Gazes Galore!

One of my writing bugaboos is 'gazing'. Somebody, somewhere, on each page is gazing at another, drowning in that gaze or being scorched by it. Gazes are mysterious, smoldering, dark, or icy. They are felt and avoided, or met head on. They smolder with passion, or hint at vulnerabilities.

Heck, there are whole herds of gazes grazing on my pages. Inevitably, they are culled.

My hero(ine)'s gazes also have superpowers, they can size up the opposite sex, within a millisecond (Warning: objects on the page may take longer to assess than in real life)-- not only age, height, and weight, but also the turquoise and gold flecks floating in the depths of emerald 'gazes'. Streaks of rich auburn in glossy chestnut tresses are pin-pointed, and confidence aquired that waists could be spanned with one hand. The hardness (iron) of biceps, chest and thighs is judged, along with other other, a-hem, iron-like accoutrements (ie: hero's hung like a horse) in the thigh area. Lips are pronounced soft, cruelly thin, or colored like cherries. All this knowledge acquired from just....one....gaze (and 5 paragraphs).

Example from the current wip:

“Why not execute me here?” she snapped, control breaking, and looked at him for the first time.

She already knew he was a large man, overwhelming in breadth and height, but now she saw the heavy jaw and crooked nose. He wore his hair extremely short; yet even in the dimness it shone golden, lighter by several shades than his brows and neatly trimmed beard and moustache.

His shirt was rough-spun cambric. His long coat made of thick supple leather that swept down to where his pants tucked into a pair battered boots.

From a sheath strapped to one powerful thigh, the handle of a dagger stuck out, while the hilt of his sword rose at a slant behind his broad shoulders.

But it was his gaze that cautioned her from further outbursts: Light in hue, dark in contemplation.

Honestly? I rather like that example. But the dreaded romance novel 'inventory gaze' can go horrible, horrible wrong, setting one's teeth on edge in a frothing backwash of cliché after cliché.

Over on the Jennifer Crusie/Bob Meyer's blog-- He Said, She Said-- JC makes a very good argument for keeping those 'looks' to a minimum and how to use them in the most effective way to reveal character. Take a gander. (yuk,yuk,yuk)