They Are What They Wear: Character and Clothing

I’ve mentioned here before that I don’t like lavish description. Significant detail, that’s the ticket. Readers are going to latch onto anything you put in a story that seems significant to them, but if you bury the good stuff under a thousand details, they’re going to start skimming and miss it. Plus general description is not action, folks, so you’re slowing down your story if you stop to describe everything. Short significant detail given as part of the ongoing action is the way to go. (As always, your mileage may differ.) One place detail is particularly important for character building is clothing.

I’ve never cared for the books that list the protagonists’ clothing by labels; I figure that must mean the characters care about the labels, and I don’t. And I get really tired of the hero in well-worn jeans even though I have nothing against well-worn jeans; it’s just that they’re ALL wearing well-worn jeans, they probably all shop at the Well-Worn Jeans Store, and I’d like to see a little individuality. So mostly what I’m looking for when clothing pops up as a descriptor is some indication that this is something interesting about the character, especially if it has significance to the community. If the writer put it on the page, I figure, she must have had a plan.

That’s why I love Liz’s t-shirts in Lavender’s Blue, not just because they’re great t-shirts and I own most of them, but because her mother and aunt don’t like them, so every time she puts one on, it’s a rebellion. I love them because she uses them to construct a narrative about a better life, the life she made for herself after she left her hometown and started from scratch, using the shirts as postcards from the past. I love them because her idea of dressing up is putting a suit jacket over one of them, accepting a facade but making sure everybody knows it’s a facade because they can clearly see the T-shirt underneath. I love them because they’re comfortable, unpretentious, and funny, and that’s what I want Liz to be. Of course, I didn’t know all of that when I started writing Liz. I just knew she liked t-shirts.

Which brings us to Nita. Several of you have pointed out that my first drafts are almost all dialogue. Yep. But eventually I must force myself to flesh out the world in general and the protagonist in particular, and somewhere in there I have to notice what she’s wearing. In the early drafts, Nita had different jackets, finally ending up in a black hoodie. There are many reasons for this–it’s cold out, it’s the middle of the night, she just got out of bed, she’s sick and wants something soft and warm–but the big one is that Nita would wear a black hoodie. Not a red hoodie, not a jacket, nothing with a slogan or picture; Nita is practical and projects a no-nonsense persona. A black hoodie is the “said” of the clothing conversation: Nobody notices it’s there because they’re so used to seeing it everywhere. So Nita’s wearing a black hoodie. But the more I revise, the more detail shows up, and in the latest revision, as Nita gets out of the car, she’s wearing poodle pajamas under the hoodie.

Yes, I was surprised, too.

I remember thinking, “Nope, nope,” as I typed but I kept going because the scene was finally getting some shapte to it, and I can always cut poodle pajamas later. Except that people kept commenting on them because of course they would. Mort liked them, and Clint laughed at them, and Nick in the next scene files the pajamas away so he can make sense of them in the context of more information later. Those poodle pants were useful in characterizing others.

They looked like this:

That’s not what Nita looks like, but those are the pajamas.

So great, the pjs are helpful for characterizing others, but I didn’t see how they were going to be helpful characterizing Nita. So I had to cogitate. Beyond that, I had to become Nita: “What the hell am I doing in poodle pajamas?”

Well, she’s sick, and it’s past midnight so she was in bed, so she’d have been wearing pajamas when she got the call. But if it was an official call, she’d have gotten dressed. If she’d known it was a crime scene, she’d have gotten dressed. So she didn’t know it was a crime scene. Why would she just put a hoodie over her pjs and go out in the dark? The only possible reason is that Mort called her to come help him. No, not called, she’d have asked what was going on. So he texted her for help and then refused to pick up the phone. She’s annoyed, but it’s Mort, and then her new partner calls and leaps at the chance to drive her to pick up her brother who probably lost his keys. She puts the hoodie on for warmth figuring she won’t even have to get out of the car.

I kind of like that. The bit with Button is convoluted, but the rest of it is practical. She’s sick, the pjs are warm, she’s not getting out of the car, she doesn’t care what her new partner thinks because this is what you get when you get Nita, plus the hoodie is now oversize, maybe one of Mort’s, so its down past her hips. People are going to be looking at poodle-covered knees. Pink and turquoise poodles on a white background, so they’re going to be noticeable, even in the dark, but only about twenty-four inches of them. Subtle.

Okay, that’s why she’s wearing them at the crime scene. But why is she wearing them at all? And not just “why would this character wear poodle pajamas” but why the hell did the Girls send up poodle pajamas from the depth of my subconscious?

I decided she has poodle pajamas because either Mort or Keres gave them to her for her birthday the year before. Probably Keres. Nita loves dogs but doesn’t have one because her job keeps her away from home too much, and Keres knows her little sister well and thinks that underneath all that black she wears, she probably, secretly, subconsciously yearns for pink and turquoise. Plus Keres loves her a lot and would like to hug her but knows Nita isn’t good with affection, so it’s Keres’s way of holding her and keeping her warm. And Nita was surprised when she opened them, and was polite about them at the time, but now she loves them because they’re worn and comfortable and they feel like a hug from Keres, even if she doesn’t consciously think about it. None of that will be in the book, of course, but it’s interesting, if only because I had no idea Nita wanted to be hugged that much since she’d move away if anybody tried it.

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place when I finally got to Button’s reaction in her PoV scene: Button isn’t sure about the pj pants when she first sees them but if that’s how Nita rolls, then that’s fine. But then Nita walks into a crime scene in pajama pants and dominates the two alpha males who are trying to control things, then walks into a bar and faces down a thug and the Devil, all while wearing poodle pants. Nita is going to own any situation she’s in, regardless of her attire. The fact that she can do it in poodle pants just makes her even more awesome. Button considers getting poodle pants.

Okay, given all of that, the poodle pjs are a significant detail. (I was going to add bunny slippers, but that was a bridge too far.) But I don’t think they’re the most significant detail because other characters keep commenting on them. I think really strong significant detail is the stuff that nobody in the story notices, the stuff that’s dropped in, and then the story moves on and only the reader picks up the significance, a lot of the time subliminally. Which is why I love the over-sized black hoodie that’s too big for her and covers most of the poodle pjs and keeps her comfortable, a barrier between the outside world and her Inner Poodle. I think it is Mort’s, I think she stole it from him because it feels like he’s hugging her, that with the poodles and the hoodie, she’s wrapped in the family she loves and that loves her unconditionally albeit cautiously. The hoodie-with-poodles is Nita’s armor against the world, so Button’s got it backward: Nita’s strength isn’t that she can overcome the poodles, it’s that the poodles give her strength. She hasn’t completely smothered who she is. Her Inner Poodle can defeat anything. Imagine if she let it out to play . . .

Those poodles are staying.

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