storytelling

It occurs to me I haven't pointed out that descriptions of facial expressions often employ metaphor, as in the example from Cold Mountain the last entry. That's a whole different topic. Someday, I'll get to it.

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Mouths are by design extremely flexible. Lots of muscles are involved in moving the lips in the production of speech, in smiling and frowning, in pursing the mouth. There are dozens of possible smiles. If you think of the person you know best in the world, you can probably identify at least three distinct smiles. The full smile, when the person is unreservedly pleased or happy, the shy smile, the reluctant smile, the sneering smile, the almost smile. These are such basics of human interaction that it's hard to describe them, and often authors don't. She (he) smiled has to be one of the most common sentences in fiction, along with she (he) said. And that's okay; there's no need, most times, to belabor the point.

But mouths can give a lot away, both about the person who owns the mouth and the person observing the mouth. From A.S. Byatt's Possession, this lovely phrasing:

...his mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ...

This POV character has got some issues about the cultural differences between Americans and Brits.

In this next example there's Stephanie Plum's POV in Evanovich's Hot Six. Morelli is Stephanie's on-again, off-again boyfriend, and she doesn't like what she sees when his mouth twitches. We get that very directly, in her first person POV.

The corners of Morelli's mouth twitched up ever so slightly. Jerk.

One of the best examples I could find of the use of a smile in a scene is from Frasier's Cold Mountain:

Frasier combines authorial observation (he is the one telling us that there's no irony or bravado in the condemned man's smile) with actually showing us Prangle's actions. The result is a very powerful, vivid and unsettling set of images.

Back to Jean, who is observing her older brother talk to Mrs. Kevorkian. Jean is very sensitive to Sam's moods, so she watches him closely. Maybe because she is so dependent on him; maybe because she is afraid of him; maybe because she is protective of him. She may like the fact that Mrs. Kevorkian winds Sam up, or she may find it aggravating, or it may panic her for some reason. One of the ways she gauges Sam's frame of mind is by looking at his face, most particularly (in this exercise) what he does with his mouth.

"Now another thing," Mrs. Kevorkian said. "About that rodent you call a dog."

Sam dropped his head, but not before Jean saw him suck in his upper lip, a sure sign that he was about to burst into laughter.

Of course, you could lose the last phrase if you've already established what it means when Sam sucks in his upper lip. You could ignore his mouth all together, and focus on what he does with his cheeks. I'll try that tomorrow.

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