50,000 words into the book and I’m writing a scene where one of my characters raises an eyebrow and I start to think, “Do my characters raise one eyebrow too much? Because it seems like they raise their eyebrows way more than normal people do.”
In truth, there are a lot of crazy, “eyebrow-raising” moments in the book so it’s sort of forgivable. But then I start thinking about the fact that I am incapable of raising just one eyebrow unless I’m holding the other one down with my fingers. I am deficient. And I’m not the only one. I know lots of people who can’t raise just one eyebrow.
So I do a text search of my book for the word “eyebrow” and find that I do indeed employ eyebrows heavily to show that my characters are shocked, surprised or skeptical about what’s happening around them. It may be too much.
But interestingly, one of my main characters nearly always raises one eyebrow while the other main character nearly always raises two. This is just too fun to be a coincidence so I edit the two cases where their eyebrow gymnastics are out of character.
Now one of my characters shares my eyebrow raising disability and I feel in some small way like I am not alone in the world.
Ha! You are very funny! I found your lovely new blog through that of an old friend of mine, Erin. I hope you keep this one up!
ReplyDeleteI am currently writing an anthology of short fiction and have spent ample time in the Internet Writing Worshop getting each piece critiqued and fine-tuned. It IS funny how our most beloved characters tend to do a lot of eyebrow raising (or "looking away" in my case...why, what are they looking at? No idea).