Are Your Characters Naked? Costuming Creates Body Language
Byinterview by Aggie Villanueva
Attend one of Lynne Gentry’s workshops and expect to see a quick-change artist, or even be costumed yourself. That’s because Ms. Gentry, known as the Susan Lucci of Genesis, is trained in theater arts at Oklahoma Christian University, and draws upon twenty years experience speaking, teaching novice actors, and directing, not to mention writing.
Ms. Gentry created a remarkable workshop that draws from her theater work to flesh out written characters as three-dimensionally as a live actor. Costuming is an avenue for characterization that is often overlooked by writers, probably because we don’t understand it. I thought I did, until taking Lynne’s workshop.
Lynne asks, “Ever showered your character, dressed them in a shirt and slacks, and sent them forth in your story with no further consideration?” She teaches how employing stage costuming techniques can create the body language necessary to flesh out interesting and unforgettable characters.
We all understand how costumes contribute to the reality of the actor, and it makes perfect sense, but the rub comes when we try to believably apply that to a non-visual, written character. The visual and the mental image are so different; how do we apply the same principles?
Author Lynne Gentry, who has finaled for the past three years in American Christian Fiction Writers’ contest, blends her writing and vast theater experience to bring this all together for us in her workshops. She utilizes the costuming and body language techniques of the stage to make flat characters leap from the page.
Lynne serves as the Director of Creative Arts at the Dallas church her husband pastors. Her responsibilities include directing all technical support used in the worship assembly as well as writing, directing, and producing all of the drama, music, and videos used to enhance the pastor’s message.
She teaches stage presence and body language to worship teams, pastors and children, and has written, produced and directed countless worship sketches, plus two full-length musicals for the Christmas and Easter holidays. She has also served as a consultant on a sitcom writing team for Prestonwood Baptist.
With sixteen years experience writing children’s skits and directing thirty to eighty kids at a time in a competitive drama program called Leadership Training for Christ, Lynne loves watching children succeed. Recently, two of her young acting students signed with a major acting agency in Hollywood, another made the final cut in American Idol, and another just signed with a Broadway agent.
For twenty years, Lynne has been an inspirational speaker traveling the country speaking at retreats and conferences. She is a member of Christians in Theater Arts (CITA), has acted in a training video for Southwest Airlines and recorded books on tape for the local school district. Currently, Lynne performs monologues from her original work, The Reinvention of Leona Harper, at women’s conferences.
Aggie: Lynne, thank you so much for joining us today. I know you’ve spent the last twenty years working with novice actors, who you describe as a lot like paper dolls—flat and flexible, and as fragile as the paper tabs on paper clothes. Are our written actors as fragile? Why?
LYNNE: Thanks for having me, Aggie. Yes, I believe writers are frustrated directors struggling to coerce rookie characters into reaching their full potential. Why? Because written characters tend to come onto the page the same way a novice actor takes the stage for the first time…tentatively and very unsure of themselves.
The reason? Losing yourself in order to become someone else is a challenge, a risk most of us are afraid to take. As authors, we not only create the cast, we are the cast. We must play all the different roles and play them at the same time. We are the hero. We are the heroine. We’re even the bad guy.
Therefore, the challenge for any author is the same as any actor—to jettison the defining characteristics of their own personality—fears, past experiences, limited knowledge—and allow themselves to become a totally different person. If an actor is unwilling to lose their inhibitions and begin to think and move like a different person, a wooden and unbelievable character will be the end result every time.
Likewise, authors reluctant to push their characters past themselves will not achieve the characterization that conjures the three-dimensional in the minds of readers.
Aggie: As demonstrated through your acting classes, you say the only thing you have trouble teaching your stage rookies is how to transition from that flat character to a three-dimensional character. Why is that?
LYNNE: Novice actors are eager to learn. They’ll quickly master their lines. They’ll move where I tell them. They’ll enter and exit right on cue. But creating a character that can convince the audience they are who they are pretending to be requires that they master the nuances of body language, movements that communicate that they are actually thinking and feeling what they are saying. Teaching someone to “think” for themselves has plagued teachers throughout the ages.
