This is something I’ve been wrestling with, too. I tend to give very few descriptions of things like hair and eye color, and even fewer of clothes. When I’m reviewing what I’ve written, I sit there and wonder if people are going to see my characters as anything other than amorphous blobs. (A bigger concern, although this has never happened to me, is that somehow people will make an assumption about a character’s appearance that screws up a later plot point. That’d be sort of stupid and careless on my part, though.)
I find it hard to write descriptions of what people look like without sinking into stupid cliches, and even worse, it interrupts the action or the descriptions of whatever I originally thought was more important. I suppose I’ll just have to muddle on the way I have been.
Some of Austen’s character’s talk about clothes though. But only when it illustrates THEIR character to do so - and in doing so she can sometimes kill two birds with one stone.
i.e. Upon returning from the Meryton assembling, Mrs. Bennett says something like “And the lace on Mrs. Hurst’s gown…” This lets us know two things - Mrs. Bennett is the type of person who notices the quality of lace on someone else’s gown and is impressed by that more than by their character, and - as we are then informed that Mrs. Hurst married “a man of more fashion than fortune” that Mrs. Hurst herself is something of a spendthrift.
Mrs. Allen in Northanger Abbey spends a lot of time talking about clothes. Because that is what is important to Mrs. Allen. Thus we have a better idea of what Catherine Moreland is wearing at any time than we ever get of what Elizabeth Bennett wears (other than Elizabeth wears muddy petticoats).
I think the purpose of a description is to give the reader a feel for the character, nothing more; most descriptions beyond that are superfluous. Give us a basic physical description (“slight”, "“short”, “powerfully built”, “amazonian”), any distinctive features (“laughing eyes”, “worried brow”, “prematurely greying hair”) and we’ll fill in the blanks. In fact, the best way to describe a character is through the actions of the *other * characters - if they treat him or her as they would a beautiful or a physically intimidating person, then that’s how we’ll know that that’s what they are.
As for clothing, there’s no reason it should take more than a sentence or, at most, two:
“He was wearing an expensive-looking grey pinstripe suit”
“She was sporting a generously-cut halter top and shorts that were much too short for her own good”
“He was dressed in faded Levi’s, a black T-shirt and a green Army-surplus jacket.”
“She wore mail over leather and wielded a heavy sword. A great black cloak was draped over her shoulders, its hood hiding her face.”
Like with anything else, if it doesn’t advance the plot, doesn’t illuminate the characters, or isn’t interesting to read in and of itself, skip it.
Thing is, Alessan is right: people fill in the blanks. I had a very clear picture of what Fran Goldsmith in The Stand looked like, was annoyed when the movie version looked absolutely nothing like her, and then read the book again and discovered that she wasn’t actually described the way I remembered it; I had just filled in the blanks. Someone on this board told of an identical experience with the aliens from Tommyknockers.
Also in The Stand, the Dark Man is consistently described as having boots with worn heels (may be paraphrased; I’ve only read the book in Swedish). This comes to identify the character so strongly that at one point “the sound of worn bootheels” (and how does that sound, anyway?) signals who is approaching. That’s a good reason to describe clothing.
When I write, I mostly trust my readers to fill in the blanks unless there’s a reason to be more descriptive. If I want to show a bigwig in ceremonial dress, I take some time to describe the dress. When the ninjas come, they are wearing black. I also like to throw a curveball every now and again, like when my main (male) character has long hair in a ponytail, which hasn’t been mentioned before.
I thought of Robert B. Parker too. Though I’m currently annoyed with him, I think it’s a useful thing in the context of the Spenser novels. It’s consistent with his characterization: Spenser notices and records everything he sees, and people frequently comment on his ability to give extremely good descriptions, to recognize people he last saw years ago, and so forth.
Heh, before starting this thread, I discussed it with my wife, and brought up this very thought. That, of course, was a big mistake. One would think that after all these years of marraige, I would know better, but nooooo.
He sat before his Dell laptop on the chair that was too small and read this thread. He scratched an itch on his scalp before looking over at the almost-empty bowl of rice next to the computer. “Something here doesn’t fit”, he thought. “Is it the blue work out shorts that I wear to bed every night or is it the black low-cut socks? Perhaps it’s the black nightshirt I’m wearing.” No, something else made his girlfriend not take him seriously this morning. It was at that moment that he realized it.
The fucking sombrero.
I also came in to mention Anita Blake. Ugh. Constant descriptions of the vampire hunter’s clothing choices. Hamilton is the very definition of a hack.
Rex Stout did it all the time too (although I, too, thought of Robert B. Parker first). Archie Goodwin discusses clothing in enormous detail–his, and everyone else’s. Partly because Archie can be a huge snob, partly to set the stage, and partly, perhaps, because Rex’s wife Pola was a celebrated textile designer.
DRINK!
(sorry - there is a WOT drinking game, and when women exhibit one of Jordan’s favorite bits you have to drink).
Robert Parker’s Spenser for Hire series also had all of his cooking details - you could skip a page if you didn’t care about what meal Spenser was making for his girlfriend.
He doesn’t do that anymore, sadly, and I miss it. Which is to say, I miss the mingling of Spenser’s figuring out his case with his assembly of a meal. But I figure Parker’s writing the Spenser books nwo only because his contract requires him to do so if he wants Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone tales to see print. His fatigue with the series is palpable.
I think her descriptions of the men are more outrageous. All the thigh-high boots, tight leather pants and waist-length hair, and that’s not even on the male strippers. To be fair, though, appearance is an important part of the vampire scene. They put a lot of thought into looking that trashy. And once in a while Anita acknowledges how ridiculous it all is.
One place where I enjoy the descriptions of clothing is in Georgette Heyer’s novels, which I’ve only recently discovered. She describes Regency fashions in great detail, and it’s wonderful, particularly concerning the men of fashion. All those hours spent arranging their cravats.
This can backfire very badly when you’ve described the height of fashion, and twenty years later it’s “What was Author THINKING? Oh lord.”
With Parker, I always think of it, too, as a nod to the Marlowe novels he based Spenser on. IIRC, the first time we meet Marlowe, we hear about his socks.