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May 9, 2013

The Eyes Have It

Thursday Thirteen

Eyes give me problems. During the writing of my books, my characters change eye color regularly. Sometimes I don’t catch it, but luckily my editor is on the ball. In the book world there are lots of heroes and heroines out there with green eyes. Lots. Quite a few heroines have violet ones too. Not so common in everyday life. I’ve been thinking I should pick a color and allocate that color to all my characters. It would solve my problem!

Thirteen Interesting Facts About Eyes

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1. The colored part of the eye is called the iris. It contains pigmentation that determines the color of the eye.

2. Eye colors are determined by the parents, but a child’s eyes aren’t a combination of the parents. The eye color depends on the genes and there are lots of possibilities as to the end result.

3. Most babies are born with blue eyes. A color change occurs if a brown pigment called melanin develops as the baby grows.

4. Darker colors dominate so brown beats green and green wins over blue.

5. Emotions can change the iris color and the pupil size.

6. Eye color can also change with age. This usually happens with those who have a light eye color to start with.

7. If the eye color of an adult changes dramatically it can be an indication of a disease. Check with your eye doctor!

8. The human eye blinks around 4,200,000 times a year.

9. Blinking helps keep our eyes moist.

10. Only one-sixth of the eyeball is visible.

11. The eyeball remains the same size as it was at birth.

12. Our eyes can detect 10 million color hues (not sure who counted this), but we can’t see ultraviolet or infra red light.

13. The human eye can distinguish 500 shades of gray. (not 50 as a certain book would have us believe!)

According to an online survey about eye color the most popular color is green followed by light blue. Hazel, dark blue, gray, honey, amethyst and brown came next in descending order.

My eyes are light blue.

What color are your eyes? For you writers out there, do you vary your character’s eye colors from book to book or do you tend to stick to the basic brown or blue? Readers – do you care what color eyes the characters have?

15 Comments

  1. Anthony North

    I always thought just 50 shades of grey was a little tunnel visioned ;-)

  2. Maria Zannini

    My eyes are very dark brown. They’re so dark, sometimes you can’t see the pupil.

    I didn’t know that the eye ball stays the same size from birth. Interesting!

    I love green or hazel eyes on my characters, but I’ll change it to fit the ethnic origin of each individual.

    • Shelley Munro

      Nodding. I’ve done something similar with my characters. All my shifters have green eyes while my aliens have violet eyes.

      I thought the eye size was interesting too.

  3. Novroz

    I looooove your post!! so informative.
    I wonder who counts the blinking and the number of colours we can see….what more amazing is, you know about that ;)

    Ah…a bit correction I think…most babies were born with blue eyes, everyone on Asian was born with brown eyes as far as I know it. I might be wrong tho.

    • Shelley Munro

      Yes, you’re right! My statement should read all Caucasian babies are born with blue eyes.

      I’m glad you enjoyed my post.

  4. Jennifer Leeland

    LOL! My characters change eye color too! Love this post.

    • Shelley Munro

      Yeah, they’re really stealthy about it too. I think my editor must tear her hair out sometimes. Actually, I think we share an editor :)

  5. Alice Audrey

    My eye color has shifted around so much that when someone asks what it is, I look them square in the face, take my glasses off, and ask them to tell me.

    • Shelley Munro

      That’s funny. I took my glasses off last night and asked my hubby what color my eyes were and he said hazel, so I suspect it depends on what I wear.

  6. Heather

    My eyes are light blue to gray in color, depending on mood. Alas, blue-eyed people also tend to be more sensitive to bright light, especially sunlight.

    • Shelley Munro

      I didn’t know that – about the light sensitivity. I have real problems with that and always wear sunglasses when I’m outside.

  7. Brinda

    Mine are brown. I love eye colors in my characters. I tend to choose blue in the hero when I’m not over-thinking it. lol

    I do have a secondary character right now in my series that I can’t remember his eye color. I think it’s green.