Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Placeholder Clothes

Wow. I just typed a blog entry that was spectacularly munched by blogger. Never ignore a stuck "saving..." button. Well, if T.E. Lawrence can rewrite Seven Pillars of Wisdom in one week after losing a near complete manuscript, then I sure as hell can retype four paragraphs.

I finally figured out the clothing for a significant new character in the next Hemlock novel. I fear that this may be the type of mundane miscellany that could make for a boring blog post. I apologize in advance of that's true.

But this actually was a significant milestone for me. That's because these clothes weren't merely a happenstance fashion selection by this character. These clothes reflect the culture of a society that is being introduced for the first time. I thought of an initial idea for the clothes, but it just didn't feel right to me. So the issue stuck in the back of my head for months. I was paging through some wiki pages this week when I spotted a historical photo that just clicked for me. This was the missing piece of the clothing puzzle for this imaginary culture.

I had mentally referred to the initial outfit as "placeholder clothes". Since I don't hang out with a lot of writers (er, actually, I do, but for some reason we are usually gaming and not talking about writing when we are together), I don't really encounter situations to talk to other people about "placeholder clothes". Thank God for the Internet (and blogs).

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