I’m utterly amazed how this can actually be used by a professional writer, in a professional magazine. This is something that we all have done, so don’t act like you didn’t, but usually we outgrow this after the first few stories. So I’m just shocked to see it in an otherwise decent story I read this evening. Yes, I’m talking about the dreaded self-assessment-in-a-mirror-so-the-writer-can-describe-the-character syndrome.
In this case, it’s not a mirror exactly but an airplane window. She “had left him the armrest they shared, but now she leaned her elbow on it as she looked out the tiny window. She saw her own face in the glass, superimposed on the clouds: a red-haired woman in her worried forties, with a high, lined forehead and a long, thin nose.”
Arggghhhhhh.
I cannot express how much I hate that. Nor how amateurish that seems to me. One of the first things we all learned in workshops was to try and develop character. Make the reader visualize the character. Make the reader sympathize and understand the character. Define the character. And sure enough, next week, everyone one of us turned in a stinking mirror scene in our stories. But usually it got drummed out of us and by the end of the semester, we knew better than to do this.
At this point, I’d rather the author never give me a single detail about the character than to see this freshman writing 101 device used.
But hey, what do I know? This lady is a published author with a major house and I’m just me, sitting in my kitchen blogging, refusing to look in any mirrors.
Hilarious! Thanks! Why aren’t you a published writer? OOops! Maybe that’s a loaded question. I’ll have to go back and read your posts - I just stumbled onto your page.
Don’t discount all mirror scenes just because you were taught to in a class. Mirror scenes have been used very effectively, such as in Beauty Lessons by Cofer.
This puts it very nicely-
“These rules aren’t exactly arbitrary. Having a character gaze into a mirror is evidently an involuntary reflex for amateurs and writers without talent. But the rule makes no allowances for the possibilities of a mirror scene in the hands of a writer with talent. (See Katherine Manfield’s “Prelude.”).”
http://www.newyorkpress.com/18/48/books/SamSacks.cfm
Admittedly, talent and experience can pull off a mirror scene. No doubt about that. You’re exactly right.
But all too often, we see such mirror scenes painfully put into use without doing anything new to it. I’d like to see a mirror scene where the character gazes into his open mouth to look at a filling. The mirror could reveal a mouth full of fillings (indicative of poor hygene, lack of care, or just bad teeth) or could reveal a pristine set of choppers marred by this one small filing that drives the character bonkers (indicative of a need for perfectionism, or some compulsion of some sort). But just something different with the mirror.
Instead, it’s usually, just the same old obvious amateurish thing.