If the title weren’t obvious enough, I have no right eye! That’s right, I only have vision in my left eye!
Have a character who is missing an eye, and curious about something? Ask! Curious in general? Ask! I’ll be more than happy to answer!
Just remember, my experiences do not mirror everyone else’s :) so I definitely do not represent everyone in the missing eye club.
My character loses his eye in the middle of my story. Any general advice how to write a character that wears an eyepatch? How long does it take to accustom to it? Does it disturb you throughout the day?
It does vary for everyone as I mentioned in my original post, but I’ll try to answer those questions to the best of my abilities.
How long does it take to accustom to it?
I’ve been wearing mine for over ten years, but of course it didn’t take that long to get used to it! The length can vary, for me it took quite a while (also due to the nature of how I lost my eye). I would say about a year, but that was also including recovery, not just the patch.
Does it disturb you throughout the day?
Rarely does, anymore! This also depends on the material of the patch, how long you’ve been wearing it for, and other factors too. I don’t think it was really the patch either when I was first starting to wear it, it was more of me getting used to only having vision in one eye. And worse depth perception, tracking objects, etc. All of which I’ve had to do activities with to train myself back up to norms again.
Any general advice how to write a character that wears an eyepatch?
As for this…If it’s in a world like ours, where you don’t see people that have eyepatches every day, they might get some looks only because the people are curious. It’s not everyday I see another fellow eyepatch wearer! For writing the character themselves, go at it like you’d do anyone else. They might have some troubles, like depth perception as I mentioned, seeing people coming from one side or another (for me, if I wanted to see something on my right side I’d need to turn enough to where my left eye could see it). It really means that people with monocular vision, like me, have had to adapt to use our functioning eye and other senses consciously, as opposed to when two eyes could gathered information effortlessly. You don’t often realize how good it is to have working eyes until something happens to one or both of them.
This means that I’ve had to have a lot more focus with the loss of my eye. People with two eyes already need to focus, imagine how different that is with only one eye.
Also, there are some people with missing eyes that can be clumsier. Because they don’t have complete vision, it’s hard to see things or people. I for one am not that clumsy, but I do slip up occasionally.
thank you! <3
How's your peripheral vision? I remember Frederico da Montefeltro lost an eye during a tournament and had the bridge of his nose removed along with part of his eyelid so he could have both sides of peripheral vision out of one eye, but it's hard to imagine having only one side of your vision at all times. Is there anything you do to compensate?