The bleak, icy gray of his eyes
So I've been thinking about attraction, lately, and how much of it is a product of actions and words, rather than appearance; in real life, sure, but even more so in books, where the visual is only as strong as the imagination of the reader. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe there are romance readers out there who get all swoony when someone is described as 'meltingly, knee-tremblingly gorgeous' (too much chick-lit lately, me??? nahhhh) - or maybe it's enough for some people to read a physical description - the inevitable broad-shouldered, usually dark-haired, take your pick of icy blue/stormy grey eyes (not so usually brown, which is too prosaic, perhaps? or green, which is too fey and playful?)... long legs, imposing height, etc etc. I have to admit that the physical descriptions don't make me love the character, and maybe that's just a lack of imagination on my part (though am I the only one who shuffles through a mental rolodex of people-I-find-attractive when presented with the hero's colouring and 'look' in a romance?? ahem) - or maybe it's far better, as a writer, to pick some more action or dialogue-based ways of creating a gorgeous hero. Or to rely on the insight into his mind during the hero-POV pieces, to hook the reader into falling for your man. So many romances I read - and I don't read a lot of them, but I read enough to see it happen quite a bit - show a hero whose behaviour is fairly bad (with the exception, perhaps, that he grumpily displays some 'hidden' virtue such as kindness to animals, children etc, but always something traditionally virtuous and So Damn Noble, when he thinks nobody's clocking him), but who is of course pretty as an extremely rugged and dashing picture, and therein lies the heroine's heart-pounding attraction to him. Bah, I say. Show me someone interesting, with some intriguing and unexpected twists and turns of character, and then I shall love the appearance no matter how he's described. Flawed! Real! (Ish).