoying the journey!

In conclusion, the closed-eye exercise of mind’s eye writing is a powerful tool that can enhance creativity and improve writing skills. Give it a try!

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The department of english and creative writing responds to the may 1, 2024 events and arrests on campus.

We the faculty and staff of the Dartmouth College Department of English and Creative Writing write to condemn the decision-making process that led to the presence of multiple militarized police units on our campus. One of these units, the New Hampshire Special Weapon and Tactics , defines itself as a highly-trained squad,

with expertise in weaponry and specialized tactics such as rappelling and building assaults. The purpose of the SWAT Unit is to be able to respond to high-risk incidents such as barricaded suspects, hostage takers, high-risk warrant service, active shooter situations and executive (VIP) security, as well as other incidents in which the lives and safety of the public are in extreme danger.

As in-person observers of the protest—representing a range of political views within the department—and as faculty who've consulted with students representing a range of political views, we affirm that the following played no role in the protest:

—barricaded suspects,

—hostage takers,

—standing warrants,

—active shooters,

—executive (VIP) security.

The decision to call in law enforcement, leading to the presence of militarized police, made this a case of "SWATting," the practice of summoning militarized police to a non-threatening situation to increase the risk of violence​. This decision endangered the safety of every member of the Dartmouth community.

The protest in question obstructed nothing and threatened no violence. Before this administration took power, there was no precedent in Dartmouth history for responding with law enforcement to language that is not explicitly threatening. There is no precedent in Dartmouth history for responding to any protest with militarized police units created to respond to life-or-death situations.

Therefore, w e call for the College to formally revise its dissent policies, in consultation with the faculty, so that police and militarized police will never again be used in response to peaceful protest.

In solidarity with students and with the many departments and programs across our campus that have issued statements denouncing the administration's actions, we reiterate and affirm the demands articulated by our colleagues in the Department of History and African and African American Studies that the Dartmouth administration

• acknowledge publicly that the deployment of state police and armored vehicles was an excessive and punitive response to peaceful protests, which will not be repeated,
• announce publicly that you are asking prosecutors to dismiss all criminal charges against the faculty, students, and staff who were arrested on May 1—a request that in no way infringes on prosecutorial discretion—and charges against the two students arrested in the fall, Roan V. Wade and Kevin Engle, should also be dropped immediately,
• make it officially and publicly known that academic freedom includes the right to peacefully express support for Palestinian rights. The college should permit nonviolent protest and restore faith in fair process and commitment to free speech on campus.

This statement was agreed upon by a clear majority of 26 yes votes, with 1 no vote, 1 abstain vote, and 9 uncast ballots.

‘The program of no’: Creative writing program faces lecturer shortages

Two creative writing lecturers requested anonymity due to fears of professional retaliation. Pseudonyms and gender neutral pronouns were used to protect sources’ identities and improve readability.

Rose Whitmore, a former Jones lecturer, was one of Kathaleen Mallard’s ’25 favorite teachers and mentors. She received the 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize — the same year she was let go. When another student asked her to be their advisor that year, Whitmore had to decline.

“I advised her for the rest of that year and then she had to go find somebody, and I think that was a bummer for her,” Whitmore said. 

Whitmore’s dismissal was necessitated by a four-year cap on lectureships, implemented by the creative writing program last year, which meant that those hired after the cap would be terminated at the end of their four years. But despite the policy, Stanford’s creative writing program — which claims to be “one of the best-known in the country” — continues to struggle to meet student demand, with high-volume waitlists for capped workshop classes.

For some students and lecturers, this tension between the program’s hiring limits and student demand means that creative writing students are not receiving the resources they need.

“Students are having a harder time getting into the classes,” said Charlie, a lecturer who requested anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation. “That’s why we’re disappointed at the faculty’s decision to reduce the number of lectureships — we feel like it’s wrong and it’s exactly the opposite of what we should be doing, considering the demand.”

This academic year is the first that current Stegner fellows, from whom Jones lectureships are usually hired, are not being offered the opportunity to apply for the lectureship. In an email obtained by The Daily, Nicholas Jenkins, the co-director of the creative writing program, and Elizabeth Tallent, the former co-director of the program, wrote that the program lacked the funds to support new positions. Following advocacy to increase compensation to allow lecturers to afford Bay Area rent, the program recently increased salaries for Jones lectures.

Some students who face limited resources and teaching staff say they are being discouraged from the program. 

Natalie Rodriguez ’25, who said she applied to Stanford because of its creative writing program, said that despite being a declared English major, there has not been a quarter where she has not been stressed about enrollment. 

