New hair!…tentative thoughts on building characters with memorable appearances…video/audio about writing getting easy again
Sunday, Ray and I went out for new hair with our fabulous hairdresser Katelyn. It’s not really about the hair, I suppose, more about the bonding time, although it is ALSO about the hair. “Wanting to look good” isn’t really a concept that I got to have for long stretches of my life, and Ray neither, perhaps even more so.
(Yes, I get that guys are encouraged not to want to look good! Guys: I support you, however you wanna look. The coolest tip I heard lately was “paint your nails and female-type persons will give you slightly more of the benefit of a doubt.” Even black. Ya still gotta be a decent human being, though.)
Ray grew up having to say “Oh I don’t care, whatever” to a lot of things. Me, I got yelled at for not caring enough about my appearance, then yelled at for my vanity for inconveniencing my mom (who refused to buy things and would throw herself into all kinds of weird, time-consuming, expensive projects to “save money”). I had to deal with can’t-do/must-do situations; Ray didn’t have to negotiate turbulent waters so much as survive long periods of drought.–I’ll have to ask her if that description feels about right.
So when we go to see Katelyn, Ray gets attention paid to what she wants, doesn’t get shut down for wanting things, and gets reactions of delight when she suggests something even more over the top than what Katelyn can come up with. She gets heard; she gets some tentative suggestions in case she doesn’t know what’s “allowed”; she gets supported with positive feedback. Gradually she opens up, although there are still times where I’m like, “Katelyn doesn’t know what ASMR is; let me provide some context.”
(ASMR is “autonomous sensory meridian response,” a tingling feeling that some people get, in current pop usage to do with certain types of videos emphasizing basic sounds, like hairbrushing. Now that I write that down, I wonder if, for Katelyn, it would have translated to “You know that thing when you eat food so spicy it makes your head tingle? some people do that with sound, and there are tons of videos for it.” Not the same thing, but a bridge of meaning, maybe. ASMR videos make my stomach flop in panic.)
When I go to see Katelyn, I’m trying to figure out what I want. I often have no fucking clue. I played it “safe” for so long with hair–that is, I got it whacked off once a year in the spring to keep the weight down and just let it grow out otherwise–that getting my hair cut more often than once a year was stressful at first.
Haircut = money/time spent on myself = bullshit indirect punishment from the ex.
This was the first time with her I ran into something I didn’t like. I just had this visceral reaction. One, she covered up the teal in my hair with silver, which I agreed to as part of an experiment for Halloween hair, and two, she blow-dried my hair and brushed it out.
I like the *sensation* of having my hair brushed and blow-dried just fine. I could zonk out that way easily. But when I sat up I just about cried. I had hair that sort of looked like my mom’s hair, AND I got triggered remembering her brushing my hair. She’d scream at me for having tangles, for not brushing my hair well, etc.–I’ve seen her do this to other people, kids that is, and have stepped in at the time to be like, “I know you’re in a hurry, Mom, you KNOW how I love to brush hair!” I don’t love brushing hair (it’s all right but I don’t have a passion for it or anything), but it’d make her throw down a brush and let me take over.
WHEW.
I talked about it with Katelyn, as much as I’d figured out at the time anyway, so she wouldn’t be too worried that I wasn’t overjoyed.
The silver is kinda boring to me; it was a GREAT job that, when brushed out, looked like owl feathers with deep colors and just the slightest bit of iridescence. Perfectly well done.
I really like it as a thing in itself, the way the teal comes throught he silver in shifting shades. Nonetheless I went, “But my teeeeeeaaaaaaaaalllllllll.” It may be that I am not built for the kind of classy subtlety of taste that this hair color implies.
I lived with the uncomfortable hair style for the rest of the day just to make sure it wasn’t the triggery reaction and that I wouldn’t like it more when I got used to it. NOPE. I hated it. I am apparently born to be disheveled.
…
Writing the following feels foolish and arrogant, a combination of completely nerdy and completely indulgent that I’m not “supposed” to actually think about/feel proud of, but I’m going to leave it. I’m not sure what the resistance to the idea is, maybe “you’re too smart to be this vain/airheaded/girly, have some self-respect already” stuff. But it also ended up wandering into writerly territory. Hm.
…
Talking about hair with Katelyn, she wanted to know what I wanted for colors for Halloween, and she kept saying she wanted me to bring a picture of how I wanted it to look.
