Inspired by Nature: Unusual Eye Colours

Saying "my character has purple eyes" will get people telling you to change them without any further information. You can either blame Mary Sue or the Drow species.

Despite this automatic shudder when presented with unusual eyes, it's not a bad thing to have a physically distinctive character. Common fantasy tropes are common because people like them. People like characters who look different, when it's handled well.

One way to remove the gimmicky feel is to portray the unusual eyes realistically. This post starts by looking at some uncommon real eye colours and has a few thoughts on inventing your own.

Real Eye Colours

Green Eyes - Green eyes are the rarest common eye colour, and thus still get unusual eye colour status. They're based entirely on pigments (which sets them apart from most of the others discussed in this section). It's odd that books link green eyes to red hair and pale features, because they're found in many parts of the world. The trick with green eye realism is to shake it up a bit - don't just give them to Irish people.

Yellow Eyes - These are also within the range of normal eye colours (and would be classified as amber), but it's rare to see someone with completely yellow eyes. It's a surprise they aren't more common in fantasy books. Maybe yellow isn't deemed interesting enough?

Violet / Purple Eyes - Violet eyes are caused by blue eyes mixed in with blood colouration*. You'll most commonly see them described in connection with human albinos. Most human albinos have blue eyes. In cases where there's very little pigment, blood colouration may show through, thus making the eyes appear violet under normal lighting conditions. This lack of pigment often leads to poor vision.

It's not impossible to see violet eyes in a non-albino person. The one violet-eyed individual I met had damage/deformity in the outer eye, which meant there was blood colouration in the iris area. Again, red + blue = violet.

It's also within the realms of possibility that a non-albino may have albinistic eyes (reduced pigment only in the eye area). I couldn't find a confirmed case for humans, but it sounds realistic enough to include in a fantasy novel**. A person in this category would have the same vision problems as a full albino.

Pink Eyes - As said before, most human albinos have blue eyes. However, in some cases, there may be so little pigment that the eyes appear pink (from blood showing through). Given that pink-eyed human albinos are rare, this colour choice might make it look like you didn't do your research.

(Note that albinos often appear to have pink or red eyes in photographs due to the reflections. This doesn't mean they appear to have pink or red eyes normally.)

Black Eyes - Really black, not dark brown. This is a caused by a condition called aniridia, where the iris fails to develop (along with some other problems with eye development). This leads to the eye appearing to have an enlarged pupil directly on the white of the eye. People with aniridia will have vision problems.

On Inventing Pigments

Let's say you decide you want pink eyes, but you want it to be caused by a pigment. You've immediately made pink eyes more common. As well as a scattering of pink-eyed people, you'd expect to see people with odd flecks of pink in their eyes, mixed colour eyes, and all the combinations we see with normal eye pigments.

Consider that the rarest common eye colour is green... you wouldn't have a chosen one marked by their green eyes, unless it was a case that any green-eyed person would do***.

This may be exactly what you want. It could be fun to explore a human population with new eye colours. If it's not what you want, and you want an eye-colour people have rarely seen (or may never have heard of) you're better off with an eye colour linked to a medical condition.

No, Not Purple!

Having medical implications to eye colour, or making it a common eye colour in your population****, are two ways to make it realistic. Some other thoughts on reducing the 'argh, purple eyes!' reaction are:

• Eye colour is usually subtle and you have to get close to see it. Violet eyes tend to be greyish violet (much as blue eyes are often greyish blue). Noticeable, but not the first thing you notice about a person. It comes across as more realistic if eye colour is something observers notice later.
  
  That said, if your character has neon green eyes, it'll be noticeable at a distance. They're probably glowing.
• Some of the 'argh, purple eyes!' response is a reaction to authors mentioning eye colour continuously. Don't get so caught up on the unusual eye colour that it's mentioned every five seconds.
• Why do unusual eyes have to be seen as pretty? They may appear ugly or freaky to some other characters. Some characters may be indifferent.

