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Writing About Clothing

srcroft

Minstrel
So you don't have to get to detailed in the type of clothing or anything like that?

It also depends on your level of expertise. Stephen King can go into great detail with run on after run on sentence, for example, the book "It" he has sentences that last two pages in the beginning. Point it, as a novice, the less you put the more you allow the reader to use their imagination. You point out allegory and symbols in clothes or adornment, or you setup plot points, but if its not interesting or not important I would say get rid of it.

This goes for more than clothes. Fantasy especially people have a habit of being as descriptive as a historical fiction writer--this can be a big mistake. Telling slows your novel down to a crawl and gives the reader the opportunity to put your book down. We all chose fantasy because it has depth that writers like Koontz skate over--but there is a balance to how much you force on your reader.

If you have never been published it would be smart to err on the side of cutting the description.

All too often we build such a 3d world we want to describe everything--or that we need to make everything clear to be believable. What happens is boredom of the writer and reader, difficult transition and scene changes, and destruction of the number one rhythmic tool of a novel--conflict and tension.
 
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