During her frosh winter, Rodriguez said she struggled to get into ENGLISH 90: “Fiction Writing” and eventually got off the waitlist after classes had already started. She considered herself lucky — if she had not gotten into the class, she said she likely would have been turned off by the program and probably would not have become an English major with a concentration in creative writing.

“That is the whole reason that I wanted to come here and it probably would have been incredibly stressful to have to figure out a whole plan and to feel like I had been lied to,” she said.

Even students who brave the enrollment process say the challenges are making them hesitant about pursuing a creative writing career.

Mallard said she can feel a sense of discouragement in the classroom from seeing lecturers get let go and experiencing the difficulty of getting into classes, which both make it seem like Stanford does not think creative writing is a “valid pathway.”  

According to Mallard, Whitmore is “one of the best short story writers [in the] nation.”

“If she was let go, what hope do the rest of us have for finding a job in creative writing?” Mallard asked. 

Sam, a lecturer who requested anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation, wrote that they found it strange that Stanford does not have the funds for additional creative writing classes when other departments and classes, like engineering, require more expensive resources. If there was a lack of instructors in the computer science department, they wrote, Stanford would immediately address the issue. 

Hiring caps mean that creative writing instructors also often have to turn down students looking for advisors.

Natalie Rodriguez ’25, who applied for an honors in the arts, said she reached out to several lecturers to advise her creative writing project. But none had the capacity to help her, because they were at capacity for the number of other students who had asked to do independent work. Eventually, Rodriguez found someone in a different department to advise her. 

Sam wrote that since the passing of the last program director, Eavan Boland, the new co-directors have implemented a policy of two independent studies students per year, per lecturer. Though many lecturers, like Charlie, say they take this maximum amount of two independent studies students per year, they are unable to fully meet student demand.

Capped workshops, which Rodriguez said are some of the program’s most popular and demanded classes, are also affected by teaching staff shortages. The most popular introductory creative writing classes, ENGLISH 9CE: “Creative Expression in Writing,” ENGLISH 90: “Fiction Writing” and ENGLISH 91: “Creative Nonfiction” are all workshops. 

“It’s important that workshops are kept to a class of 15 students, so that each student’s work gets the attention it deserves,” Sam wrote. “Most introductory courses have waitlists of 10 students or more.”

Whitmore said she used to receive many emails from students, especially from seniors who really needed to take a specific class to fulfill their minor. She would occasionally take more students than the cap, but such a decision is up to the discretion of each particular lecturer. 

“If there’s too many students in the class, people just don’t get the same experience,” Whitmore said. “Creative writing classes should be small because it’s an intimate excavator process and it’s meant to be.”

Workshops typically begin with a few weeks dedicated to studying the works of other authors, before students take turns sharing their personal work. Class sessions are then spent providing feedback to individual students — Rodriguez said these are her favorite classes to be in because she enjoys reading her classmates’ work and getting feedback from them and lecturers.

Since the introduction of enrollment groups, though, Sam wrote the composition of their introductory creative writing classes has been affected, with more seniors and juniors than before. “Of course we want seniors and juniors in our classes, but we’d especially like for freshmen and sophomores to have access to these introductory classes,” they wrote. 

“This is a failure of vision and attention at all levels of upper administration at Stanford. If I was a parent of a Stanford student who could not take a Creative Writing class, I would be astonished and angry,” Sam wrote.

Mallard said this was a huge problem for creative writing students, because it is hard to get into the classes they need. She said that it feels like there are more creative writing minors and English majors with a creative writing concentration now, “but they’re not hiring any new lecturers and a lot of really, really famous lecturers, like famous writers, are let go.” 

Sam wrote that when the creative writing program was under former director Eavan Boland, the culture and priority of the program was centered around the students. However, since her passing in 2020, the leadership and direction of the program has changed. Sam wrote that critical needs are not addressed, even when expressed by lecturers and students.

“Every email from our directors detail all the things that can’t be done. It’s become the Program of No. The culture and morale that was built by Eavan in partnership with the Jones lecturers and generations of undergraduates is falling apart in front of our eyes,” Sam wrote. 

In an email to The Daily, Gabriella Safran, senior associate dean of humanities and arts, wrote that she and the faculty in the program were aware of the high demand for creative writing classes, and that she could not speak to personnel and hiring issues. 

“We hope to provide more opportunities for students in the future once the restructuring of the program is complete,” she wrote. 

According to Charlie, under the co-directorship of Jenkins and Tallent, a process to restructure the creative writing program began with the formation of a working group comprised of creative writing faculty members. There was no Jones lecturer representation in the group. 

“I think if Stanford wants to claim that they have a great creative writing program, they need to offer the same funding and the same support that they offer to other programs,” said Rodriguez.

