Since stories are not a movie or the real world, you tend to have to describe things you might not normally (especially in first person, you don't walk into your classroom thinking: There's my best friend Jenna. She has hazel eyes and brown hair and loves pizza.).

We strive for realistic writing, but remember that it's impossible to write down all the sensory input and stimulation we're getting every single second of every single day. [We still want to use our imaginations, to feel like the story could happen the way it's being told.]

For us humans, one of the biggest ways we express ourselves is visually. It's a really important sense and it's one that translates pretty well into writing.

So, it's not surprising that writers often look (haha) to the eyes when they're composing stories.

And to be honest, a lot of people are sick of hearing about someone's colorful eyes. It's not very realistic to name everyone's eye color. In real life you might eat lunch with someone for ten years and have to really stop and think about what color their eyes are.

That being said, I find that the issue with eyes isn't the description of a color (which the writing community has sort of made into a must-have detail, like hair color). Remember, writing isn't real life. Fiction writers have to give details that make a world seem real, even though it isn't.

, I've noticed in my editing experience, . Inexperienced writers tend to pair reaction with eye color, so they really hammer home the color because they keep using the eyes as a reaction. [and if they're here on Wattpad, they tend to read a majority of lower-end writing, which does the exact same thing, so they don't absorb new techniques].

So you get things like:

Bryce narrowed his hazel eyes. "Why?"

"Because I said so." Julie squinted into the distance. "What's that?"

Two brown eyes stared back at them lovingly.

"It's Pepper! C'mere, boy!" Bryce shouted, his own eyes filling with warm tears. His little Beagle wasn't a pup anymore.

etc, when there's a million other ways to convey things!

If you want readers to get involved in a scene, one of the best ways to accomplish that is by making sure that the character is interacting in the scene.

When you're editing, if you notice you have got a lot of eye references, a quick fix to a more involving scene is to replace some of them with other reactions.

Looked, saw, see

Cry, squint, narrow, blink, widen his/her/my eyes

Adjust, focus, open, pop, screwed shut, closed, squeezed, watered

These are perfectly acceptable! But if you use them frequently, your story might start to sound shallow. People might tell you that everything you said is right, but they don't quite feel involved. That's probably because you're missing those other interactions.

Body language

While his eyes are widening with shock at the appearance of Sidney, what's the rest of him doing? Fidgeting with his socks? Are his knuckles white as he grips the baton, waiting for the race to start?

Setting the mood with scene

The wind from the coming tornado makes Tony's eyes water. What's it doing to everything else? Did a Stop Sign just smash into a windshield?

Interacting with the scene

Polly lowers her eyes, embarrassed. Maybe she kicks the top off a dandelion or picks up the nearest drink even though she's pretty sure it isn't hers.

Interacting with the self

Carly can't stop crying. Or perhaps she can't believe that Mikal confessed to murdering her best friend.

Interacting with another character

Gabe stares deep into his lover's eyes. Might he also have a hand on their chin, directing their attention on his supple lips?

Their eyes meet across the table. Jon's eyes sparkle in amusement as Kate accidentally knocks a drink into their snooty host's lap. Whoops. After a couple seconds spent observing her display of adorable mortification, he passes her his napkin so she doesn't have to use her only one. If she's that clumsy, he says, he'd hate to see her damage that stunning gown.

Sparingly. It's okay to mention it here and there to reinforce the character's image (sometimes readers forget), but unless eye color is crucial to the scene itself, it's okay to back down.

Hailey's eyes are green. When we picture her narrowing them, they're still going to be green. When we picture them as she lounges in the swimming pool, they're still green.

Here's where eye color might be relevant:

Hailey surfaces just in time to throw back her wet hair and smile up at our hero, who is immediately smitten with her dimples and eyes that sparkle like uncharted islands.

Where it's not:

Hailey is hanging out with her BFF. Little do they know a gator is about to sliiiide into the far end of the pool.

Eyes are something that are so basic and so understandable that you really don't need to go around changing out words. It's one of those invisible words where readers don't get offended when they see such a simple word. It's straight, short, and to the point.

90% of the time, people are using it to refer to, as the dictionary puts it, an "optical organ of an animate being."

So what's available for us to use?

Spheres, globes, balls, circles, rings, apples, planets, discs, curvatures, orbs, etc...

A lot of these tend to be really hard to use without people rolling their eyes.

When the eye being referred to is not in fact, an "optical organ of an animate being."

Similes and metaphors, but even then, you probably are just using these for colors and not the word "eye" itself.

When you don't necessarily want people to know something is an eye.

When it's not a normal eye (think like a fireball residing on top of a dark tower) and/or you're trying to conveying some kind of a mood (little pinpricks of light moving between the tree branches).

Orbs.

Yep, it gets it's own category.

Okay. I thought I was done with this word but it seems to have been revived. When I was younger, I did a lot of wolf roleplaying and some writers would post things such as:

An' he looked round, his orbs fiery pools of amber light, til he spotted 'er, padding lightly aside the forested den.

Generally, it's a word I associate with people trying to be fancy for absolutely no doggone reason. An orb pretty much means a globe, a rounded object. It's super hard to make that word flow (sound/read naturally and organically). It sticks out like a sore thumb especially when writers use a plain writing style. If you've got lots of simple words and simple sentences, "orb" stands out as a weird, fancy substitution as compared to its presence in more balanced, detailed texts.

By all means, use it. Just take care not to sound overly ridiculous!