Six Things About Dressing Your Characters

How to make your characters' clothes part of your storytelling

I’ve been thinking about what works - and what doesn’t - when you’re dressing your characters, thanks to the ever-reliable Lit Hub, which has a fascinating post by historical fictioneer Claudia Cravens

1. Quoting her film costume designer mother, Claudia C says that dressing your characters isn’t about making them look fabulous (in our case, in the reader’s imagination), it’s about taking us into the world of the story. Who are your people? Where do they fit in the material culture - economics, materials, significance - of their world? How does that play out in their daily lives?

2. Because storytelling is built out of character-in-action, how clothes interact with bodies-in-action is more important than the specifics of what the clothes look like, let alone where they were bought. Are they warming, itching, hitching-up, floating over, stretching, splitting, hampering, protecting, revealing, flattering, disguising … ?Famously, in building a character the actor Beryl Reid started from the outside, by figuring out what shoes she would wear, which gave her the walk, which gave her the rest. Others start from the inside, and work outwards.