They also dilate from arousal and interest in general. One of the ways they do behavioral experiments on babies is by measuring pupil dilation when showing them different pictures.

Kewl! (memo to self, to tell Ruth if she objects to a "look in the eye" thing) But even there, how would you know what was causing it? I mean as a writer or a reader?

To clarify: Lola is staring at Larry. We, the reader, are told "Lola stared at Larry, love in her eye." How is that happening? How does the author know it's love, if all she has to go on is dilated pupils?

I think that's one of the basics Ruth objects to: assumptions, we're being told not shown.

Eyes really do grow darker when you're looking at a sexy being; the pupil dilates.

On me, the comment has always been that the iris grows lighter, not that the pupil expands. I may be a freak...

I don't see the grounds for absolute resistance.

Me neither. I can see how eye expressions could be a crutch, and lazy writing (I think they're one of my bad habits), but sometimes they're perfectly useful shorthand, and all you need.

Just because eyeballs do communicate, it doesn't mean all eye-related expressions are good ones. And it's already very common (see dictionary above and makeup example) to expand "eye" in common usage past the eyeball itself.

edited because it doesn't warrant a numbered list.

I don't see the grounds for absolute resistance.

Nope, me neither. And Ruth doesn't automatically redline those; she just grits her teeth, mostly, unless the writer overuses.

It does, however, make me more careful about how and when I use those instances. I'll generally synch them up to a secondary thing to reinforce it. There's a thing in Matty, where they're first exposed to the insane glory of Charlotte Leight-Arnold, a woman with no filters and no inhibitions. Jane's met her first, Penny and Ringan pull up, Charlotte comes out and announces that my goodness, you're RINGAN LAINE, I've wanted to shag you for years, truly. And Jane, being dragged along, says something like

"Ringan." Jane's voice held warning and urgency. There was a singular look in her eye. "This is Charlotte Leight-Arnold. She's...rather a fan of yours."

So, reinforcing with voice, Ruth never glanced at it twice.

Pupils dilate in response to adrenaline, too. And in response to that eyedrop they have at the optometrist's office, which leaves me looking like a wide-eyed freak for hours and hours afterwards.

It's already very common (see dictionary above and makeup example) to expand "eye" in common usage past the eyeball itself.

It's what, the opposite of synechdoche, where the word for the part describes the whole. I don't know if that formally has a name, but I recognize its being a tool one might want to use (if sparingly).

TEP! Can we have a weekly challenge for "really really really shitty fiction" please?

You mean as a drabble topic, or a whole new ongoing weekly challenge?

I think a drabble topic. It would be nuts-making after a few weeks, but as a one-time - or maybe annual - shot? MASSES of fun.

The eye thing can bug, but mainly if I see it being used as the main way of showing a character's thoughts, emotions, etc.

Anyhow, here's my shot at the "Home" drabble.

I've only been here twice before, and seeing it now, bereft of its former owner's things, it's even harder for me to imagine myself living here. I knew it would be a big adjustment, but it's finally hitting me just how big.

I let the cat out of his carrier, and he saunters over to the biggest, sunniest windowsill in the place. Within seconds, he's hunkered down, squinting into the sunlight and rumbling out his deep, arhythmic purr.

"You're supposed to be the one who's put out by disruption to routine, you little bastard."

He lifts his chin and blinks lazily.

I'm perfectly at home, he says. What's your problem?

Very nice, Anne.

I've been forced back down to earth. When I asked for more details about which publishers were interested in Napoleonic War stories, she said she couldn't name the publisher, but that it was a case where they'd specifically commissioned one of their existing authors to write such a story.

So I've gone from "Woohoo! The market is finally opening up to the kind of story I care about writing," to "Oh, God--what if her book is too close to mine in premise? She'll beat me to market, because it's just impossible for me to write really fast what with freelancing and Annabel. And I love my book. I want it to have its chance so bad."

Susan, there's a lot of room in there for different styles of stories set in the same period. Personally, I'd rather read something like what you're writing versus a "traditional" regency.

Finally got my thoughts together on all those pictures posted yesterday. Here's one for starters.

Picture #1.

Climb Every Mountain

Years later, after she’d lost the picture, she was reminded of that day by a song. They’d met at a fair outside Garmish-Partenkirchen two years earlier. That day they’d gone up the mountains for a picnic, grateful to escape together for even a couple of hours. It was their last meeting. He was going back to try and bring his family out of Germany. She never saw him, or those hills, again. In the darkened theater, watching a young woman climb her own mountains and sing of being alive, she cried for a home that had never existed for her.