Mallard said she recently attended a poetry reading held by a Stegner Fellow. It was a packed event, which surprised her.

“So I think the problem isn’t with engagement or the lack of people who are passionate about creative writing … I think there are lots of students who want to make creative writing their livelihood after college,” she said. “It’s like, truthfully, Stanford is just, ignoring the students and what they want.”

Judy N. Liu '26 is the Academics desk editor for News and staff writer at The Daily.

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Ai is contentious among authors. so why are some feeding it their own writing.

Chloe Veltman

The vast majority of authors don't use artificial intelligence as part of their creative process — or at least won't admit to it.

Yet according to a recent poll from the writers' advocacy nonprofit The Authors Guild, 13% said they do use AI, for activities like brainstorming character ideas and creating outlines.

The technology is a vexed topic in the literary world. Many authors are concerned about the use of their copyrighted material in generative AI models. At the same time, some are actively using these technologies — even attempting to train AI models on their own works.

These experiments, though limited, are teaching their authors new things about creativity.

Best known as the author of technology and business-oriented non-fiction books like The Long Tail, lately Chris Anderson has been trying his hand at fiction. Anderson is working on his second novel, about drone warfare.

He says he wants to put generative AI technology to the test.

"I wanted to see whether in fact AI can do more than just help me organize my thoughts, but actually start injecting new thoughts," Anderson says.

Anderson says he fed parts of his first novel into an AI writing platform to help him write this new one. The system surprised him by moving his opening scene from a corporate meeting room to a karaoke bar.

Authors push back on the growing number of AI 'scam' books on Amazon

"And I was like, you know? That could work!" Anderson says. "I ended up writing the scene myself. But the idea was the AI's."

Anderson says he didn't use a single actual word the AI platform generated. The sentences were grammatically correct, he says, but fell way short in terms of replicating his writing style. Although he admits to being disappointed, Anderson says ultimately he's OK with having to do some of the heavy lifting himself: "Maybe that's just the universe telling me that writing actually involves the act of writing."

Training an AI model to imitate style

It's very hard for off-the-shelf AI models like GPT and Claude to emulate contemporary literary authors' styles.

The authors NPR talked with say that's because these models are predominantly trained on content scraped from the Internet like news articles, Wikipedia entries and how-to manuals — standard, non-literary prose.

But some authors, like Sasha Stiles , say they have been able to make these systems suit their stylistic needs.

"There are moments where I do ask my machine collaborator to write something and then I use what's come out verbatim," Stiles says.

The poet and AI researcher says she wanted to make the off-the-shelf AI models she'd been experimenting with for years more responsive to her own poetic voice.

So she started customizing them by inputting her finished poems, drafts, and research notes.

"All with the intention to sort of mentor a bespoke poetic alter ego," Stiles says.

She has collaborated with this bespoke poetic alter ego on a variety of projects, including Technelegy (2021), a volume of poetry published by Black Spring Press; and " Repetae: Again, Again ," a multimedia poem created last year for luxury fashion brand Gucci.

Stiles says working with her AI persona has led her to ask questions about whether what she's doing is in fact poetic, and where the line falls between the human and the machine.

read it again… pic.twitter.com/sAs2xhdufD — Sasha Stiles | AI alter ego Technelegy ✍️🤖 (@sashastiles) November 28, 2023

"It's been really a provocative thing to be able to use these tools to create poetry," she says.

Potential issues come with these experiments

These types of experiments are also provocative in another way. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says she's not opposed to authors training AI models on their own writing.

"If you're using AI to create derivative works of your own work, that is completely acceptable," Rasenberger says.

Thousands of authors urge AI companies to stop using work without permission

But building an AI system that responds fluently to user prompts requires vast amounts of training data. So the foundational AI models that underpin most of these investigations in literary style may contain copyrighted works.

Rasenberger pointed to the recent wave of lawsuits brought by authors alleging AI companies trained their models on unauthorized copies of articles and books.

"If the output does in fact contain other people's works, that creates real ethical concerns," she says. "Because that you should be getting permission for."

Circumventing ethical problems while being creative

Award-winning speculative fiction writer Ken Liu says he wanted to circumvent these ethical problems, while at the same time creating new aesthetic possibilities using AI.

So the former software engineer and lawyer attempted to train an AI model solely on his own output. He says he fed all of his short stories and novels into the system — and nothing else.

Liu says he knew this approach was doomed to fail.

That's because the entire life's work of any single writer simply doesn't contain enough words to produce a viable so-called large language model.

"I don't care how prolific you are," Liu says. "It's just not going to work."

Liu's AI system built only on his own writing produced predictable results.

