A Substitute For Brandy - Breaking the Colour Cliché

Her Irish-setter hair gleamed...

HA!!!!

...Remember people context!!! LOL

 

Great thread! I try my best never to call Obi-Wan's hair ginger because, though that's a good description, it's used ALL the time and it gets old.


-sj loves kevin spacey

 

I don't even try to describe Obi-Wan's looks except for his eyes, because I can never tell what color his hair is. Red? Brown? Blond? Reddish-blond? Reddish-brown? Wheat-colored? Dark blond? And on the JA covers, his hair is black! At least in the OT, his hair is white, and very consistently so.

Maybe he should just shave his head and spare us the pain.

 

One really nice thing to remember... Obi-wan's a guy, so he probably couldn't care less what the shade of his hair is called.

My hair is pretty inconsistent, too. Sometimes it's brown, sometimes it's dark blonde, sometimes it's kind of tan-yellow-y, and, one horrible summer, it got such a natural sun-bleach that my friends wouldn't let me tell blonde jokes at all. I've learned to just call it "dirty blonde" and get on with my life.

 

Good point Ty I don't describe him much either because I figure people know what he looks like. The eyes are sometimes important, though, for different expressions.

Yeah the JA books with the black hair... what the heck?!

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Context is the key, and this wipes out about eighty percent of our choices. Even though "Emerald" has been used extensively to describe Mara's eyes, and we know that chocolate exists because Lando introduced Luke to hot chocolate, but I just don't see using a color-word like Lilac, Violet, or somthing tied into anything "Earth"ly when this takes place in a galaxy far, far away. Are there lilacs or violets in Naboo or Alderaan? There may be, but then, there probably aren't. So I stick to more basic words like brown and grey-blue. The most exotic I get is slate or stony, I guess.

 

You do have to remember that WE are on Earth, and the descriptions are for US to use to picture the individual. In conversation, I wouldn't use something that might seem strictly "Earth", but in a narrative description, rather than a dialogue one . . . Yes, I might use lilac.

Dana

 

I see your POV, Dana, and since you put it that way, I agree. Thanks, that helps.

 

It also depends on who exactly the narrator of the story is. If it's the Earth-bound author, then lilac and what all will work. If it's the POV of a GFFA character, but still in 3d person (i.e. "Tahiri did such and such as Anakin's parents looked on"), then maybe you'd want to consider more GFFA-type descriptions.

Sorry, memories of creative writing class kicking in

 

Well, when you get onto colors, it's harder to judge what's over the line. Things like "lilac" are used so often as simply a color that we don't even think of the flower when we read it. In that context, it's fine.

Of course, in the GFFA, you wouldn't want to say "smelling of lilacs" unless you were to introduce a breed of wild Alderaani lilacs, because that would conjure up thoughts of the flower.

(Of course, I probably shouldn't be talking about not going too far into earth terms. I stuck "Coffee," "Tea," "Scotch," and Hamlet into The Past Rediscovered...)

 

Upping so people can find this.


Dana

 

Personally I like useing the pre established colors for existing characters(ie "brandy brown" for Jaina and "red-gold" and "emerald" for Mara) so that I don't confuse the reader.

However I tend to use more than just your more common color descriptions when creating a new character, for example in one of my fics-in-progress I use what I think is a very good description for the character.

Sho-Nan was a tall and attractive human female, almost 1.7 meters tall and very thin. She had long jet-black hair that went down to her waist. Her eyes were the same shade of blue as the sky of Ithor during a beautiful spring day, back when Ithor was beautiful, back before the Vong.

 

I like grity dark adjectives at times and though they tend to not specifically name a color they do generate a mental image and reaction. These are words that work well defining eye color, sometimes hair, clothing and many other characteristics.

murky, mottled, greasy

I'll edit more when I reread old stuff.

 

Whenever I write Obi-Wan, I don't worry about descriptions of his hair color too much. Most people know already what young Obi-Wan looks like, and sometimes, the story doesn't always warrant a large extensive description. If it isn't needed, there's no use putting it there.

I feel anyway, that if there's a long description about any character in a story, it sort of drags out the story a bit and slows it down.

~aeryn

 

This thread is not for discussion of why you do or do not like description. Please stick to the topic at hand. Thank you.


Dana

 

up!

 

...*slinks in*

*looks around*

Well... I thought i found a new color when I found "cerulean" but it turns out I didn't so this'll just be an "up".

 

Giving this an up, because it's a great resource when you need to find a word other than 'brandy'.

 

I write the Solo twins post Dark Nest, so I tend to use eye color as a description of their personalities.

When it comes to Jacen's eyes, I always refer to them as whiskey colored rather than brandy. There is something a bit more sinister and older...darker, maybe, about the word whiskey.

As for Jaina, I just refer to her eyes as muddy since everything about her at this point is a mess.

 

I usually refer to their eyes as "brandy" colored when I specifically want to evoke the YJK books, since the description of their "brandy-brown" eyes was utterly ubiquitous in those. If I want to purposefully distance myself from the characterization of those books I would use a different term. Personally, I like to use more complicated descriptions that reference stuff "in galaxy" like "as pale as an Ilum winter" or something like that, or "shining like the twin suns of Tatooine."

 

I do the same sort of thing. For example, in a story I wrote, there are gems that are kinda like emeralds, but a lighter color and I called them springstones. So people knew that when they read about people with springstone eyes, it would be a little darker than the color of celery.

 

I rarely ever describe eye color. But color description in general is really fun. And this thread is a pretty good reference for that sort of thing.
But choosing a shade is one thing; the descriptions that truly catch my eye are the ones that are really creative in their selection.

I think the best color description I've ever read was in "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson, as a character flew off the california coast in a helicopter:

...khaki colored water

It conjured up exactly what you see when you honestly look at a lake or a pond. They're never blue, we just don't want to admit it.
Finding that color which is at once accurate and unexpected can be a fun challenge.



Ish: I also like the idea of introducing objects into the GFFA which allow me to describe colors simply by referencing that object. Emerald is so overused, I don't think it's emerald anymore, to name one of many such colors. And I always feel weird writing 'violet' or 'olive' in a universe with no violets or olives to speak of. Plus, inventing stuff is fun too!

 

My .02 credits...

In classical literature and other saga and epic works handed down from oral tradition, it is fairly common to find the same epithets reused continuously to indicate and/or describe a character.

Athena, for example, had the epithet 'Glaukôpis', which meant 'grey-eyed'. That was one of many. In a similar vein, 'brandy-brown eyes' and 'red-gold hair' are epithets of Jaina/Jacen and Mara Jade, respectively. When an author refers to those features, with or without mentioning names, the reader can be sure of which character is being referred to.

Yup, they are cliches. What value they do or don't have is up to debate. However, I would caution against turning one's prose into a mini-thesaurus in an attempt to escape them.

 

Yes, but don't forget that they're ornamental epithets. When I use descriptions of colors, it's either symbolic or to indicate something very specific.

And Yodimus, I agree about "olive" and "violet" and such.

 

Well, I have to say that I think that many of the alternate terms you've listed, such as "mocha" and "amethyst" are incredibly popular among illiterate thirteen year-old girls, and thus incredibly clichéd.