Green eyes??

Serious question NEEDS an answer!

My WIP has a heroine(?) with green eyes and auburn hair, but the eyes and the hair are the result of a paranormal event. One of the villians has green eyes for the same reason. Do you think that's cliche? If it is, thenwell, then my whole manuscript has to be reworked! HELP!

Cliche or not, green eyes and red hair do exist:

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There are time when cliche is good. It means your readers have to think less about the minor stuff (like hair color and eye color) and concentrate more on the important stuff.

My mother has green eyes. They're not a bright green, but more of a muddy-grey green.

Green eyes are unusual but not impossible. I have green eyes. Not hazel, not grey-green, but green, and they've been that colour all my life. But I'm a brunette, not a redhead.

Possibly the combination of natural red hair and green eyes is a cliche because that combination would be pretty unusual The majority of redheads I've met have blue or hazel eyes.

but Appalachian, if your characters have green eyes due to an explained supernatural event, I think that's perfectly acceptable!

Shara

Appalachian Writer said:

My WIP has a heroine(?) with green eyes and auburn hair, but the eyes and the hair are the result of a paranormal event. One of the villians has green eyes for the same reason. Do you think that's cliche? If it is, thenwell, then my whole manuscript has to be reworked! HELP!

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To me, this is one of those things that writers call cliche (or say is over-represented), but I'll bet if you polled your average reader it wouldn't be the case. I also think that it must depend on the genre. Perhaps romance is a typical home for the green-eyed beauty, I don't know.But I read all different types of genres and off the top of my head, I can't think of any novels with whack descriptions of green eyes.

Sage green actually sounds like a variation of hazel to me. I'd say my sister's eyes are sage. But yeah, even though I married into a family of blue-eyed Irish people, I can still think of many friends and family members with real (and beautiful) green eyes.

I know several people with very vivid green eyes. It's more common in certain areas ( scandanavia / iceland etc).

My heroine has green eyes for an extremely specific reason - and it's not really that they are green that makes thems so odd....

My husband's eyes are quite green.

Technically speaking my daughter lists her eyes as hazel. However, they range from dull blue/gray, and dusty sage all the way up to a decent green depending on her mood and the color of clothes she wears. She's a blonde by the way. We used to kid her about it when she was younger because if she had a bad day (in grade school) her eyes would be very green.

The oddity is that both I and her father have blue eyes. :raised eyebrow:

Another odd eye color is violet. I saw that once, most unusual and very pretty. She was of African/Irish? descent.

Amy

My girlfriend's often look as if they have changed from blue to green. While I know that's not actually possible, it still seems to happen.

If a character's eye color jumps out at a reader to where it stops him/her, perhaps the surrounding prose is a bit on the bland side.

Eye color is a reality of nature, and green (of various shades including hazel) is one of the possible colors coded in the human genome. How can that be cliche. It can be overused or over emphasized, but it isn't cliche any more than having a heroine with blond hair is cliche. And, remember, eye color can be changed with contact lenses these days, so the percentage of total humans with natrual green eyes may not be the same as the number of humans whose eyes look green.

I have green eyes. Mrs. Fizzy's eyes are green flecked with blue so they can look either green or blue depending on what she wears. Little Fizzy's eyes are green. Little Fizzette has blue eyes.

BarbaraKE said:

The recent thread entitled '1001 writing cliches' mentioned 'red hair and green eyes' as a cliche.

(Maybe cliche isn't the right word, but it was pointed out that this description is way over-represented in fiction.)

Anyway, that started me thinking. What exactly is 'green' eyes?? I'm serious - I've never seen anyone with green eyes. A friend once mentioned that she had green eyes, I would have called them light brown (hazel). Do people ever have really green eyes??

(On a side note, the very next book I started after reading that thread had a heroine with 'long red hair that rippled down to her waist' and 'sage-green eyes'. She was also an expert in her field (scientist) and was 5'8" tall, approx. 135 pounds and 28 years old. Yeah, right. Did I mention that the hero also had green eyes (but his were 'olivine'). No, this wasn't a romance, it was a thriller. Agghhhhh!!)

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Yes - I have green eyes. When I cry they go as green as a cat's eyes! They do have blue circles round them though. Green eyes are very common in Irish people, and I'm of Irish descent.

B.

Duped said:

Yes - I have green eyes. When I cry they go as green as a cat's eyes!

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My youngest daughter is the same way! Mostly her eyes are a very interesting indeterminate color - kind of blue, grey, moss something. But when she cries, they go bright green.

Perks said:

My youngest daughter is the same way! Mostly her eyes are a very interesting indeterminate color - kind of blue, grey, moss something. But when she cries, they go bright green.

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Yes, when I was a child I was amazed at the colour green my eyes went!

if your characters have green eyes due to an explained supernatural event, I think that's perfectly acceptable!

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Shara, thanks loads. I based a lot of things in the book on the transformations from brown eyes to green, blue to green, etc. When I read the cliche thing, my stomach almost floated out of my mouth! This gives me a lot of comfort.