"It barely generated any phrases, even," Liu says. "A lot of it was just gibberish."

Yet for Liu, that was the point. He put this gibberish to work in a short story. 50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know , published in Uncanny Magazine in 2020, is a meditation on what it means to be human from the perspective of a machine.

"Dinoted concentration crusch the dead gods," is an example of one line in Liu's story generated by his custom-built AI model. "A man reached the torch for something darker perified it seemed the billboding," is another.

Liu continues to experiment with AI. He says the technology shows promise, but is still very limited. If anything, he says, his experiments have reaffirmed why human art matters.

"So what is the point of experimenting with AIs?" Liu says. "The point for me really is about pushing the boundaries of what is art."

Audio and digital stories edited by Meghan Collins Sullivan .

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College delegation presents at creative writing festival

Clatsop Community College participated in the Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher Creative Writing Festival in Port Angeles, Washington, from April 25 to April 27. Associated Student Government president and creative writing major Asher Finch, along with writing instructor Kama O'Connor, did a presentation at the event about the work that is put into Rain Magazine, the college's annual literary publication. Joining Finch and O'Connor, adjunct writing faculty Marianne Monson read from her novel, "The Opera Sisters." The delegation participated in various conference activities, including academic panels, plenary talks and special...

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R.O. Kwon Is Writing Into Desire

By Keziah Weir

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“I’m so obsessed with every word, every comma of a novel, that it was initially hard for me to contemplate letting go,” R.O. Kwon says of the screen adaptation of her best-selling 2019 debut novel, The Incendiaries. “My first reaction for half a day was like, ‘Well, guess I’m just going to learn how to make TV shows.’” But publishing has brimmed with lessons in surrender for the writer. “I was just like, ‘Well, no, I've read exactly one script of my life. I’m not versed in this.’” She relinquished control to two filmmakers whose work she admires. A collaboration between screenwriter Lisa Randolph ( Jessica Jones , Prodigal Son ) and director Kogonada ( Columbus, Pachinko ) is now underway.

She’s found other outlets for her comma tinkering. In 2014, Kwon started writing Exhibit (Riverhead) , and over the intervening decade has polished it so it glitters like a garnet in firelight. “I want the prose to get to a place where I can pick it up at random, read two sentences and not want to change anything about those sentences.” In the novel, a Korean American photographer named Jin finds herself creatively blocked at the same time her husband’s longing to become a father diverges painfully from her own desire to remain childless. An injured ballerina named Lidija, whom she meets at a party, unleashes both an artistic and a sensual awakening.

Kwon, who lives in San Francisco (“the long-term plan is to be here until climate change chases us out”), says that Exhibit bloomed from her longtime appreciation of photography and its “complicated and fraught relationship to reality, and to hanging on to a little bit of time, a little bit of the past” along with a more recently discovered love of dance. While watching a San Francisco Ballet performance of Alexei Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy, “I had this full body experience while watching, where I thought the dancers’ bodies—like, the cells —were directly talking to my body.” Kwon took introductory photography and ballet classes in an attempt to capture the bodily sensation of creating both art forms.

Earlier this year, Kwon wrote an essay about why she hopes her parents won’t read the book, given its frank depictions of lust and queerness—subjects into which Kwon took an exploratory dip with the best-selling 2021 story anthology Kink, which she co-edited with Garth Greenwell. It comprises fiction that explores desire from such authors as Alexander Chee, Melissa Febos, Roxane Gay, and Chris Kraus. Kwon’s own story, “Safeword,” was first published by Playboy and centers on a man navigating his girlfriend’s newly disclosed submissive sexual desires with a joint visit to a dominatrix.

“One of the strongest antidotes to the deepest kinds of loneliness, the worst shame I have felt, has been the fellowship I have found in literature and other people’s art,” Kwon says. “That's a guiding principle for me in my work. I so badly want to meet other people’s loneliness and other people’s solitude and other people’s shame.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Vanity Fair: Where did the book start for you?

R.O. Kwon: One of the first sparks for the book was that I was interested in what, as a woman, I feel allowed and encouraged to want, and what I feel pressured to hide my desire for. I wanted to have women on the page who want a great deal, to see what happens if they're given a space to run after what they desire. Ambition continues to feel like a really fraught thing for, I think especially, my woman artist friends and woman writer friends to even say out loud. Saying the words, "I am an ambitious woman" still feels really dangerous.

Jin, like the narrators in The Incendiaries and in your short story “Safe Word,” was raised Christian and lost their faith, which I know is something that you experienced too. But both of those narrators were white men. Of course, I understand that Jin is fictional, and that you are not Jin, but I am curious about the difference between writing a narrator who feels biographically, on paper, different or more similar to you.