Aggie: If we are to “jump into that nebulous world of defining what builds characterization, we’d be better served using our energy to try to harness the wind.” I agree with the difficulty you describe. As a reader, I know that gripping written characters are probably the weakest link for writers. So, is there hope for creating plausible characters in our writing?
LYNNE: Yes, absolutely. All of us can recall our favorite literary characters, characters that seemed so real in our mind that we hated for the story to end. I think the key to creating plausible characters is helping them become real in the minds of the reader.
Just like when we watch an actor on the stage or screen, we know that person is not really who they are pretending to be, but somehow in the delivery of their lines, their movement across the stage, and by the inflection and intonations of their voice, we believe for the duration of the show that they are that character.
For example, I just saw Blindside. I know Sandra Bullock is not the real rich housewife who took in an underprivileged kid, but because she dressed, moved, and spoke like one for the duration of that two-hour movie, I was willing to believe she was the real Leigh Anne Touhy.
Our readers know we can’t be all those people in our story, but if we can make each character act like who they are pretending to be, the reader will suspend their disbelief as well; and it is when the characters become real in the minds of the reader that they become people the reader cares about.
Aggie: You advise layering our characters with body language to achieve one more layer of characterization. Can you give us a few examples of body language cues and what they mean?
LYNNE: Body language cues are many and require that we become keen observers of nonverbal communication. Even the slightest variance on the same basic body movement can communicate something totally different.
For example, arms crossed across the chest can mean several things. It can mean someone is cold, or that they are self-conscious about their weight, or madder than a wet hen.
How do we know the difference? We don’t always, but a few extra body clues help us hone in on the most accurate interpretation. If the character adds a lifted chin and stares straight into our eyes, we get a different interpretation than if the person with the crossed arms lowers their chin and drops their gaze.
One action means you can’t hurt me, I won’t let you. The other means please don’t hurt me, but just in case, I’m trying to protect myself from that possibility. I recommend writers read and study several books on body language.
Aggie: I’ve already downloaded the book you recommend to my Kindle. (See Lynn’s Recommends after the interview) Obviously you don’t have time to “wait for your actors to acquire upper level acting skills where they have mastered the nuances of body language.” You share in your workshops how you remedy that. How is that?
LYNNE: I set the stage with the props they’ll need, then I put them in costume as quickly as possible. I’m always amazed at the transformation that occurs when I have an actor change into their costume.
Something about taking a football coach who is comfortable in athletic shorts and t-shirt and insisting he slip into his wise-man tunic remodels his body language. Putting a tough guy in a dress alters the fluidity of his movement. And it is in the modification of the fluidity of an actor’s movement, either increasing it or restricting it, that I can effectuate the most rapid growth in their characterization. In other words, when I change their body language, I change what they communicate to the audience.
Aggie: As you explain, early on we learn to discern subtext (the meaning of the words) based on non-verbal communication. Please explain how an actor communicates that? And an example of how a written character could communicate that?
LYNNE: Subtext is saying one thing, but communicating what you’re really thinking with body language. A scene rich in tension will have lots of subtext. The actors may be saying one thing, but by having their face and body reacting contrary to those words, they tell the audience there is more to this conversation than what is being said.
For example, all of us have experienced someone telling us we look good in a certain color, but if the speaker won’t look us in the eye or their brow is furrowed, we are convinced they don’t mean what they said. Why? Because the speaker gave us nonverbal clues to the possibility that we should never wear beige.
I once directed a skit of five women coming to a Bible study. None of them wanted to be there, but all had to say lines that made it sound like they did. That would have been a boring skit had we not managed to communicate some subtext. One of the women was supposed to be soft-spoken. Why? According to the last lines she would deliver, she had been abused in her past. So her subtext from the moment she hit the stage had to communicate that she hoped no one at the study would realize her unworthiness.
With that information in mind, we began rehearsals. The actress entered on cue. Hit her mark every time. Said every line perfectly. But still she did not communicate the subtext of shame and fear…until I re-blocked her. I had her come in, sit in a chair as quickly as possible, angle her body away from the group, cross her legs, then cross her arms over her chest, only allowing herself furtive and occasional glances at her other cast members.
