RWT: Death to the Mirror Cliché!

Okay, I have to rant for a second. I was just reading a book (which will remain mercifully unnamed) and I saw a cliché I didn't realize I hated with a passion until coming across it for the millionth time a few days ago.

You might be familiar with it already, but when I say mirror cliché I'm talking about authors who take the easy path and describe their main character by having them look in a mirror and fuss over their appearance.

For example, a story about a middle school girl struggling to fit in amongst her peers wakes up on page one, shuffles to her bathroom, looks in the mirror, and starts listing off all the physical features she's unhappy with. Her brown eyes are boring, her hair is too frizzy, her braces too bright, bla bla bla. (no offense to anyone with these features by the way, it was middle school, we all looked ridiculous)

To those of you thinking what's wrong with that? let me just say, IT'S CHEATING. This is literally the easiest and laziest way to introduce a character's physical appearance early on in the story.

Now I completely agree that it's important to give your readers a mental image of characters, and as a reader, I prefer to have this as well. If I'm on chapter three and still have no idea what these people look like, I'm going to be ticked. So don't think I'm telling you not to describe your characters. The issue isn't whether or not to describe them, it's HOW to describe them.

Don't just have your character look in a mirror. Trust me, it's been done. And as a writer, we want to be different from everybody else, right? So get creative. Find ways to tell me what your character looks like without falling into the mirror cliché, because I'll be completely honest, I had to stop reading this book after a chapter or two. The writing was just way too lacking for me to put up with, and the cheesy mirror thing I had to slog through on page one was the first tip-off that this author and I weren't going to get along.

Try to think of some other ways you can describe a character. Maybe have an old friend see them for the first time in years and talk about how different they look now. You could discuss family members and whether or not their features resemble those of the main character. Heck, get even crazier. Have someone paint them in the nude. Have a bully read aloud hate comments from their social media account. Give us a description of the main character from the eyes of their stalker. However you do it, surprise the reader! Give them something they haven't seen before.

In my trilogy, I switch perspective between three main characters. The first time they all meet, they can't stand each other. I try to give my readers a hate-tinged view of each character through the eyes of the people meeting them for the first time. It might not be perfect, but at least it's not as boring as someone looking in a mirror. Here's a brief clip. (the character speaking is a Fey boy describing an older human boy after meeting him for the first time)

"I had already given him his own once-over last night. Tall and pale, he looked like somebody stretched out a Neverchild and dipped it in powdered sugar. His gangly movements reminded me of a self-absorbed stork. And the way he bossed everyone around with that phony low voice made me want to roast his windpipe on a spit."

So tell me what you all think. Do you agree that this cliché needs to die a fiery death, or am I just being dramatic? How do you feel about the examples I gave to use as a replacement? Do you have any other suggestions? Is the method I used in my trilogy effective, why or why not? Let me know in the comments!