With The Incendiaries, it wasn't as though I walked in telling myself, I'm going to write a book from the point of view of a white man. It was actually initially told from Phoebe, the Korean woman’s point of view, and that ended up changing. I believe very strongly in following the book's desires and needs, and not imposing what I think the book should be.

But with this book, I wanted very much to write from a Korean woman's point of view, and to not let the book morph again, in that way, if at all possible. In retrospect, I thought that maybe part of why that happened with The Incendiaries, it could have been some part of me was trying to protect myself a little. A lot of people seem to assume that Phoebe was a stand-in character for me, which was definitely a little wild because I was like, I haven't bombed an abortion clinic! That was definitely the most common question: How autobiographical was this book? And my goodness, well, I haven't done that.

By Bess Levin

By Kase Wickman

I wanted to let myself be much more unprotected in this book. Sex is at the center of this book. And being Korean, ex-Catholic, and ex-Christian, part of the journey of this book has involved some of the most overwhelming anxiety and panic that I've ever experienced in my life.

I'm sorry!

Part of me would just be watching myself and being like, you did this to yourself. Why? No one made you do this. No one made you write this very queer, kinky novel.

It's still true that every cell in my body seems to feel convinced that…honestly, a message I keep hearing is: You're going to be killed. It wasn't that long ago that a Korean woman could be divorced for talking too much. You could be divorced for—this one kills me, I flew into a day’s outrage about this—you could be divorced for moving during sex. And at the time, being divorced was a death sentence. I'm just not that far removed from when that was true. And my body's fully aware that giving any hint to the world that I've ever had sex is such a rule-breaking thing. I'm pretty sure I haven't even told my grandmother I’m queer. I just let her live her life in peace. She almost certainly thinks being queer is an illness. It's just not that uncommon. It's not just my grandmother's generation, at all.

Part of the deep anxiety about this has also come from the ways in which I write about sexuality and kink, especially Jin's sexuality, is that it can be misinterpreted as aligning exactly with some of the most harmful stereotypes about people who look like me. That we’re submissive, hypersexual, compliant, that we’re up for being mistreated. But I do believe that turning away from naming what I feel compelled to name, that itself brings its own harm.

I think a lot about something that my friend Garth Greenwell said. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like, "I'm not writing for people who think I'm disgusting. I'm writing for people who already think I'm beautiful." Jin clearly has very conflicted feelings about her desires, and is working through those conflicted feelings. I hoped that this book would at least in part turn into or turn toward a celebration of our bodies, and a celebration of bodies who are told that we don't get to want what we want.

In talking about her lack of a desire to have a child, Jin says that she can't argue the urge into being, which felt like such a parallel to the surety or lack thereof about faith in God.

That was one obsession of the book, these different ways—with faith, with wanting children or not, with sexual desire, with appetites in general, including for food—that our bodies are so powerful. I haven't been able to—and I've tried—I can't argue myself into believing in a Christian God. Again, I can't argue myself into or out of sexual desire. I am fascinated by the ways in which I haven't been able to ever reason or argue myself out of who I seem to be and what I want and what I believe.

I have friends and loved ones who so desperately want kids. And I know how absolutely, with all my being, I've never had that desire. With Jin and her husband, she, even more adamantly than I do, doesn't want kids. I always said if my partner woke up one day realizing he definitely wants kids, then I've told him, we will work with that and figure something out. But for Jin, it's further along on the spectrum than I am. She's just like, "I can't imagine this." And so there's the profound heartbreak of what do you then do when your life becomes incompatible with someone you love very much?

There’s another love story of sorts—the ghost of a kisaeng starts speaking to Jin.

The kisaeng story, the bare bones of the double suicide, with someone who was going to marry her, that's very loosely based on a family story. It has been fascinating to me, in part, because some of the family stories I've heard most often, and I really haven't heard that many family stories, have to do with people blowing up their lives for love. This became especially personal to me when the conflict that Jin has with her parents, where they didn't want to, where they say, "If you don't have a marriage in the church then we won't come." My parents said that to me. I took a less hard-line position. I’m so not Christian. That said, I thought, if this matters so much to y’all, then all right, whatever. We can have a priest involved.

The kisaeng who plays this large role in my own family's mythology, her name hasn't survived. I plunged into research, which itself started feeling really restrictive, because I just became increasingly obsessed with needing the historical details to be exactly right. And at one point, what became very liberating was I read about Korean men in Korea looking through Korean history and anointing people of the past as queer ancestors, because of all the ways in which queer people are erased from history. That really liberated me. I was like, You know what? We're talking about a ghost, channeled through a shaman, and she can fly. I can make some things up.

