Characters from the Outside In: Costume

When you hear actors talk about how they get into character, it’s in either one of two ways. Some examine the inner life of the character by doing things like writing bios of the character’s life before the film/play begins, looking at clues in the dialogue and actions of the character that help the author get under that character’s skin. But the other way is quite different. The actress/comedienne Carol Burnett one said that she got into character by putting on the costume the designer had come up with for the character. From her perspective, once she could see the character through what she wore, she felt she could take on the personality of that character more easily.

If you’ve ever heard a costume designer talk about how they designed the costumes for the characters in a film you no doubt heard them go into a character analysis that would rival the screenwriter’s! Because costume designers create the look of the character based on the character’s personality. It’s an interesting profession—imagining you’re inside a character and can choose the clothes she would choose. In many ways, you have to become the character in order to make that choice.

But the choice of how to dress a character isn’t always yours. The director will be the guiding force as to the look of the production, the kinds of costumes he/she is going for, etc. But once the production is underway, it’s not only the director you have to please—it’s the actors as well!

Generally speaking, as a writer, you don’t go into great detail on the clothing your characters wear. You can say “John wears a sleek business suit and carries an expensive briefcase” for example. You don’t need to say it’s a Hugo Boss suit or that the briefcase is Louis Vuitton unless those particular designers are important to demonstrate who he is. Your costume designer will have relationships with various designers who will supply the suit and the briefcase, and he/she is quite capable of picking out the right suit from amongst those designers. Bottom line, you don’t want to limit your designer with your descriptions.

The key is to envision your character in your mind. How is she dressed? Does she have on shorts and a tank top as she heads out for a walk? Or does she wear jeans and a t-shirt? Or is she dressed in a long, gossamer skirt and a camisole? You can include any of those short descriptions to describe what your character’s wearing if it’s important to the scene. If you began every scene with a description of what the characters are wearing it would be dull, it would drag. You only want to include such descriptions when they’re important.

But whether you write a character’s costuming into the script or not, you should certainly see it in your mind as you write. Your characters will be more real to you if you can envision them—and that means envisioning what they wear.

In many respects, as a writer, you’re the first costume designer on the film. Fun, huh? One of the many decisions you get to make as a writer; and though deciding what your main character wears in the first scene may seem like a small thing, it plants the seed for how she’ll look throughout the film as well as telling us something about her personality.

Copyright © Diane Lake

18Mar18

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