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The matching question to the white-box syndrome for scene dressing is “Just how naked are they?” for not dressing your characters. I ran across the following question in the Novel November forums this year:
Clothing Question: I’ve recently come to realize that I never describe any characters’ outfits in my writing – I think as an affect of my old effort to not find myself with the My Immortal old fanfic style of going into far too much unnecessary detail on clothes. But now I never mention it at all, so – when do you describe clothes? How do you know which scenes should have it?
For today’s Writing Exercise, we are going to dress a character, but not by describing what they are wearing like an infodump character description, but dropping the information as part of a scene. The full assignment is below in the normal area. Here is my response (mostly- I did add stuff for y’all):
Genre really drives this. How important are the clothes to the storytelling style?
- Romance, very much so: part of the fun is dressing up the characters, especially for balls and special events. Barbie doll time!
- Science Fiction, pretty often: special environments on distant worlds may require unique clothing solutions (like the Fermin suits of Dune).
- Fantasy, sometimes: For example, riding clothing for special animals – heat resistant for riding dragons. Or the shawls of the Wheel of Time indicating status. Nearly always a wizard’s outfit is described; similarly, a fighter’s weapons and what areas are protected by armor.
- Mystery, bits and hints: clues are given by what people are wearing, or the damage done to the clothes. “The left cuff had signs of wear where the right cuff did not, indicating they were left-handed. The stabs were clearly from a right-handed person, so the husband did not do it. But since the majority of people are right-handed, this did not narrow the field far. It only removed the most likely suspect.”
- Horror: Most of the time the clothes get described as the gore is splashed on it.
- Thriller: A great example is 24 (a television show of a season in 24 hours) – what happens when the character doesn’t have time to change clothes, what happens to their clothes during the action-adventure. The damage to the clothes reflects the physical and mental trauma of the character.
Basically clothes reflect the story, the storytelling, and give information about the character.
That being said, story length can impact the clothing description as much as the genre. For short stories, especially flashes, there is no room for clothing unless it is integral to the story (hence, my stories rarely have clothing description). At the other end of the spectrum, epic fantasy tomes pushing two hundred thousand words each (including appendixes) have all the room in the world and each character’s clothing is described in detail.
A final consideration is tropes which can also be fun: inappropriate clothes for activity; overdressed; climate teleport (winter to summer or summer to winter – a favorite of portal fantasies); clothes as a reward; arsenal attire (weapons are incorporated into the clothing rather than just hidden by the clothing); the doomed disguise; cloned clothing (two characters with the same clothing mistaken for each other); stuck in pajamas; grandma’s gift is * magical * (a cursed or blessed family heirloom received without explanation); the list goes on…
Other people also responded with good suggestions:
- “When I describe clothing while introducing a character, it’s more a style or vibe, than a list of clothing.” (An example would be: “The new guy wore black like no other color existed in the world.” Or “For lack of a better description, the teen dressed like a goth dunked in a rainbow. And her personality matched.”)
- Using clothes descriptions as characterization is a great idea! I can see it helping me think of when and where to describe it, as I’d be looking for character and plot building details rather than ‘oh i should probably say they aren’t naked’
- In one case, a person describe about their POV character reacting to other people’s clothing: My judgmental POV character has tons of thoughts about what people are wearing. The descriptions aren’t excessive, just quick descriptions like “argyle sweater”, “grey fedora”, or “floppy blue hat” alongside the snarky thought. (a lot more description cut out) tl;dr: Clothes are great, describe away because they can be used for characterization and plot relevance.
WRITING EXERCISE: Pick a genre and write a scene of about 500 words (does not have to be a complete story like a flash) where the clothing of a character is described but not the typical “They looked themself in the mirror to check their fit.” The clothing description needs to be in the style of the genre.
BONUS WRITING EXERCISE: Choose one of the clothing tropes above and write a flash (500 words or less) around the trope.
READING EXERCISE: In your present read, dissect the most recent chapter for clothing. Does it meet genre expectations? Is there anything there you would call a clothing trope? How does the clothing match the vibe of the story? How does the clothing match the character and helps define them?
My attempt: Long ago, when I was attempting to write Cons of Romance for Novel November, one of my characters was a cosplayer. Her clothing descriptions, while in costume, were involved. Blog: NaNo Day 5, And so it begins (11/5/2015).