there's some literary convention going on here. A phrase like "His eyes/face darkened" is not, I think, intended to convey a literal darkening but a metaphorical one
Huh! I never thought about it that way before. Well, I've always thought about "his face darkened" as a metaphor, but I always just assumed darkening eyes was literal--but yes, makes more sense as a metaphor.
it's a lot more concise than saying "His brows came a quarter-inch closer together, his forehead wrinkled, his lips thinned, and the corners of his mouth kind of pinched up a little, causing his labionasal folds to deepen."
Oh, definitely. The art of conveying facial expressions and body language in few words is so difficult, and saying "she read the sadness in his eyes" is actually much better, as compared to labionasal folds. One thing I've noticed particularly in fanfic, is that some people are trying very hard to show not tell, and they *have* an actual actor to describe...so they end up describing little nuances of that actor's face or body to the point where it's actually way, way too much detail to be effective.
I think that it's easier for people who know each other well to interpret body language, because there's a huge amount of context for it
I definitely agree there. A lot of it is mental, I think. You can reason out in your mind the way the person you know might react, and you use the face as a guide to tell you which reaction you're getting. And yet there seems to be so many cases in fiction where people who seem like they *shouldn't* know each others' reactions, do. As in, when secrets are revealed or realizations dawn just by seeing someone's eyes.
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Huh! I never thought about it that way before. Well, I've always thought about "his face darkened" as a metaphor, but I always just assumed darkening eyes was literal--but yes, makes more sense as a metaphor.
it's a lot more concise than saying "His brows came a quarter-inch closer together, his forehead wrinkled, his lips thinned, and the corners of his mouth kind of pinched up a little, causing his labionasal folds to deepen."
Oh, definitely. The art of conveying facial expressions and body language in few words is so difficult, and saying "she read the sadness in his eyes" is actually much better, as compared to labionasal folds. One thing I've noticed particularly in fanfic, is that some people are trying very hard to show not tell, and they *have* an actual actor to describe...so they end up describing little nuances of that actor's face or body to the point where it's actually way, way too much detail to be effective.
I think that it's easier for people who know each other well to interpret body language, because there's a huge amount of context for it
I definitely agree there. A lot of it is mental, I think. You can reason out in your mind the way the person you know might react, and you use the face as a guide to tell you which reaction you're getting. And yet there seems to be so many cases in fiction where people who seem like they *shouldn't* know each others' reactions, do. As in, when secrets are revealed or realizations dawn just by seeing someone's eyes.