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To create a more futuristic looking style an easy way of doing it is to incorporate technology into the clothing itself. In writing, the clothes kind of do make the (hu)man. Another important function of clothing description in stories is to create an authentic sense of time and place. Black and white usually does the trick as well. So have fun with that. Maybe your character is snuggled up in their fleece pajamas while the blizzard rages outside. To illustrate this in a way we did with the futuristic shirt example let's take a standard medieval tunic and turn it into a fantasy-themed version. Baggy jeans. Hello, I am attempting to write my first fantasy novel (and my first novel), and I'm having difficulty visualizing what kind of clothes my characters should be wearing. And ninety-nine percent of the clothing descriptions in your first draft are just jeans. I get it. You can continue to alter it to add cultural elements, like the previously mentioned elvish elements or you could stick with this and keep it simple. What exactly are you trying to communicate about the character, setting, or situation? For example, if a character is going on a date, you could write: Gem wanted to look sexy for her date downtown (but not easy), so she changed into more comfortable clothes. Lets talk about how to describe clothing in writing organically. Use the Character section of the Idea Finder to develop quick story ideas and flesh out your storys cast. Normally I dont dress characters with such complex clothing that takes more than a few sentences to describe but the vest was inspired by a picture I saw and it took at least a paragraph to describe. Thats a good example of using clothing to reinforce the narrative of a characters arc. Mantel describes the cardinals vestments: They bring out the cardinals vestments, his copes. Not to mention the social status of a person. Do your main characters tend to steal the show in your novels? They were warriors first and foremost. What are the rules of your characters world? Now on the other end of the spectrum we have fantasy clothing and more history based clothing. This article was very helpfulcan you post some examples of showing versus telling when describing clothing? A four-layer, bubble-gum pink taffeta skirt. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e7bbcc198c936bc1af3fbda128514c44fcfc10f0513ea31cad7c21ae61ba0ab0.jpg. They mixed more traditional Asian styles with the more Western Industrial Revolution period styles. - Make things look glossy, smooth and clean. To discover more awesome ideas, head over to Pinterest and just search for female fantasy armor. From time to time we may use affiliate links to help with the costs of running the site. They could withstand high-velocity strikes from a javelin or lance, driven home by somebody charging forwards on horseback. I can only imagine the pain of the chafing! Only when youre keeping secrets in fiction, you can make them even darker and deeper than any you might ever have in real life. In both of these it was mostly the rich who had the extravagant clothing, which brings back the earlier point of how culture influences what a character might wear. We all love a character with a cool set of fantasy armor: the baresark Rek from David Gemmells Legend with his enchanted coat of bronze, or Tomas from Raymond Feists Riftwar Cycle with his gleaming white dragon plate which gifted him incredible power. And of course, location provides a clue for what it takes to be comfortable in the world of your story. Do they strive to be humble before their god or do they want to spend this one and only life as their bold, ostentatious selves? In this scene, Gradgrind returns home to find his children playing outside: A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for any child he knew by name, and might order off. Like say a vest with mirrored sequins and rhinestones, but they all go in a pattern and you feel the need to describe the pattern line by line? As a quick question, in film you see a lot of heroes and leaders not wearing helmets. For more information, please see our It's part of culture, so it's definitely something to keep in mind since your fictional universes will have some form of culture as well. But that doesn't mean you can't deviate from these guidelines completely and do whatever you wish. So this really reaffirmed that approach for me. Note that with the camouflage patterns it's best to use this style, but make them less randomized to avoid the military look, unless that's what you're going for of course. Showing what your characters are wearing can be a great way to show your readers what they might be up to that day without having to actually narrate anything. But your reader is going to picture something whether you guide them or not. Blades hacking, slicing and puncturing, cutting open gaping wounds and severing limbs and heads from bodies. One of her poems is (legally) stamped into a sidewalk in Santa Clarita, California. Follow edited Jun 17, 2020 at 9:43. If youre trying to learn how to describe clothing in writing, youre probably like me: Youve only pretended to know what organza is. One thing Ive always wondered is if someone wearing plate could fall down just right in a muddy battlefield, and get stuck there in the same way a large flat rock gets stuck laying in mud. Leather could be stitched into coats, or added to mail to provide added protection. Im writing a little in the Epic Fantasy genre and there were quite a few useful notes I wasnt aware of here. Thus his plain dress is, ironically, indicative of higher status. Its fun to play with power in clothing, because it's a relative concept. (Find out more). To navigate your way through this guide, just click the links below. I tend to avoid describing clothing. Chapters 1 and 2 were pretty decent and I started chapter 4 with him dressing for the party. I used to be under the mindset that describing attire was boring and it was better to let the reader fill in those