Did anyone else spend the 80′s glued to the TV Thursdays at 9, watching Magnum PI? I’m not saying I had a crush on Tom Selleck, but the hero in my first attempt at a novel was a blend of MacGyver and Magnum.

(Pardon this tangent – did anyone else get a big kick out of the MacGruber skits on Saturday Night Live last week? I squealed when I realized that really was RDA in a mullet wig. They aired one of the skits as a Super Bowl commercial for Pepsi.)

So, back to Magnum. Private investigator, drives a Ferrari, lives on an estate in Hawaii. Big dude. Stands 6’4″ and no one has looked as good wearing short shorts since. Put the “Oh!” in Oahu. His deep, gravelly voice goes up an octave at times in a way few men can pull off and still be macho. (I’d happily listen to him read the phone book … or even narrate orange juice commercials.)

He has a playful sense of humor, which is advertised in the opening credits. You know the part, where he looks back over his shoulder at the camera and … just how do you describe what he does with those thick eyebrows? Magnum may giggle but he does not waggle. “A lift of the eyebrows” doesn’t do it justice, either.

I’m often stymied when trying to describe my characters’ facial expressions and movements. I’ve spent way too much time cross-referencing words in my thesaurus, both online and in Word, and the Synonym Finder, struggling to find more precise ways to describe a smile, a lift of the eyebrow, a crinkling of the eyes. Have even resorted to The Romance Writer’s Phrasebook at times, which offers many suggestions that went out of vogue probably about the time Magnum went off the air.

There’s another gesture for which I’ve been seeking the precise description. Our intrepid hero has attempted to escape only to be caught in the act by the villain with a wicked sense of humor. Said villain moves his right index finger. He did not “shake his finger” as you would at a dog who’s misbehaved. The villain’s right palm is not facing left. His palm is instead facing the hero, and his finger is moving side to side. (In a commercial, the frustrated mom whose kids keep throwing away their rollover minutes does the same thing.) It’s the Holy Grail of description, right? At lunch with several writer friends I demonstrated the gesture, and none of them could come up an efficient description, either.

In the name of research (ah, the sacrifices we make for our art and craft…) I’ve started watching an intriguing new show on Fox called Lie To Me. Anyone else hooked? Dr. Lightman, the lead character, is billed as a human lie detector. He runs a consulting firm specializing in deception detection. He doesn’t need to hear police interrogate the suspect, he just needs to see. To watch the body language. Something like 70% of all communication is done non-verbally, so it makes sense.

The cool thing for me is when they study film, and stop-frame when a character gives something away. They back up their hypothesis by showing still photos of other people giving away the same thing – people we know well from the six o’clock news. (The guest actors must get a lot of extra coaching to get the tics and gestures just right.) And they identify the gestures and expressions by name. It’s like learning a new language. How cool is that?

I’m going to start taking notes while watching it. Many of the descriptive terms they use are new to me but make sense. I might even be able to apply them in my fiction. Yes, that’s all I need to make my writing always go smooth and easy. (I can dream, can’t I?)