One of my biggest pleasures in a book is finding a character from another one of the author’s books—and I got that in The Exhibit, with a visit from the world of The Incendiaries.

There's a part of me that almost believes that an ideal version of a book pre-exists me. And I feel less that I'm making anything up with fiction, and that I’m more working my way toward a book that's already there. Honestly, that feels more reassuring than...

That you're liberating a form rather than having to find it yourself.

That way it’s not the wide open vista of infinite choice, but instead working my way toward liberating, like a sculpture out of a rock. The world of The Incendiaries feels to me as though it almost exists. When I feel extra down about the world, I sometimes turn to quantum physics for consolation, the articles and books that are for lay people. I love reading that there are infinite versions of the world, and in ways that almost exceed language. In The Incendiaries, a world where those abortion clinics were bombed, that version of the world, it seems to exist to me. It still felt so vibrant, that it felt natural for the world of Exhibit to also belong there.

I'm most likely working toward either a trilogy or triptych, or a quartet, of books where they're very loosely connected. But where what happens in the past, in these past books, continues to exist in future books. I think Jin's photos—I mean, who knows, it's early days—I think Jin's photos will show up in the next book.

It sounds like you're already working on that third book.

I'm having more trouble really pulling myself into fiction than I've ever had. It's been really disorienting. It just remains such a central terror, that terror Jin feels in Exhibit , her fear that the photos have left. Because it does happen sometimes. Every now and then, there are artists who just don't ever write again, don't make their art again. I’m so afraid that the words have left. But I'm trying to be patient, and I've been storing up, and I've been collecting accounts of writers who fall into years of quiet, because I know my mind and body are at their best when I’m writing fiction every day. And currently I’m not able to, but I'm trying.

Below, Kwon shares some of the creative inspirations behind Exhibit.

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Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

All vaccines have at least occasional side effects. But people who say they were injured by Covid vaccines believe their cases have been ignored.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City, said that ever since his first Covid shot, standing up has sent his heart racing. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

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By Apoorva Mandavilli

Apoorva Mandavilli spent more than a year talking to dozens of experts in vaccine science, policymakers and people who said they had experienced serious side effects after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

• Published May 3, 2024 Updated May 4, 2024

Within minutes of getting the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, Michelle Zimmerman felt pain racing from her left arm up to her ear and down to her fingertips. Within days, she was unbearably sensitive to light and struggled to remember simple facts.

She was 37, with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and until then could ride her bicycle 20 miles, teach a dance class and give a lecture on artificial intelligence, all in the same day. Now, more than three years later, she lives with her parents. Eventually diagnosed with brain damage, she cannot work, drive or even stand for long periods of time.

“When I let myself think about the devastation of what this has done to my life, and how much I’ve lost, sometimes it feels even too hard to comprehend,” said Dr. Zimmerman, who believes her injury is due to a contaminated vaccine batch .

The Covid vaccines, a triumph of science and public health, are estimated to have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths . Yet even the best vaccines produce rare but serious side effects . And the Covid vaccines have been given to more than 270 million people in the United States, in nearly 677 million doses .

Dr. Zimmerman’s account is among the more harrowing, but thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government — but to little avail. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600 .

Some scientists fear that patients with real injuries are being denied help and believe that more needs to be done to clarify the possible risks.

“At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University. But people who say they have post-vaccination injuries are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added.

In interviews and email exchanges conducted over several months, federal health officials insisted that serious side effects were extremely rare and that their surveillance efforts were more than sufficient to detect patterns of adverse events.

“Hundreds of millions of people in the United States have safely received Covid vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history,” Jeff Nesbit, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement.

But in a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration, who retired in February, said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies.

“I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.”

“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”

Federal officials and independent scientists face a number of challenges in identifying potential vaccine side effects.

The nation’s fragmented health care system complicates detection of very rare side effects, a process that depends on an analysis of huge amounts of data. That’s a difficult task when a patient may be tested for Covid at Walgreens, get vaccinated at CVS, go to a local clinic for minor ailments and seek care at a hospital for serious conditions. Each place may rely on different health record systems.

There is no central repository of vaccine recipients, nor of medical records, and no easy to way to pool these data. Reports to the largest federal database of so-called adverse events can be made by anyone, about anything. It’s not even clear what officials should be looking for.

“I mean, you’re not going to find ‘brain fog’ in the medical record or claims data, and so then you’re not going to find” a signal that it may be linked to vaccination, Dr. Woodcock said. If such a side effect is not acknowledged by federal officials, “it’s because it doesn’t have a good research definition,” she added. “It isn’t, like, malevolence on their part.”