I have green eyes - they are yellowish-green around the pupil, and a bright almost- emerald (yes, I said emerald ) around the yellow. They started out blue, but changed when I was about 17. They also tend to turn turquoise-y depending on what color I wear. I call them "mood eyes" and I'm the only one in my family with them. I don't have red hair, but blonde. I'm the family freak

She_wulf said:

Technically speaking my daughter lists her eyes as hazel. However, they range from dull blue/gray, and dusty sage all the way up to a decent green depending on her mood and the color of clothes she wears. She's a blonde by the way. We used to kid her about it when she was younger because if she had a bad day (in grade school) her eyes would be very green.

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Mine are pretty much the same; they're kind of a greenish hazel most of the time, but can shade all the way from a kind of dull gray-blue to outright green, mood and outfit depending. I've even been told they looked sort of yellowish a few times, though that was generally in bad light.

Both my mom and my brother have green eyes and red hair. IMO I wouldn't call it cliche since I grew up wth it. The majority of people in my family have red hair,about half with green eyes, and the other half blue. It's just the norm!

Actual data is hard to find on the percentage of individuals with green eyes. An unsubstantiated number I found for the total population of the globe is around 2% green and 8% blue eyes. If, however, you look at specific populations, it will be much different--in Iceland, 88% of the population has either green or blue eyes (no original reference found).

In writing, therefore, the probability of "seeing" green or blue eyes will be dependent upon the setting of the story and/or the lineage of the characters.

I have green eyes but unfortunately, they're not the attractive vivid kind - more like cold pond water. All the red heads I know have blue or brown eyes.

MM

I have those muddy-green-brown ones, but my best friend's a red head, and he has eyes like lime lifesavers.

I have green eyes. When I was in high school, they were more gray, but have become greener over time. My grandfather had one green eye and one blue eye.

I'd send you a picture, but in photos, my eyes almost always are red!

P.S. Depending on what I wear and what make-up I have on, they are of varying intensity.

She_wulf said:

Technically speaking my daughter lists her eyes as hazel. However, they range from dull blue/gray, and dusty sage all the way up to a decent green depending on her mood and the color of clothes she wears. She's a blonde by the way. We used to kid her about it when she was younger because if she had a bad day (in grade school) her eyes would be very green.

The oddity is that both I and her father have blue eyes. :raised eyebrow:

Another odd eye color is violet. I saw that once, most unusual and very pretty. She was of African/Irish? descent.

Amy

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Violet? Sounds to me like the person is lacking almost all pigment in their eyes. They might have just enough blue so that their lenses aren't clear, but you can probably still see some of the red of the blood vessels behind the lenses, and mixed together it forms violet. Sort of sounds like a mild version of albinism. (It is possible to have albinism and only have the eyes missing their pigment... their entire body doesn't have to be lacking)

BarbaraKE said:

The recent thread entitled '1001 writing cliches' mentioned 'red hair and green eyes' as a cliche.

(Maybe cliche isn't the right word, but it was pointed out that this description is way over-represented in fiction.)

Anyway, that started me thinking. What exactly is 'green' eyes?? I'm serious - I've never seen anyone with green eyes. A friend once mentioned that she had green eyes, I would have called them light brown (hazel). Do people ever have really green eyes??

(On a side note, the very next book I started after reading that thread had a heroine with 'long red hair that rippled down to her waist' and 'sage-green eyes'. She was also an expert in her field (scientist) and was 5'8" tall, approx. 135 pounds and 28 years old. Yeah, right. Did I mention that the hero also had green eyes (but his were 'olivine'). No, this wasn't a romance, it was a thriller. Agghhhhh!!)

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True green eyes are pretty rare. A few people I know (notibly my mother and husband) have the eyes that switch from gray to blue to green depending on what they're wearing, and my cousin has the enviable combination of brown hair/skin and green eyes. I don't think my cousin's eyes aren't totally green though, they may have a brown ring in the middle or brown flecks throughout, but I've never gotten in my cousin's face to look so I'm not sure. Another girl I knew in highschool had brown around the center, green in the middle, and blue on the outside. She's the only person I've ever seen (or heard of) with that eye color.

Also, I think the reason red hair/green eyes might be considered cliche, is that because a lot of newer writers try to go for something "unusual" for their character's description, and the red/green combination is overall a pretty rare occurance in the human race. Of course that means that it's a lot more common in fiction. The dreaded cliche female character is a redhead named Kate. Even I fell prey to that one... I have a Kate with auburn hair and hazel eyes. /sigh

sunna said:

Mine are pretty much the same; they're kind of a greenish hazel most of the time, but can shade all the way from a kind of dull gray-blue to outright green, mood and outfit depending. I've even been told they looked sort of yellowish a few times, though that was generally in bad light.

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My step-sister has hazel eyes. Can't really see the green unless she's wearing that color, but it lightens the brown enough that her eyes mostly look gold all the time. "Whiskey eyes" is one description I've heard, and it's pretty accurate for her.

I have heard many times that Liz Taylor has violet-blue eyes.

The MC in my historical has eyes of a specific green color for story purposes, not on a whim. As said above, if the reason for color is made clear by the author, it cannot be a cliché.