writing-questions-answered:
Anonymous asked:Is it okay to compare eye color to food and other...
Anonymous asked:
Is it okay to compare eye color to food and other things?
It really depends on what you’re using for comparison, but typically, food doesn’t make for a good comparison to eye color. For one thing, human eyes are amber, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel, and rarely red or violet. There aren’t a lot of foods that are those colors and would be appropriate comparisons. “Her eyes were as green as a leaf of Boston lettuce,” or “His eyes were as brown as the skin of a baking potato,” just doesn’t sound nice. Over fifty percent of the world has brown eyes, but the most obvious food to compare brown eyes to is chocolate, and that’s been done to death.
With food and with other objects, too, you have to worry not only about relevance (are your character’s eyes really the color of lapis lazuli? Probably not…), you also have to worry about any negative connotation the object might have. Dirt would be a poor choice, for example. Not only does dirt come in a variety of colors, it also has an unpleasant and unclean connotation, so probably not the best choice for eye color. “His eyes were brown like the bark of a tree,” is also not great. Like dirt, tree bark comes in a variety of colors, but it also has a rough and basic connotation. It also just sounds cheesy. On the other hand, “Her eyes were the color of spring’s first grass,” could be okay, especially if you want to imbue your character with all the positive qualities of springtime.
Also, it’s okay to just describe someone’s eye color as just brown or blue. Not every character is deserving of eyes the color of spring’s first grass. Reserve those descriptions for special moments–something that would be memorable for the character who is making the observation, or that need to have a huge impact on your reader. :)
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