Immediately the audience knew this woman had something to hide. They couldn’t put their finger on what she was hiding because she was saying otherwise. But her body created the tension of the subtext that kept them interested in trying to figure out her secret. In the end, when the actress confessed her past to the group, the audience had their suspicions confirmed and they knew they’d pegged her character correctly. While the actress’s body movements had spurred the subtext tension, the audience had actually done the work of forming her character in their minds–and that’s what makes a character real.
Aggie: Your workshop concept stems from the fact that vocabulary is limited, vague and easily misunderstood without body language to interpret it. Exactly how does costuming influence body language?
LYNNE: Costuming either increases fluidity of movement or restricts it. In her stunning debut novel, The Russian Concubine, Kate Furnivall dresses Alfred, an uppity Englishman, in a cream linen suit for his stage entrance.
Linen is an impossible, unforgiving fabric. It doesn’t have much give. It wrinkles terribly, stains easily and is almost impossible to clean. To make Alfred even more uncomfortable, she fashions this cream linen into a suit, even further restricting the poor man’s movements. And then she drops this character into the middle of a filthy Junchow, China market.
Immediately, the reader can see a character whose movements are restricted and must remain restricted if he is to maintain his pristine condition. It is in Alfred’s restricted movements that the reader begins to form an impression of this character and his desire to remain closed. So when Alfred’s life takes a turn for the wild side, we immediately feel for the guy in the cream linen suit.
Aggie: I was a member of my local drama troupe for years, and I know how hard it is to become someone else. As a writer speaking through so many different characters, I also know it’s even harder to create realistic written characters. Why do all our written characters all start out so flat?
LYNNE: Because they end up being mirror images of us. No matter how colorful we might consider ourselves, none of us are big enough to carry out the characterization of an entire cast. Our characters need to be bigger than us. They need to hurt more than us. Care more deeply than we do. Risk more than we’d ever be willing to risk. That’s a pretty tall order.
Aggie: Do you have any concrete costuming suggestions for getting ourselves out of our characters right from the start?
LYNNE: Yes. Consider your setting and then costume your character in something that would immediately make them uncomfortable in that setting. For example, in Smoke Screen, Sandra Brown dresses her high-heel-wearing heroine in white tennis shoes then forces her to tramp through the woods.
Immediately, the reader can picture this city girl trying to tiptoe around roots and mud puddles in an effort to keep those shoes clean. Soiled white shoes would make a woman who is always camera-ready feel less than her best. And when a character is not at their best is when you have an interesting character.
Aggie: I understand. When someone is in their character’s costumes they feel the transformation, and so communicate it to the audience because their body language instantly changes to that of their costume. What does that “costuming dependence on body language” mean for wordsmiths?
LYNNE: It means we can’t just shower our character, dress them in jeans and a shirt, and never consider what they have on again. Failure to consider what our characters have on is missing an opportunity to observe or change their body language–and when body language changes, character changes.
I love the scene in the movie Miss Congeniality when Sandra Bullock struts out of the hanger in that short, tight dress and heels after her tomboy makeover. Don’t think the success of that scene wasn’t directly tied to very careful costume selections, including those sunglasses and her flowing hair.
Aggie: What benefits do we derive from successfully addressing the writing barriers? Does it strengthen other areas of our writing?
LYNNE: I consider plot one of my writing barriers. Characters come easy to me, thinking about what to do with them is much harder. But, like anything that doesn’t come easy, practice makes perfect. Working to strengthen my plots gives my characters lots more options.
Aggie: How does the writer translate this to create three dimensional characters? In other words, how can we get past the visual limitations of fiction to show how the costumes affect the characters actions?
LYNNE: The beauty of dressing your characters properly in the first place is that the reader does most of the moving of the character in their head. We all know what it feels like and how we move in a shirt that is too tight, a coat that is too big, or dressed in a bunny suit when everyone else is wearing jeans (Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde).
But, taking time to dress your characters gives you an opportunity to make them even more uncomfortable. You can show their discomfort by having them tug at the hem of a skirt that is too short. Or have them push up their sleeves when they’re trying to impress someone with their willingness to get their hands dirty. Or have them pull a stocking cap down over their eyes when they’re trying to avoid being spotted in the grocery store without any makeup on.
Aggie: What part does color play in costuming our characters?
LYNNE: Different colors have different meanings. Green is calming, bringing to mind wealth and safety. Black, on the other hand, represents death or something dark and foreboding.
