Costume

Everything visual reinforces your character’s image and therefore its identity. You must choose an outfit that informs us about the character. Sometimes a hero wears disguise to deceive us, but when the character is him/herself, he/she wears an outfit that reveals his/her personality. Think about characters that have marked you. Often you can’t imagine them in any other outfit. Create the same effect with your characters. Decide how your hero will dress and define a selection of outfits that will tell us who he/she is at a given time while making him/her unique. Remember if possible to choose a detail specific to the character: a scarf, hat, coat, pair of boots, ring, hook, hairstyle or original mustache…

Example Thomas wears tasseled moccasins, tartan socks and perfectly ironed jeans with neat creases down the front. He dresses in designer polo shirts and spotless blazers. He always wears a silver chain name bracelet that was a gift from his father-in-law.

EXERCISE 11 Choose your hero’s outfit. It must be explicit.

HELP Look at the people around you and how they dress. Pay attention to every little detail and what each reveals about personality.

Never stop collecting information, in books, films, museums and magazines. Use codes the audience can recognize and understand. Otherwise, they won’t know who is who and who does what.

Of course you can play with certain codes and use them in a new way to make them deliver a different message, but this can be risky.