The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

‘I’m Not Real’

Patients who believe they experienced serious side effects say they have received little support or acknowledgment.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City who has worked on clinical trials for H.I.V. and Covid, said that ever since his first Covid shot, merely standing up sent his heart racing — a symptom suggestive of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome , a neurological disorder that some studies have linked to both Covid and, much less often, vaccination .

He also experienced stinging pain in his eyes, mouth and genitals, which has abated, and tinnitus, which has not.

“I can’t get the government to help me,” Mr. Barcavage said of his fruitless pleas to federal agencies and elected representatives. “I am told I’m not real. I’m told I’m rare. I’m told I’m coincidence.”

Renee France, 49, a physical therapist in Seattle, developed Bell’s palsy — a form of facial paralysis, usually temporary — and a dramatic rash that neatly bisected her face. Bell’s palsy is a known side effect of other vaccines, and it has been linked to Covid vaccination in some studies.

But Dr. France said doctors were dismissive of any connection to the Covid vaccines. The rash, a bout of shingles, debilitated her for three weeks, so Dr. France reported it to federal databases twice.

“I thought for sure someone would reach out, but no one ever did,” she said.

Similar sentiments were echoed in interviews, conducted over more than a year, with 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid shots. They described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular.

All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines.

Even leading experts in vaccine science have run up against disbelief and ambivalence.

Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.

He received polite responses to his many emails, but “I just don’t get any sense of movement,” he said.

“If they have done studies, those studies should be published,” Dr. Poland added. In despair that he might “never hear silence again,” he has sought solace in meditation and his religious faith.

Dr. Buddy Creech, 50, who led several Covid vaccine trials at Vanderbilt University, said his tinnitus and racing heart lasted about a week after each shot. “It’s very similar to what I experienced during acute Covid, back in March of 2020,” Dr. Creech said.

Research may ultimately find that most reported side effects are unrelated to the vaccine, he acknowledged. Many can be caused by Covid itself.

“Regardless, when our patients experience a side effect that may or may not be related to the vaccine, we owe it to them to investigate that as completely as we can,” Dr. Creech said.

Federal health officials say they do not believe that the Covid vaccines caused the illnesses described by patients like Mr. Barcavage, Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. France. The vaccines may cause transient reactions, such as swelling, fatigue and fever, according to the C.D.C., but the agency has documented only four serious but rare side effects .

Two are associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is no longer available in the United States: Guillain-Barré syndrome , a known side effect of other vaccines , including the flu shot; and a blood-clotting disorder.

The C.D.C. also links mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to heart inflammation, or myocarditis, especially in boys and young men. And the agency warns of anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction, which can occur after any vaccination.

Listening for Signals

Agency scientists are monitoring large databases containing medical information on millions of Americans for patterns that might suggest a hitherto unknown side effect of vaccination, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“We toe the line by reporting the signals that we think are real signals and reporting them as soon as we identify them as signals,” he said. The agency’s systems for monitoring vaccine safety are “pretty close” to ideal, he said.

Those national surveillance efforts include the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). It is the largest database, but also the least reliable: Reports of side effects can be submitted by anyone and are not vetted, so they may be subject to bias or manipulation.

The system contains roughly one million reports regarding Covid vaccination, the vast majority for mild events, according to the C.D.C.

Federal researchers also comb through databases that combine electronic health records and insurance claims on tens of millions of Americans. The scientists monitor the data for 23 conditions that may occur following Covid vaccination. Officials remain alert to others that may pop up, Dr. Daskalakis said.

But there are gaps, some experts noted. The Covid shots administered at mass vaccination sites were not recorded in insurance claims databases, for example, and medical records in the United States are not centralized.

“It’s harder to see signals when you have so many people, and things are happening in different parts of the country, and they’re not all collected in the same system,” said Rebecca Chandler, a vaccine safety expert at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

An expert panel convened by the National Academies concluded in April that for the vast majority of side effects, there was not enough data to accept or reject a link.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing whether the nation’s vaccine-safety surveillance was sufficient, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, “I do believe we could do better.”

In some countries with centralized health care systems, officials have actively sought out reports of serious side effects of Covid vaccines and reached conclusions that U.S. health authorities have not.

In Hong Kong, the government analyzed centralized medical records of patients after vaccination and paid people to come forward with problems. The strategy identified “a lot of mild cases that other countries would not otherwise pick up,” said Ian Wong, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong who led the nation’s vaccine safety efforts.

That included the finding that in rare instances — about seven per million doses — the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine triggered a bout of shingles serious enough to require hospitalization.

The European Medicines Agency has linked the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to facial paralysis, tingling sensations and numbness. The E.M.A. also counts tinnitus as a side effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, although the American health agencies do not. There are more than 17,000 reports of tinnitus following Covid vaccination in VAERS.

