Kawaii & Kowai

I believe it’s fine to describe what your characters are wearing. However, like all things, it should serve some kind of purpose.

For instance, describing winter clothes helps impart to the reader a sense of how cold it is. Describing summer clothes helps explain how warm it is.

Describing an outfit before a social event gives a window onto the character’s sense of fashion, or explains their reverence (or lack) for the event; for example a character can wear a black suit to a funeral, or watch from a distance while wearing a t-shirt and jeans. These impart a different attitude.

An outfit may be described purely to give a little more interest to a character; to give the reader a bit more insight into who they are, through the way they present themselves. It may have no greater significance to the wider story but this is still a reason to do it.

“I was wearing a purple hoodie, black skinny jeans, and checkered converse.”

 vs 

“I wiped my palms on the thighs of my jeans. Black was the best color for when you’re going grave robbing – the dirt and blood didn’t stand out as much. Sadie flung the shovel back with a little more force than was necessary, flinging hunks of dirt onto my shoes. I paid 85$ for these limited edition checkered converse, and while perhaps I shouldn’t have been wearing them to grave rob, I didn’t have anything else. I pulled Abby’s shirt out of the pocket of my hoodie, running my fingers over the fabric. It was covered in purple lint from my jacket, but she wouldn’t care anyways. She was dead”

Unless you’re writing in the objective voice (which you probably aren’t, because it’s a. only appropriate in a few specific circumstances, and b. extremely difficult to write well), your writing is going to have an implied viewpoint character – usually but not always the focus character of the scene – so you’ve gotta ask yourself: what would my PoV character make note of?

Spending a paragraph doing a point-by-point breakdown of a character’s outfit is the equivalent of your PoV stopping to give them the full once over. Is that appropriate? Is it in character? Would they have had the time?

Even a flatly factual description that offers no direct opinions on what’s observed tells you something about your PoV’s personality, because now you know what sorts of things they do and don’t notice.

This necklace depicts Tiktaalik, an animal that lived some 375 Million years ago, when the lands were lushly carpeted in the first forests, and aswarm with arthropods, but where, as yet, no vertebrate walked. Into this vacuum, Tiktaalik, or some near-relation walked, and then proceeded to diversify into the reptiles, birds, mammals, and other land vertebrates, a group known collectively as the “Tetrapods”.

One word KAIZEN (I might be spelling it wrong lol)

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