A few smaller details of clothes can radically separate your personalities, highlighting aspects of the personalities.
The Victorian writer Charles Dickens is widely considered to be a master of characterization, for good reason. His clothes descriptions are always exact, frequently humorous.
Take this example from Hard Times (1853). See how Dickens contrasts fact-obsessed, overbearing teacher Thomas Gradgrind and his spouse's personalities through (among other details) their clothes description. Towards the end of the next chapter, Gradgrind is clarified returning home to find his kids playing outside:
'A distance of stunted grass and dry crap being between him and the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to search for any kid he knew by name, and might order away '
The pompous and bullying Gradgrind is (as Dickens' descriptions elsewhere reveal ) the type who would wear a waistcoat hiding an eyeglass for catching people out.
Compare this, then, to Dickens' description of Gradgrind's spouse in the next chapter (Gradgrind's wealthy but poverty-claiming friend has just told Mrs. Gradgrind he had been born in a ditch):
'Mrs. Gradgrind, a little thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; that was always taking physic without any effect, and that, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?'
In a single piece of clothing description ('a pink-eyed bundle of shawls'), Dickens conveys how timid and ailing Mrs. Gradgrind is compared to her bullish, overbearing husband.
Likewise reveal how different characters' personalities are via apt clothing description. [Find more posts on personality description on the character writing hub. ]
4: Show clothes to prevent over-relying on telling
Clothing description in a narrative is helpful since it often gives additional information about a character that you may otherwise tell.
'Gem wanted to look sexy for her date downtown (although not simple ), so she changed into more comfortable clothes.'
However, it is possible to show and indicate a character's intention without spelling it out:
'They had agreed to meet downtown . At a quarter to 6 Gem pulled off the low-cut top Emma had wolf-whistled and clapped at when they had met for their customary weekend catch-up. 'Make them earn some sight of epidermis,' Aunt P constantly said. Jeans and a tee was.'
Why this possibly works better is the specifics of getting dressed inform us multiple facts about Gem. The last minute change indicates an indecisive nature. The fact Gem goes with jeans and a tee shirt could indicate that she trusts her aunt's advice, or else feels shamed by her Aunt and forced to be'great'. There's simply more characterization, not just of Gem but another example characters.
5: Change characters' clothing, to highlight personality growth
Changes in characters' clothing can help show personality growth. In Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, the bad, Tuberculosis-stricken Katerina Ivanovna's husband is trampled to death by a horse-drawn cart. The book's protagonist, Raskolnikov provides Katerina the last of his money to sponsor a funeral. Dostoyevsky describes how Katerina's landlady, Amalia Ivanovna, dresses to the funeral:
'...the table was properly laid in the time and mended, and Amalia Ivanovna, believing she had done her job well, had put on a black silk dress and a cap with fresh mourning ribbons and met with the returning party with some pride.
Katerina is affronted by Amalia's fine dress as it's'new' and shows'pride'. Impoverished with kids to care for, she uses her last money to give her husband a dignified funeral. Amalia's dress thus comes across as insensitive to hermalicious even. The landlady's dress highlights, by contrast, the downward spiral of Katerina's fortunes, and she reacts to the landlady's prideful clothes with her own hurt pride:
'Look at her, she is making around eyes, she believes that we're talking about her and can not understand. PfForthe owl! Ha-ha! And what does she put that cap ? An owl in fresh ribbons, ha-ha-ha!'
Embarrassed by her own inability to dress in finery for the occasion (and by being upstaged), Katerina hotels to scathing mockery of Amalia.
Like Dostoyevsky, think how something as small as a character's change of clothes can affect their own or others' beha{viour.
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