This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Earlier in the year, I went to see the wonderful ‘Hollywood Costume’ exhibition at the V & A Museum, and I found one of the text panels really spoke to me as an author:
“No matter the era that the story takes place, the audience is asked to believe that the people in the movie are real and that they had a life prior to the start of the movie. We join our cast of characters at one moment in their life. Everything about them must resonate true, including their clothes.” V&A Museum 2012
I must have read the text over and over, and one of those cartoon lightbulbs popped above my head. This is exactly what we have to do too. Whilst authors might have a slightly easier job in being able to fill narrative with back story to explain our characters past, we still have to create an illusion that our characters’ stories will continue on without us. But how do we do it?
A couple of years ago I entered a first chapter competition. It was one of those awful ones where you have to post the chapter online and people can comment on it. I was terrified of having my entry so public. Whilst I had a lot of positive comments about the setting of the story, one of the recurring themes was that I had too much back story, too soon. I was too eager to get readers to understand my main characters and realised that I should tease out the back story throughout the rest of the chapters.
I’ve also read a number of writing tips that suggest creating a character sheet for each character; detailing the key moments in their life as well as their physical characteristics. An aide-memoir to stop your character with blue eyes suddenly ending up with green eyes twenty pages later! I want to write a sequel to my debut novel ‘Millie and the American Wedding’ and I started by writing a prequel first. Whether I publish the prequel is a moot point, but I learnt so much about my characters by looking backwards at how they all met and grew-up. It showed me just how useful it was to really get a sense of the backstory before I start writing a book.
And what about the last line in the quote, ‘including their clothes.’ Does it matter what our characters are wearing? An experience at an airport a couple of weeks ago made me think. I was waiting for my husband’s flight when I saw a woman walk across the concourse. She was dressed in a grey fur coat, skinny black jeans and high patent boots and holding a satin clutch purse. It was an extremely glamourous outfit, and I looked down and reevaluated my hoodie, jeans and trainers combo. Did it scream that I was meeting someone I was extremely comfortable with? In my defence, it was freezing. If I was writing the fur coat woman into my book, I probably wouldn’t have to write the words rich, classy or glamourous, as those connotations would be drawn by the reader by the description of the clothes.
What do you do? How else do you think we can make a character come to life as a living breathing person?