While you may choose to dress your character in a certain color because it brings out their eyes, consider going a step further. Choose a color that can represent either where they are in life or clue the reader to what might possibly lie ahead for them– like Alfred’s cream linen suit.
I think Kate chose cream to represent Alfred’s purity, his naiveté, the goodness that he would show again and again. But she also chose cream because this color made Alfred stand out against the backdrop of his horrible situation. It marked him as a patsy, a sucker, for all the evil she was about to bestow upon him. Poor Alfred.
Aggie: Can you give us any other general recommendations for the type of clothing you choose to create a specific trait?
LYNNE: If I want a character self-conscious about their body, I hang something baggy on them to disguise the curves. If I want them exposed and vulnerable, I make their clothes fit snuggly, revealing as many imperfections as possible.
If I want them uptight and nervous, I put them in something buttoned-up, long-sleeved, and something they can pull across their core (shoulders to hips) to protect themselves. If I want them hopeful, more comfortable in who they are, I dress them in lighter colors and in clothes that give them greater freedom in their movements.
Aggie: For female characters you speak often of the shoes they wear making a huge difference in body language and subtext. Can you give an example?
LYNNE: Every person has a gait that is distinctive to them. My mom had polio as a child. Her step had a specific clomp, rest, clomp sound. This pattern, very specific to her disability, is hard for someone who is not disabled to imitate.
Actors who are successful at portraying famous people will spend hours studying any film footage they can find. Besides listening to the voice of their subject, they are paying very close attention to how they walked (Leonardo DeCaprio as Howard Hughes, Hillary Swank as Amelia Earhart).
While each of us have a specific gait, changing our shoes will change how we walk. I walk one way in my comfortable Nikes and another way in my Sunday heels. Guys who slouch around in flip flops will strut like a bow-legged cowboy in snakeskin boots.
If you want your character’s gait to change, change their footwear. I’ve seen stay-at-home moms ditch their sneakers and slid into a pair of heels and take the stage like the CEO of a major corporation.
Aggie: You teach that character costuming and props are not just about what time period or place they exist, but about giving our characters “one more layer.” You instruct us to “take time to dress your characters and you’ll be surprised how much easier it is to move them around in your story with the fluidity of their own body language.” Can you give us an example?
LYNNE: I guess I’ll pick on poor Alfred again. Kate has him checking out the wares in one of the marketplace stalls. She simply writes, “The Englishman leaned forward, careful to avoid any contact between the rough-hewn stall and his immaculate jacket.”
She didn’t write that much about how Alfred moved. She didn’t have to. Why? Because anyone who’s ever tried to avoid a toddler’s sticky hands knows what body movements are involved in trying to keep their clothes clean. She didn’t have to write that Alfred probably placed his right hand against his jacket and thrust his left out behind him. She didn’t have to write in his restrictive movements because we could use our past experience of trying to keep our own clothes clean to do the movement in our heads. Causing the reader to move the characters in their heads is brilliant, because it is in our ability to increase the mental movements of a character in a reader’s mind that they suddenly change from flat to three-dimensional–they become real to the reader.
Aggie: You speak about creating a character arc. Can you explain the arc concept further, and how can costuming helps accomplish it?
LYNNE: Many things go into creating that elusive growth in a character. Changing a character’s clothes is just one of those many layers. Think about Maria in the Sound of Music. She starts out all cinched up and unhappy in a nun’s habit. Then she changes into clothes made of curtains and discovers a whole new person. Finally her growth as a woman is portrayed as complete when she walks down that cathedral aisle wearing that flowing white gown. Each costume change clued the audience to some sort of change in Maria, an arc or growth in her character.
Aggie: How can groups contact you to come teach at their functions?
LYNNE: Email me.
Aggie: For those too distant, do you offer online classes? Video training?
LYNNE: I’m working on some online classes for purchase and perhaps a video too. In the meantime, I offer a CD of PaperDolls for $10.00 on my blogsite: http://lynnegentry.wordpress.com
Aggie: Lynne, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your time and experience with us. I know our readers have learned a lot from you, and you’ve given us even more to think about.
For more about Lynne
Lynne Recommends: ChangingMinds.org
Lynne Recommends: What Every BODY is Saying by Joe Navarro
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