The Mirror Cliche and Other Temptations on the Road to Literary Hell

For once, I am going to write a short post.  I promise.  

I was sitting at my computer this morning forcing myself along on my usual 10-2 writing bout, a euphemism for my excruciating daily wrestling match with my latest novel, when it came time to describe my main character.

The tale is told in the first person so, of course, I was more than tempted to resort to the good old mirror. And the fact that there was a mirror (actually, in my case, a reflective car window) in the scene for reasons other than my protagonist's narcissistic navel gazing justified my temptation. 

Mirror gazing is, of course, a cliched literary device we've all seen.  It is used by the best, and the worst, of us and most readers undoubtedly barely even notice.  I've come across the good ol' mirror in Stephen King, Michael Chabon, T Jefferson Parker, Robert Butler.  And that's just in the past few months.  So I figured I was in good company.

But then I got to thinking about how rarely in daily life I look into the mirror in contemplation of my beautiful features. And I decided that I didn't want to impart my down-to-earth character with the narcissism implied by staring lovingly into the mirror.

A quick google search revealed to me that I wasn't the first writer in the world to become fed up wit the cliche.  Which is why this post will be short: I'm not exactly treading new ground.  A few of the best examples I came across to avoid those tempting reflective surfaces include:

• Description in relation to other characters
• Pure, expository prose, i.e., don't beat around the bush and just tell us already
• Piecemeal character descriptions, i.e., the sprinkle approach to revealing attributes little by little
• Using another character's dialogue to describe the character, as in:  "You bastard, you're just so pretty I can't stand it.  Your button nose, your almond-shaped eyes and your pouty red lips make me go weak in the knees."

 I'm sure there are many more that I haven't listed.  In my case, I went with my last example: another character meets my protagonist and comments on his looks (albeit a bit more subtly than my example above).

But that got me to thinking about other cliches that are out there and I would be interested in reader feedback on your favorites.  A few examples that came to mind from my own writing include:

• Using sighs to denote boredom or frustration.  Oh, I love my sighs.
• Foot tapping for impatience.  I can't remember when I last saw this in real life but my characters do it all the time.
• Rolling eyes to indicate....What exactly do rolling eyes indicate, anyway?  Disbelief?  Frustration?  Boredom?  I'm actually not sure about that one other than that most books I read have at least one instance of eyes that role.
• Circumstance and coincidence:  I actually try to avoid this if at all possible because it bugs the hell out of me when I see it.  Bad TV dramas are the usual culprit.  A little is ok but when major plot points turn on it than count me out.