Writers Write Is All About Writing
Writers Write Is All About Writing
Playing Dress Up With Your Characters

Paper Dolls — Playing Dress Up With Your Characters

The great thing about writing fiction is that we get to make stuff up all the time. In this post, we discuss playing dress up with your characters.

Paper Dolls — Playing Dress Up With Your Characters

The great thing about writing fiction — and something we often forget about — is that we get to make stuff up all the time. It’s like being a kid again, playing with your fashion dolls or action figures. We don’t only get to invent characters but we also get to dress them up.

Step back in time!

I was watching a YouTube video of an 80s hit and read a subscriber’s comment. She wrote that the song brought back a memory her teen years: rollerblading in a parking lot with her Walkman. In my mind, I had such a vivid picture of character and that character’s place in time. I was also flooded with my own sense of nostalgia.

Time’s tailor

Here’s a fun experiment. Make up a character or take a character from your existing story and spend a few minutes dressing them up through the decades. If you have two lovers —  say, Jack and Victoria — ask how they would dress up in a different time?

1940s: Jack might be wearing an Air Force uniform if he’s serving in World War 2, his hair shaved short. Or a zoot suit and fedora if he was a gangster. His hair would be slicked by with Vitalis or Brylcreem.
1950s: Victoria may be a fashion model, photographed in a silk Dior dress. Or maybe she wears the tight waist and wide skirt of a rock ‘n roll girl — and wears her first pair of denims on the weekends.
1960s: Jack is a big Beatles fan, with tighter pants, longer hair, and a peacoat jacket. Or he’s an up-and-coming businessman in a slim black suit and tie.
1970s: Victoria is maybe a mother of a one, wearing chocolate corduroys and a turtleneck sweater. She paints the spare room, wearing her favourite dungarees, as she prepares for baby number two.

Yes, fashion may seem a superficial way to start building a character — but it does give you a shorthand to the type of character you’re writing about. It gives you an immediate mental image of the character, which might make them more real to you as a writer — and more real to the reader.

Playing Dress Up With Your Characters

Fashion changes — character stays constant

While fashion is always changing, you’ll realise your character is consistent. That’s what this exercise will show you. If Jack is a typical hero, he’ll dress like hero no matter what period you place him in — even if you back to Roman times, he’d be dressed up as a gladiator. If Victoria is a typical rebel, the way she dresses will always reflect that.

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Posted on: 20th August 2015
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