What Color Are Those Eyes?

One of my tasks as a fiction editor is to spot discrepancies, and by far the most common one I see has to do with a character’s eye color. In beginning chapters, our heroine has blue eyes, and somewhere in the middle of the book her eyes are brown. This also happens frequently with hair color. He’s a blonde. No, wait! He’s a redhead. Or sometimes a shade of blond changes from strawberry to honey—and maybe even back again. Eyes are azure and later navy.

Harder to spot is when a character’s look changes between novels in a series, which is impossible for an editor to know without having edited previous volumes. And even then, the editor isn't necessarily the keeper of that information or has the memory of that proverbial elephant. Yet rarely, although dye can be involved, do characters change their hair color (other than maybe the blue, purple, green, or pink we see so often these days), and as far as I know only contact lenses will change eye color.

Discrepancies are common in fiction; after all, most everything in novels is made up, and manuscripts are revised multiple times. Discrepancies happen easily. A character has left the house by the front door yet is standing on the back porch. The family is having roast beef for dinner, but the children eagerly eat their lasagna.

But for characteristics like eye and hair color? Like height and build and facial hair and age? What to do?

My solution for tracking characteristics is to create a spreadsheet with each character down the left and categories such as eye color, hair color, age (for each book in a series), and height across the top—or the opposite, if you prefer. If applicable, add a category like scars (over the left eye or over the right eye?) or piercings (nose, lip, ears, other?). When any one of those characteristics or a new one is determined, make an entry. This shouldn’t slow you down much, especially if you review the day’s work and then record those characteristics. Then refer to that spreadsheet often as you revise, and especially during final self-editing.

I’m curious, though, to know what other solutions novelists might employ to avoid characteristic discrepancies. Please share your routines or ideas; I’d love to pass them on to my clients who feel eye-color challenged. As I said, it happens!

photo credit: https://publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=16148&picture=blue-eye-detail

Jean Kavich Bloom is a freelance editor and writer for Christian publishers and ministries (Bloom in Words Editorial Services), with more than thirty years of experience in the book publishing world. Her personal blog is Bloom in Words too, where she has posted articles about the writing life. She is also a regular contributor to The Glorious Table, a blog for women of all ages. Her published books are Bible Promises for God's Precious Princess and Bible Promises for God's Treasured Boy. She and her husband, Cal, live in central Indiana. They have three children (plus two who married in) and five grandchildren.