For Those Who Skipped to the End

Make your lavender-eyed princess short-sighted and give her glasses.



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* Though I've seen claims of violet eyes due to a pigment, I haven't seen any evidence to back it up. All the cases I've heard of, with reasonable evidence to back them up, are due to blue pigmented eyes and blood colouration combining to make violet.

It is possible to make light blue or grey eyes appear purple with special lighting, clothes and makeup (which is possibly the origin of claims of a purple pigment).

** Cats have a number of genes causing white fur patches and/or blue eyes, so the idea of albinism being restricted to certain areas of the body isn't unheard of in nature.

*** Big Trouble in Little China took this route.

**** It'd be funny to have a population of people with dark purple eyes and make the unusual eye colour brown. If there isn't a fantasy parody using that idea already, I'm a mushroom.

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(It shouldn't need to be said that the eye photo is me playing around with graphics programs, but I've seen people linking to similar photos as proof of dark purple eyes existing. So people googling purple eyes: they exist, but not like that.)

[ Inspired by Nature Index ]

Google Hates Steampunk

It's official. Not even one positive auto-complete!

Why the Fellowship Broke Up - A Team Roles Approach

When it comes to forming a team for epic adventures, people tend to balance teams in terms of species and skills (hence the team with a dwarven fighter, human mage, elven archer, human swordfighter and some sort of thief).

This is all very well, but it doesn't tell you an important thing: will this team actually be able to work together?

This is where team roles come in. Using the amazing magic of the Belbin Team Role Inventory*, we can predict why the Fellowship fell apart in Lord of the Rings (and use that for our own teams, depending on whether we want the team to work or not).

Belbin identified nine team roles (originally eight, but we'll worry about that later). These roles aren't about skills or anything like that. They're about how a person functions in a team. This post will introduce the basics of the roles and apply that to fantasy teams.

The Nine Roles

Belbin's roles aren't suggesting you need nine team members. Some teams get by without some of them. Some individuals will take on several roles. What the roles are suggesting is a balance of these roles makes the most effective team.

Shapers - Shapers want to win. They're driven to finish the task, and will take the role of a leader to achieve that goal. They're often quite aggressive in the pursuit of the goal.

Coordinators - They get everyone else sorted out. They're good at seeing the skills of others and assigning them tasks. This helps keep the team running... but can also be abused if the coordinator happens to delegate everything to someone else.

Monitor Evaluator - They're logical observers of the world, prone to choosing the most sensible decision. They're generally not good at being enthusiastic, so can bring down the team's enthusiasm levels.

Plants - Plants will come up with new and creative ideas. Their strong point is helping the team find novel solutions. Their downside is they can have trouble communicating ideas and may skip over important details.

Resource Investigators - If a fantasy adventure was the internet, these people would have the most friends on Twitter. They're good at networking and have many contacts outside the team. They may not be as good at finishing things within the team.

Implementer - They get the job done. It's all very well to come up with ideas, but someone has to put them into practise.

Completer Finisher - They're perfectionists, wanting to make sure everything is as accurate as possible. They're good at making sure the details are dealt with, but bad at delegating if they perceive other team members aren't as careful with their work.

Team Workers - They try to make sure everyone gets along. Team workers are good at listening and dealing with conflicts in a non-aggressive way. They can often be undervalued because they don't seem to have special skills. They may also have trouble making decisions. However, without them, arguments are likely to brew in the team.

Specialists - They're what it says on the tin. There's something they know about in great detail. Anything outside of that will be of little interest. (This was the role that was added later, as the other eight don't take into account a person who only helps the team in a very narrow way. You won't always need a specialist, as it depends on what your team is doing.)

Examining the Fellowship

The Fellowship suffers from a classic problem: everyone is chosen for being the best and the brightest. This means they have more than one shaper (shapers don't tend to get along). If it had been kept at the best and the brightest, they wouldn't have any team workers at all...