My brain futzed out. I *know* that bringing visuals to a person working creatively in a visual medium is helpful to them, and that people who are good at their craft won’t try to be slavish to the image but to the intent behind it–but the image helps.
At the time I just laughed and said, “I’m making up a character. If it goes well, I’ll write a story for it.”
The part I couldn’t explain to her kind of comes out of a lot of stuff: being a writer, working in marketing, figuring out how to dress the actual body I have and not the body I wish I had, and like a decade of talking about this stuff with Ray, who IS a visual person who designs her own characters. So I know how to make visually memorable characters. I’m not a master of it yet, but I’ve figured out the basics.–Whenever I went to the Denver ComicCon (or whatever they’re calling it at the moment), I’d spend hours upon hours trying to suss out which characters people were copying in their cosplay and why, what the elements were that were important which could be skimped.
It’s probably too much to go into here (even for me), but the bones of it are simple:
The personality inside matches the presentation without.
Example:
In the WIP, Goth Girl has a friend I think I call Lady Vamp when I need to mention her.
Goth Girl’s outfits are mostly black and kinda classy, balanced top and bottom, defined waists. I built her based on the Carolyn Jones’s Morticia. Her style can allow for ruffles, polka dots, purples, reds, and–she’s made up her mind to adopt them–cardigans with pockets. They’ll fall at about waist length when she eventually gets them. When she wears Docs and black jeans and t-shirts, the t-shirts are looser, blousy. She does great Rockabilly outfits, but softens them. Her butt makes Black girls look twice. When she opens her mouth, it’s rarely a joke or a pun that comes out but she laughs with gusto. She has a cat’s sense of humor. She usually wears a black wig with soft waves; her natural hair is a sunny gold color with loose curls.
Lady Vamp is taller, seems even taller because of the sharp heels she wears. She has a thin frame, no ass, naturally very dark, fine, straight hair, always has some kind of dominatrix element to her clothing (within the confines of her straight job). She’ll only wear black and scarlet red. People look at her and go “sharp.” She has no real sense of humor, has difficulty doing anything other than a quick smile, and never “breaks character.” (She’s started to warm up a little, but not much.)
You’d think that the Lady Vamp character would be more memorable. She certainly stands out visually; it’s her goal. But *anybody* could be Lady Vamp. Her personality has been flattened and simplified, not just because that’s practical for the story, but because she’s the kind of person who scrapes the messy edges off things until only “perfect” shades of black and red remain.
The actual, memorable characters who are LIKE Lady Vamp have a sense of humor. Elvira. Morticia.
Lady Vamp you might dismiss at a party. “Oh, yay, pretentious goth person.”
But I can put Goth Girl in–sorry!–a red plaid schoolgirl skirt, thigh-high socks, a sweetheart top (with a black cardigan), a chunky silver skull brooch pin, and a big floppy black Audrey Hepburn hat, and she’d be the only thing you’d see in the room. (Hm. I should give her that outfit later.)
I think the reason why beginning writers always try to “dress” their characters is that they think they’ll be able to give them a personality that way. Usually what happens is you get Very Earnest Descriptions of Blue Jeans and a Fedora. Something “cool.”
Goth Girl’s outfits get described, but it’s because that’s HER; she’s very conscious of how she looks. She feels like she’s the shortest person in the room even when she isn’t. She struggles with trying to be authentic versus coming across as somewhat cold and prickly. She’s not sure who she is at times. She doesn’t think she has a lot of innately good qualities or any originality but that she’s good at pretending to be interesting. Clothes are important to her the way a chameleon’s shifting coloration is important to its reproduction and survival.
I didn’t plan any of that out. I just had a woman reading a book in a van while someone else drove, and he was like, “Hiss at the kids in that van over there,” she she was like, “FINE” and went full-throttle for it, just to make HIM laugh.
I didn’t start with a character or with an outfit so much as I started with a moment and some subtext.
So do I need to plan out what hair colors go into my Halloween hair? Do I need pictures? For Katelyn, I do. For me, I don’t. I just need the things I normally need to build a character: all the things that make up the creative ME…plus a moment.
That moment will get there when it gets there; it’s gonna be fun.
…
I recorded a couple of videos out in the dark. The first one is mostly frogs. The second one is a ramble on writing, specifically, when it gets easier.
The new Ray hair, which channels her attitude.
The new “me” hair, born to be disheveled.
Midjourney’s idea of what Goth Girl looks like. Not…bad?