A mask is the part of a person that is designed to be seen.
A mask can be a role, a posture, a voice, a mood, a reputation, or a principle used as armour. It is often partly sincere and partly protective.
Masks are not automatically bad. Many masks are how people survive, work, belong, and keep dignity. The trouble begins when the mask becomes a prison, or when it becomes a weapon.
In creative writing, a mask is useful because it creates tension. The reader senses the gap between what is shown and what is felt, and that gap creates curiosity.
A strong mask has a cost. It makes something difficult: intimacy, honesty, rest, vulnerability, change.
# Workshop In a workshop, set the Mask by treating it as the character’s “public operating system” for the interview: the version of themselves they want a Stranger to meet, and the version they use to stay safe, impressive, lovable, or untouchable.
- Next: Scene
Ask each writer to name the Mask in one sentence, then give it three observable signals the interviewer can hear or see (a repeated phrase, a habit of dodging certain topics, a moral posture, a charm move, a refusal to be pinned down).
In paired work, one writer interviews the other’s character and tries, gently, to notice when the Mask tightens or slips; the writer playing the character protects the Mask until a single well-aimed question forces a crack.
For public domain characters, the Mask becomes a respectful “best guess” based on the text: what role do they perform, what do they never admit, and what do they need the world to believe about them.
The goal is not cosplay but revelation: the Mask creates tension, and the interview provides a clean stage where the Mask can be tested without turning the exercise into argument.
# See - Image Mask - Mask Scene Conflict