details but especially with the novel Im working on now, I have used clothing to portray more about their character. When heated, steel turns from yellow, to brown, to blue, to red. Expensive indeed, and heavystronger horses had to be bred to handle the weight. An anxious college student buys a flower crown in the hopes of feeling young and free at Coachella. You can keep track of your characters signature style, upload photos, note how their style evolves, and keep these ideas right at your fingertips as you write. If sturdy is a top consideration, your character might be expecting trouble or adventure. They are more common around the chest and torso in Asian cultures though, so keep that in mind when adding diagonal lines. Its a bit OCD of me. In one single piece of clothing description (a pink-eyed bundle of shawls), Dickens conveys how timid and ailing Mrs. Gradgrind is in contrast to her bullish, overbearing husband. I'll allow my fangirl side to shine for a second and use the Legend of Korra as an example of how mixing styles can work amazingly well. They should be doing that. Like Marquez, compare and contrast characters clothes to reveal important details about their social status or position. A band t-shirt. For example, headphones aren't really a piece of clothing, but they definitely affect our style. A coat of mail was a complex web of metal rings, each locked with an iron rivet. The bully Gradgrind is the type whod wear a waistcoat concealing an eyeglass for catching people out. (Hopefully, I dont really know your life, so maybe not. Shoes made with bendable displays already exist, allowing you to change your shoe's design on the fly. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts Whats the respected uniform, and does your character wear it? By playing around with this you quickly create very subtle, but more unique fantasy-themed items. Give your wealthy character a pair of Louboutins and dress your non-wealthy characters in hand-me-downs. Leonidas in 300, for instance, almost certainly wore a helmet in the battle with the Persians! Love this topic!! Added on top of that the condition that they had to supply him with soldiers too. What your character wears can tell us a lot about how they feel or how they want to feel. Earlier I mentioned how it's important to try and keep a feel of unfamiliarity to futuristic clothing. This is a heavy generalization of course and entirely based on Western culture of today, but these rules may not apply at all in a fictional universe, no matter if it's futuristic or based on a historic setting. Finally there's all the little things that can make an outfit look more futuristic. Im struggling to properly figure out how to describe clothing for a fantasy setting Im trying to create. Similar to how pixelated designs tend to look more futuristic so do designs full of geometrical shapes. Youre already obsessing over hat styles and what the undergarment situation was at the time of your story. All cultures have dress codes to some degree, some more so than others and some more stricter than others, but every culture has a range of styles that would be considered normal, 'out there' and unacceptable to most. Its hard to really appreciate just how sickeningly awful medieval warfare would have been. Of course there are more ways to alter historic designs and the middle ages aren't the only period to draw inspiration from. But put me in a job interview wearing the same outfit, and youd probably start making new guesses about my intentions. It's what we're slowly doing today. Something like this: As you can see, a knights armor is made up of a lot of different pieces. As soon as the actor enters stage right or left, we have an inkling of whether theyre a wealthy landowner or peasant, an elegant heiress or humble flower-seller. What I would like to ask is how you would go about describing very specific details on more complex clothing? Look how she sits with her mouth open! Which is to say, if you write from the point of view of a character who thinks of clothing only in terms of the simplest descriptors, that's just fine. In a book, none of that is true. These shallow details help us go pretty deep on character. The good news is that attire is not only important, its also kind of fun when you start digging into it. They're the Robin to your Batman, the Luigi to your Mario, the Samwise Gamgee to your Frodo Baggins. For a bigger image, just click on the link above. The tragedy of Azincourt, for example, occurred because of a poorly-chosen battleground that had flooded. And lets not forget the trusty steed. Press J to jump to the feed. Creating new clothing styles for fictional worlds can be a daunting task, there's just so much out there already and so many elements to play around with to create a fun and unique style, no matter whether the art form is visual or not. A knight, by definition, was a lord. At the end of the day, they were professional slayers, swords for hire. Using a squared, pixelated look or circuitry patterns usually works great too, which can even be combined with layered clothing to create the circuitry feel. Richie Billing writes fantasy fiction, historical fiction and stories of a darker nature. All of these advancements will become more and more common as time goes on, so it'd make sense for them to be part of our clothing in the future. You can quickly convey a number of things about your characters based on the clothing they wear. A few small details of clothing may distinguish your characters from each other, highlighting their personalities. Instead of saying, for example I saw that the station gate was coming down and the last train was about to leave, you could say The station gate is already screeching closed. When shes not writing, Abi is most likely hiking, reading, or texting her mother pictures of her houseplants to ask why they look like that. Sweaters or jumpers? How were women treated in the Middle Ages? Subtle clothing changes can signal character development quite effectively in some scenarios. (Where