Kawaii & Kowai @demonxhole - Tumblr Blog

fortecommathe

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fortecommathe

newtightverse

Reblog if ur in NC

femalepopculture

Megan Thee Stallion for NOTION Magazine

ghibli-collector

Spirited Away Chinese Cinema Posters

toboldlywrite

Are you really…. not supposed to…. describe what your characters are wearing….

by-ethan-fox

I think there’s a great deal of misinformation on this topic.

I believe it’s fine to describe what your characters are wearing. However, like all things, it should serve some kind of purpose.

For instance, describing winter clothes helps impart to the reader a sense of how cold it is. Describing summer clothes helps explain how warm it is.

Describing an outfit before a social event gives a window onto the character’s sense of fashion, or explains their reverence (or lack) for the event; for example a character can wear a black suit to a funeral, or watch from a distance while wearing a t-shirt and jeans. These impart a different attitude.

An outfit may be described purely to give a little more interest to a character; to give the reader a bit more insight into who they are, through the way they present themselves. It may have no greater significance to the wider story but this is still a reason to do it.

So the “purpose” doesn’t need to be super-vital to the story. It can be just because “describing this to the reader helps them appreciate the character or scene”, but that’s still a purpose.

toboldlywrite

I like that last comment because I think it can apply to a lot of things in storytelling! Anything that shows some element of your character has a purpose to the story even if it doesn’t exactly advance the plot.

bayoucurse

I think too there’s also the matter of how it’s described.

“I was wearing a purple hoodie, black skinny jeans, and checkered converse.”

vs

“I wiped my palms on the thighs of my jeans. Black was the best color for when you’re going grave robbing – the dirt and blood didn’t stand out as much. Sadie flung the shovel back with a little more force than was necessary, flinging hunks of dirt onto my shoes. I paid 85$ for these limited edition checkered converse, and while perhaps I shouldn’t have been wearing them to grave rob, I didn’t have anything else. I pulled Abby’s shirt out of the pocket of my hoodie, running my fingers over the fabric. It was covered in purple lint from my jacket, but she wouldn’t care anyways. She was dead”

Treat the clothes as an aspect of the character and the situation. The first one is just information about one thing thrown at the reader, whereas you get the same information in the second, but you’re also presented with a situation, thoughts behind the dress choice for the situation, and a reaction from the reader (why is the character going grave robbing? Who is Sadie? How did Abby die?). You get so much more out of your story and your character.

bookishdiplodocus

Reblogging this again for @endymions ’s addition.

prokopetz

Also bear in mind that your implicit point of view is important even when writing in the third person – it’s not just a first-person thing.

Unless you’re writing in the objective voice (which you probably aren’t, because it’s a. only appropriate in a few specific circumstances, and b. extremely difficult to write well), your writing is going to have an implied viewpoint character – usually but not always the focus character of the scene – so you’ve gotta ask yourself: what would my PoV character make note of?

Spending a paragraph doing a point-by-point breakdown of a character’s outfit is the equivalent of your PoV stopping to give them the full once over. Is that appropriate? Is it in character? Would they have had the time?

Even a flatly factual description that offers no direct opinions on what’s observed tells you something about your PoV’s personality, because now you know what sorts of things they do and don’t notice.

(You can, of course, get around most of those issues by having an omniscient narrator who’s weirdly preoccupied with people’s fashion choices, but that just moves the question back a step – now you have to think about what you’re saying about your omniscient narrator’s priorities, and what this implies for how completely and accurately they’re reporting the action!)

sixpenceee

This necklace depicts Tiktaalik, an animal that lived some 375 Million years ago, when the lands were lushly carpeted in the first forests, and aswarm with arthropods, but where, as yet, no vertebrate walked. Into this vacuum, Tiktaalik, or some near-relation walked, and then proceeded to diversify into the reptiles, birds, mammals, and other land vertebrates, a group known collectively as the “Tetrapods”.

The discovery of Tiktaalik, in 2004, was the product of a multi-year effort, mounted well north of the Arctic Circle. This expedition, whose goal was to search for fish that were in the process of transitioning to life on land, was a resounding success! Such transitional animals, known as “fishapods”, possess a mixture of fish and tetrapod traits, and Tiktallik falls squarely in the middle of this group.

happitess

Oooh, an evolution necklace!