Are the two linked? It’s not clear. As many as one in four adults has some form of tinnitus. Stress, anxiety, grief and aging can lead to the condition, as can infections like Covid itself and the flu.

There is no test or scan for tinnitus, and scientists cannot easily study it because the inner ear is tiny, delicate and encased in bone, said Dr. Konstantina Stankovic, an otolaryngologist at Stanford University.

Still, an analysis of health records from nearly 2.6 million people in the United States found that about 0.04 percent , or about 1,000, were diagnosed with tinnitus within three weeks of their first mRNA shot. In March, researchers in Australia published a study linking tinnitus and vertigo to the vaccines .

The F.D.A. is monitoring reports of tinnitus, but “at this time, the available evidence does not suggest a causal association with the Covid-19 vaccines,” the agency said in a statement.

Despite surveillance efforts, U.S. officials were not the first to identify a significant Covid vaccine side effect: myocarditis in young people receiving mRNA vaccines. It was Israeli authorities who first raised the alarm in April 2021. Officials in the United States said at the time that they had not seen a link.

On May 22, 2021, news broke that the C.D.C. was investigating a “relatively few” cases of myocarditis. By June 23, the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS had risen to more than 1,200 — a hint that it is important to tell doctors and patients what to look for.

Later analyses showed that the risk for myocarditis and pericarditis, a related condition, is highest after a second dose of an mRNA Covid vaccine in adolescent males aged 12 to 17 years.

In many people, vaccine-related myocarditis is transient. But some patients continue to experience pain, breathlessness and depression, and some show persistent changes on heart scans . The C.D.C. has said there were no confirmed deaths related to myocarditis, but in fact there have been several accounts of deaths reported post-vaccination .

Pervasive Misinformation

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects, some experts said. Much of the narrative on the purported dangers of Covid vaccines is patently false, or at least exaggerated, cooked up by savvy anti-vaccine campaigns.

Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.

“The sheer nature of misinformation, the scale of misinformation, is staggering, and anything will be twisted to make it seem like it’s not just a devastating side effect but proof of a massive cover-up,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University.

Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were immunized for Covid, some number would have had heart attacks or strokes anyway. Some women would have miscarried. How to distinguish those caused by the vaccine from those that are coincidences? The only way to resolve the question is intense research .

But the National Institutes of Health is conducting virtually no studies on Covid vaccine safety, several experts noted. William Murphy, a cancer researcher who worked at the N.I.H. for 12 years, has been prodding federal health officials to initiate these studies since 2021.

The officials each responded with “that very tired mantra: ‘But the virus is worse,’” Dr. Murphy recalled. “Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.”

A deeper understanding of possible side effects, and who is at risk for them, could have implications for the design of future vaccines, or may indicate that for some young and healthy people, the benefit of Covid shots may no longer outweigh the risks — as some European countries have determined.

Thorough research might also speed assistance to thousands of Americans who say they were injured.

The federal government has long run the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program , designed to compensate people who suffer injuries after vaccination. Established more than three decades ago, the program sets no limit on the amounts awarded to people found to have been harmed.

But Covid vaccines are not covered by that fund because Congress has not made them subject to the excise tax that pays for it. Some lawmakers have introduced bills to make the change.

Instead, claims regarding Covid vaccines go to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program . Intended for public health emergencies, this program has narrow criteria to pay out and sets a limit of $50,000, with stringent standards of proof.

It requires applicants to prove within a year of the injury that it was “the direct result” of getting the Covid vaccine, based on “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence.”

The program had only four staff members at the beginning of the pandemic, and now has 35 people evaluating claims. Still, it has reviewed only a fraction of the 13,000 claims filed, and has paid out only a dozen.

Dr. Ilka Warshawsky, a 58-year-old pathologist, said she lost all hearing in her right ear after a Covid booster shot. But hearing loss is not a recognized side effect of Covid vaccination.

The compensation program for Covid vaccines sets a high bar for proof, she said, yet offers little information on how to meet it: “These adverse events can be debilitating and life-altering, and so it’s very upsetting that they’re not acknowledged or addressed.”

Dr. Zimmerman, the neuroscientist, submitted her application in October 2021 and provided dozens of supporting medical documents. She received a claim number only in January 2023.

In adjudicating her claim for workers’ compensation, Washington State officials accepted that Covid vaccination caused her injury, but she has yet to get a decision from the federal program.

One of her therapists recently told her she might never be able to live independently again.

“That felt like a devastating blow,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “But I’m trying not to lose hope there will someday be a treatment and a way to cover it.”

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

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