do they buy their clothes? Pre-empt this by illustrating everything in layers and completing each layer of clothing. This is great! Armor, therefore, wasnt that heavya full suit weighed approximately 50 pounds, which is around 3 to 4 stone. Thanks Liv, Im glad you found this helpful. I don't mean make your characters walk around naked, but exposing (or covering) body parts in ways we don't today helps make ordinary clothing look different, which in turn helps sell the idea of it being futuristic. Obviously clothing is extremely varied, especially dresses. There are some elements which are common among most works of fiction when it comes to clothing, with these elements in mind it becomes a lot easier to turn the clothing we wear today or wore throughout history into a futuristic or more fantasy oriented equivalent. But it can also be fun to play with the confidence and ease that comes with wealth. Fashionable: Clothes representing a current style in fashion. Or one who was forever wearing poorly-fitted clothing that appeared to be handed down from friends? Here are a few different types: We mentioned gambesons above. 60s-inspired. That said, once you describe how a person dresses you shouldn't really keep doing it unless it is relevant to the plot. And what does she put that cap on for? Slog through another meaningless day in a world where nothing matters? Play with the question of presentation and power! Improve this answer. Before I delve into the more detailed aspects of creating clothing there's one final thing to keep in mind and that is that fashion repeats itself. It can be as simple as making a dress shorter, a jacket longer or sleeves wider and longer. You can even use different pieces of clothing to cover up body parts differently. But even regular elements can help with this. The reader does not need the full outfit in one go. The final design with all its layers will often hide elements of the clothing that a client may want to see later. Characters can also comment on or react to one anothers clothing, as long as the exchange reveals something about the world or relationship. As for showing with clothing rather than telling, a writer could say, He was lazy and inattentive to his appearance about a character, or they could say his clothes always looked like hed just pulled them out of a pile in some corner of his bedroom and had thrown them on without a glance in the mirror. If there is one thing I hope you take from all of this, its that none of this is about describing what a character looks like. Chausses / Chauces (15th century) Pantaloons; padded hosen for the legs, often worn under chainmail or plate armor. Let it hang diagonally across their chest and over their shoulder instead. The landladys dress highlights, by contrast, the downward spiral of Katerinas fortunes, and she responds to the landladys prideful clothing with her own wounded pride: Look at her, shes making round eyes, she feels that we are talking about her and cant understand. An owl, a real owl! Or are you writing a spy character who dons Lululemon to infiltrate an upscale yoga studio? Clothing reflects the resources available in a specific time and place. As well see below, one of the best things about using medieval armor in a fantasy story is the freedom to elevate it in some way. As knights became fully armored, so did their mounts. Here, for example, Hilary Mantel describes a Cardinals residence being plundered by the Kings men in 1529 England, in her historical novel Wolf Hall. It's your creation, your imagination and your time you use and spend, so make sure you use and spend it on something you enjoy. Think touchable fabrics and the light scent of lavender soap. Because like all other character details, its not enough to paint a picture. You walk down the usual street and suddenly some old memory hits you. As with mail, steel was the best material due to its hardness, which was obtained by heating the steel to extreme temperatures and then submerging it into cold water, a process known as quenching. You could even move the buttons to the side and have it close diagonally instead. Knights were, indeed, hard to defeat in battle. They looked something like this: One of the main defensive strengths of plated armor came from its curved design, which deflected both blades and arrows. I mean what your character wears provides a clue to how they see themselves, how they want to be seen, and even how others see them. The Victorian author Charles Dickens is widely regarded as a master of characterization, for good reason. The line could be thin or thick, glowing, metallic-looking or just plain, padded or smooth, patterned, decorated or simply a seem. 2023 NOW NOVEL CC. - Convert future clothing to a historic version. For example, the corset wasn't popular until the 16th century and while earlier versions can be found incredibly early they weren't common place. How does their attire reflect what they want, what they fear, or where theyre going? The same goes for other types of technology that could realistically be incorporated into the design of your character's clothing. How to describe clothing: 6 simple tips Use clothing to show status and position Build (or thwart) expectations using clothing descriptions Describe clothing to contrast character personalities Show clothing to avoid over-relying on telling Change clothing to highlight character development Use clothing details to create authentic setting This may seem like a tricky thing to do as there's so much out there already, but it can often be as simple as simply changing a texture, the patterns used or the amount of fabric. Really like your article. - Geometry. See more ideas about fantasy clothing, anime outfits, character outfits. The more outlandish the fantasy species your character is the more outlandish you can usually be with clothing, but familiarity is usually still a solid ground for a realistic feel, even if the universe and the creatures are completely unrealistic. It's easy to try this out too, at least the simple line version.