I enjoy masks and have a lot of them on my wall. It seems all cultures either have masks or use paint or ochre to change the look of their faces for particular occasions.
Masks are used for celebrations, for rituals, or to hide their face for some usually nefarious deed – robbing a bank, or some other criminal act.
We use masks or heavy makeup in theatre as well to illustrate some particular tradition, from the Classic Clown to Columbine or Harlequin.
These garish, beautiful, startling, sometimes grotesquely exaggerated masks are really just mimicking what happens in real life.
Most of us wear masks – we like to keep some of ourselves hidden – the public face and the private face – and writers know this so when begin to develop character – sometimes the mask is the character – (think Sherlock Holmes and his modern equivalent in the BBC series who deliberately wear masks). Think of all the characters you’ve read about or watched on film, think of the way the masks are peeled off so by the end of the story or film gradually the truth of the one underneath underneath the mask has been revealed, either for better or worse. Maybe the character faces their real self for the first time?
The trouble with masks is they become so comfortable, so safe, we tend to to think its actually us behind there and its not until something dramatic, a traumatic event say, makes us face the real us hiding away under the pleasant and serene mask.
Happily, when you’re writing about a character, you know that your job is to gradually remove the masks (plural because there’s always more than one) – the one the character wears for their mother, another one for their lover, yet another one for their child, their friend, their boss, and so it goes.
When you’re thinking of character, think about masks – think about secrets – think about peeling them off little by little.
