: Re: Is it important to describe how the characters are dressed? One thing that I never mention in my stories is how the characters are dressed. Well, except when they are being described for the

@Bryan361

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If how the character is dressed is important to the story, then you should certainly describe it. If not, then don't bring it up. Give as much detail as is relevant.

If, for example, you picture Mr Jones as always being immaculately dressed in a formal business suit and carrying a walking stick, I'd mention that, at least once up front. Or at the other extreme, if you picture him attending a very formal event, like a wedding or a reception for the governor, wearing beat-up blue jeans and a cowboy hat, I'd mention that. But if you picture him wearing a business suit to his job as a lawyer, or wearing blue jeans when he's working in the yard, well, that's pretty much what the reader would expect, so it probably doesn't need to be mentioned.

Or if an important point of the scene is that the heroine is looking incredibly beautiful and wildly sexy, going on at length about how just what and how much she is showing could help to build the mood. Make clear exactly why all the men can't take their eyes off of her, etc.

Even if how the person is dressed is relevant, you can often say all the reader needs to know in a couple of words. Like, "Sally was modestly dressed and carrying a briefcase ...", or "Bob arrived looking more formal than was really appropriate to the occasion ..." might be quite sufficient. The exact color and style of their clothes might make no difference.

I certainly would not go into a detailed description of what every character is wearing under normal circumstances. This would really bog down a story. Like, "As Smith, the master spy, entered his hotel room, suddenly three assassins leaped up and attacked him! The first was wearing a blue shirt and black pants, with a black belt. His shirt had a pocket on the front. He carried a white handkerchief in his back pocket. His belt had four holes and a slightly triangular shape to the tip. His shoes were made of brown leather with rubber soles. One of his shoelaces had a damaged end. There was a ridge pattern to the soles. The second was wearing a brown shirt and khaki pants. The pants were originally permanent press but the seam was somewhat faded from many washings ..." Unless any of this later proved to be important to the story, that would be really tedious, and would really take away from the potential excitement of an action scene.

Update

A follow-up thought: If how a character is dressed is relevant to the story, you should convey this information as early in the scene as possible. If you do not reveal this early on, then when you DO reveal it, the reader has to backtrack in how he pictured the scene. Like is you say, "Sally arrived at the pig farm early in the morning and set to work cleaning out the manure from the pig stalls ...", the reader is going to immediately have an impression in his head of Sally wearing some grubby clothes suitable to such work. If five pages later you mention that Sally is wearing a formal ball gown which she has carefully managed to keep immaculately clean through this task, the reader is going to have to rethink his entire mental picture of the scene up to this point. That kind of backtracking is often the punch line of a joke, and it might work for a humor story, but anywhere else it would just be disconcerting and confusing.

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