They only ended up with team workers because of the hobbits. Even so, team workers can't work miracles when you have several shapers vying for leadership.

Belbin predicted the fall of the Fellowship right from the start, just by counting the shapers.

It's interesting that when Frodo heads off from the team, he takes Sam with him - Sam is one of fantasy's best team workers. He's amiable and tries to keep conflicts down, as any good team worker does. Fantasy teams need more people like Sam, and fewer Aragorns and Boromirs.

Making a Team Work

In the Lord of the Rings, the Team Role Inventory and the story work together. We predict that the team will break up and it does.

Many writers don't quite get this though. They try to have a Fellowship-style group and have them work effectively as a team. You might be able to deal with two shapers by giving them sub-roles or the like (especially if the team is large and can be split into sub-teams), but it's really not the best strategy... and when you have a team with four shapers and no team workers, you know it's doomed to failure.

As a general rule of thumb:

• One shaper only, unless you plan on the other storming off in a fit of rage, only to come back later as a villain.
• Don't forget team workers. They're an endangered species in fantasy teams (possibly because it's easy to overlook their importance). When a team needs to work, having someone to sooth conflicts is important.

One of the reasons people add multiple shapers is because they want some team conflict. The issue is coming up with a conflict that won't lead to the team falling apart. A few possible scenarios are:

• Team workers are often undervalued. Plants may undervalue them because they don't come up with creative ideas. Implementers may think they're not pulling their weight. Shapers might think they're too indecisive. There's potential for strife here, followed up by realising the value of the team worker.
• Plants tend to value their own creativity. Have several plants on a team, and there's a good chance they may compete when it comes to who can come up with the wackiest idea. This could cause some fun conflict between the plants, as well as a tricky situation for the rest of the team - not all plant ideas are good ones.
• Completer Finishers like to know all the facts before they leap (and will most likely record the whole thing too). This may not be ideal on an adventure and could make the rest of the team impatient**.
• The coordinator delegates everything, then sits back and drinks ale. Someone's going to notice.

Making a Team Fail

The classic ineffective team is the one with multiple shapers and no team workers. However, consider what an over-abundance of other roles might do:

• Team Plant - Because there haven't been enough stories with all-gnome adventurers. With no one to say "you know, I think flying a metal kite in a lightning storm might be dangerous", the world is their mad science lab.
• Team Completer Finisher - Best hope the world doesn't need saving too quickly. It might also be bad if they're captured and kept complete records of everything they did.
• Team Team Worker - The team of people who have no idea what they're doing or how to get there, but they all get along really well***.
• Team Specialist - Everyone is so focused on their little field of interest, they aren't able to put it all together.

You could also have an imbalanced team, such as one with no leader roles. Or perhaps the team starts out perfectly balanced, but the team worker is eaten by a dragon in chapter three. It's hard to keep the team together without someone to handle the conflicts.

Conclusions

Who'd have thought that those team building lessons they made us do at university would actually help write stories... the world's a mysterious place.


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* Like most of the theories discussed on this blog, you'll find arguments for and against how valid they are. However, Belbin gives a different way to look at the whole team thing... so even if you decide you don't like his theories, it doesn't hurt to look at things from another angle.

** A good example is the dwarf in Goblin Quest by Jim C. Hines. He tries to map the dungeon out in loving detail as they travel through it. This doesn't go down too well with the rest of the team.

*** There was a reality show in the UK where they wanted to convince a group of people they'd been sent into space. They did this by choosing people who'd be ideal team workers. Unlike most reality shows, they rarely argued and were generally very laid back. They were also easy to deceive as they'd tend to go along with the crowd decision.

You could see why a villain might employ a team of team workers and tell them they were saving the world. It would take this team a little longer to figure out they'd been duped.

On Website Polls and Kittens

The results for my website poll are in. Here is the promised about-the-results post... after that, back to writerly posts. Thank you to everyone who voted or left comments.

