Saturday, March 20, 2010

Characterization Through Clothing

Characters should be three dimensional. How do you make them come alive when all you have is words on a page?

Clothing can help, if you pay attention to detail. Instead of putting Jane into slacks and a shirt, try having her shrug into a silk blouse and tug Cruel Girl jeans over her slim hips. Or, she might wear a plaid blouse, ripped at the shoulder, and get her sneakers caught in the leg of her cotton pants.

I hope you saw two very different women getting dressed. By choice of verb and description of garments, bits of their personalities were revealed.

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