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By Sally Odgers,

How many heroines have blue eyes? The short answer is; a large percentage! You may be the kind of writer who writes rare, lovingly polished manuscripts. One finished ms every five years might be normal for you. That’s fine. You may be the kind of writer who writes frequent, workmanlike manuscripts. Maybe your ideas tumble forth like an avalanche down a mountain. One finished ms every two months might be normal for you. That’s equally fine. Writers should write at their own pace. Trying to force a natural tortoise to gallop is cruel, and trying to make a racehorse crawl is totally useless. So, tortoise or racehorse, do what you do do well, my friends. But -

There is one problem the racehorses among you might have that the tortoises will always avoid. The problem of blue eyes. A.K.A. the problem of rising eyebrows. A.K.A. the problem of raven tresses. And well-cut features. A.K.A. a lot of other things, as well.

The problem is, if you produce (say) four full-length mss, 60 to 120 K each, per year, you are going to be creating a great many characters. Even in category romances, which tend to be short in length and long on dual stars and few walk-on roles, you’ll end up with at least twenty-five described characters. How many are going to have blue eyes? How many will have raven tresses, will quirk their eyebrows, will flush, flutter, moan, and toss a scornful head? How many chins will lift, and how many noses sniff disdainfully?

By now, you will have gathered I’m talking about the problem of catch-phrase description. It isn’t necessarily cliché. You might have come up with a phrase no-one’s thought of before! Maybe your sci-fi heroine has eyes as blue as a skyglider’s wings! Maybe your filthy-rich villain glints with a diamond tooth! These descriptions are not clichés in the normal sense, but if you don’t watch out they can become clichés of your very own.

It is a sobering experience, oh fellow racehorses, to pick five random mss and reread them. I don’t repeat characters, and I’m sure you don’t intend to either. To do so is lazy and unnecessary. Even Georgette Heyer, who claimed to have two heroes only - Heyer-Hero Mark 1 and Heyer-Hero Mark 2 - underrated her own skills. These types were, supposedly, the “brusque, savage sort” and the “smooth, urbane sort”, but which was #1 and which was #2? Even Heyer herself doesn’t seem to have been certain. Gilly, the hero of THE FOUNDLING and John, the hero of THE TOLL-GATE are both supposedly of the one type (smooth and urbane), but gentle, sweet-natured Gilly is certainly no carbon-copy of upstanding Major John. And Hugo of THE UNKNOWN AJAX, my very favourite Heyer-hero, has a sly sense of humour and a blunt Yorkshire manner that marks him apart from either of the other two. The point is, carbon-copy characters are out, but we still need to beware of the carbon-copy description.

When I went through five of my novels, I combed for the syllable “brow” as in “eyebrow”. This (gulp) is what I found.

In ANNA’S OWN, a historical novel, the following passages appeared;

Jack's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his bright hair.

"Indeed?" McNamara's eyebrows rose.

Jane raised her eyebrows.

Sam Shepherd raised haughty eyebrows

Not too bad for a book that was 120 K.

The picture for IN SEARCH OF A HUSBAND wasn’t quite so good. ISOAH is 100K, and in it come these lines;

His eyebrows came together with an almost audible snap

He raised his eyebrows

He lifted his eyebrows, and

He raised an eyebrow

Walter raised his bushy grey eyebrows

Rue raised her eyebrows

...but his eyebrows went up again. ‘You were going to marry ...

Marcus raised his eyebrows

who wouldn’t know his eyebrow from his elbow

At least there were a few different characters there!

In TRINITY STREET, a sci fi, I found the following:

She raised her eyebrows very slightly and waited.

Dr Sib’s eyebrows rose

Jens raised one eyebrow

And in TRANSLATIONS IN CELADON, a werewolf fantasy romance, only the one, rather telling, occurrence.

Your eyebrows don’t even meet across the middle!’

Probably the worst case came with an unpublished ms which shall remain nameless in case any beady-eyed editor is reading this. Just look at the eyebrow action here - and all in 70K!

One eyebrow arched a little more

twitching the arched eyebrow upwards

he raised an eyebrow in her direction

His eyebrow rose a little more.

raising his eyebrows again

X raised his eyebrows - both of them this time.

X’s eyebrows rose

his eyebrow quirking

X’s eyebrow twitched upward.

Ouch! You may be sure I am now keeping those eyebrows very much under control, but it is a melancholy fact that eyebrows aren’t the only offenders. If you suspect you have a problem, try using the search-and-find option on your computer. Seek and (if necessary) destroy! Key-words to check are eyes, lips, hair, mouth, hands, tall, face, head plus any others you suspect might be overused. I must stress that it isn’t really the “head” you need to worry about so much as what it’s doing. If the phrase “shook his head seriously” pops up three times in one chapter, you have problems. If an unusual word such as “coruscated” occurs three times in the same book you have problems. One otherwise enjoyable book was ruined for me when the author over-used the word “crusted”. A dragon kept moving/shaking/raising/tossing its “crusted head”. Yet another author so over-used “long-jawed” that I was ready to punch author and/or character right on the offending feature. Yet another author overused the term “young Egyptologist” for the protagonist of the novel in question. The lad had a name; why did the author refuse to use it?

Other words to check include smile, grin, laugh, cried, groan and hurried. You can ask you programme to find “whole words only”, but I find it better to chose part of the word. This way, “grin” will find “grinning” and “grinned” as well, “smil” will find “smile”, “smiling” and “smiled”, and “hurr” will find “hurry”, “hurried” and “hurrying”. Of course, it will also find “hurricane”, but with luck you won’t have used that too often!

After a while, you’ll learn which words and terms you tend to over-use. You’ll learn to substitute as you go, so not too many eyebrows rise and rise again. You’ll learn that one heroine with speedwell eyes is fine, but your next blue-eyed damsel really ought to sport another shade of blue. Paint-blue, perhaps, or sapphire. One lot of lustrous flaxen locks is permissible, but make your next heroine a red-head or an ash-blonde. Watch you heroes’ jaws and lips; if too many are “well-cut” or “finely chiselled” your readers will go cross-eyed. And if the lad has “well-cut” features, mention it once or twice, and then let it be taken as read thereafter.

Oh, and watch those athletic eyebrows!

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