The Results

First (7 Votes):
More Flash Fiction

Second (5 Votes):
Longer stories
More info about Polenth
Photos of Polenth

Third (4 Votes):
More micro fiction

Fourth (3 Votes):
More photos
More art
Nothing. It's wonderful!

Fifth (2 Votes):
More poetry
New colour scheme

Sixth (1 Vote):
New layout
I hate websites. Blogs rule!
Other

No one voted for: I hate everything!

People rated the post: yay (2) and bah (1). Maybe I should have added a 'Humbug on polls' option for the bah person.

General Ponderings

• The votes focused on more content rather than problems with the general site layout/concept/appearance. As such, I won't be changing any of the layout stuff in any major way.
• I've taken the advice to add a 'recent additions' to the words and art category. The intro on the main page is also a little clearer about the sections and has a permanent link to my bibliography, so there should be less clicking required.
• Flash fiction was the most popular new content. It's also the section that gets the most visits on the site. So you might be happy to know there are two new stories in that section (here and here).
• It turns out people are interested in me. Who knew? Should you have any comments about what you'd like to know about me, ask away. Otherwise you might end up with a list of my favourite spiders, when you didn't really care about that.
• Considering the site only has one poem written when I was a child, people either hate cats or poems*.
• Written content received more votes than pictures (though that may be skewed by the fact the art and photos sections are already more content-rich).
• I was surprised there weren't more people choosing the blog option, considering it was run on a blog.

What About the Blog?

I intend to keep running the blog separately from the website. The two have different purposes. Blogs are better for waffle. Static sites are better as content archives.

For those who don't like visiting static sites, there's now more information on the blog (see the links in the green bar at the top).

One day, I might get around to making a blog banner.



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* Poor kittens.

Writing Diary: Yay for Acceptances

This is the second writing diary of the new year and the one with actual news. It's also just past the anniversary of when I gave up my job*.

Writing News

I've had two acceptances since the year began. The first is for the poem 'Recipe for Eternal Youth', which sold to Star*Line**.

The second is for the short story 'Whirligig Fingers and Globular Thumbs', which sold to Crossed Genres for their steampunk issue. It's the first longer short story I've sold (the rest were flash fiction). I was good though... I only used one exclamation mark when I replied to the acceptance letter.

Crossed Genres will be out first (March, 2010), with Star*Line later in the year (July, 2010). Details of titles, dates and the like may change.

Other News

The poll about my website will close soon. I'll be posting about my thoughts for the site when that happens (with a few comments on my plans for the blog too).

On Acceptances vs. Rejections

Many people complain about rejections making them feel sad and disoriented for the whole day. The sit around in their little sadness box and don't do much.

I'm not one of those people. There's the moment of dread before opening that looks-like-a-form-rejection, but that's about it. Rejections are normal, so I treat them like any other normal*** thing (by not paying too much attention to them).

It's the acceptances that are out to get me. Acceptances are like gold bricks to the head. A gold brick is a fortunate thing, but it doesn't stop you having a concussion from the impact. I don't tend to do much on days when I have an acceptance, because it's not normal, and usually the cause of a lot of yaying and bouncing around (after the initial shock starts to wear off).

Rejections are better for getting things done. Acceptances add to my gold brick collection. It all works out in the end.


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* As noted in the post of the time, I didn't give up to be a writer specifically. It's just how it worked out.

** It occurred to me that the little star in Star*Line might be confused with my footnote mark. I considered rendering it as Star'*'Line, but that just looks silly. I'm sure people'll figure it out.

*** My version of normal isn't always the same as other people's though. I consider chairs as normal in a generic way. A chair like the one I'm sitting on is normal. Someone else's chair might not be normal, and get a good deal of attention, even if it's considered normal by the world in general.

I was the child who took pictures of different coloured toilet roll, because it wasn't the colour we had at home. Blue toilet roll just wasn't normal.