Kathleen edits

Kathleen-
Thanks for asking us to do this! You've almost got to mine on both lists! Here's mine again, slightly re-worked: (No, it's not an opening, though it is in my first scene. She's just watched a dragon materialize over a man who is lying in the street.)

Gianna pulled her cloak around herself more tightly and rubbed her eyes. Casualties were nothing new in Jarentho, but dragons that seemed to shimmer in the cold winter air were another matter completely. They no longer existed, except in fairy tales she could barely remember. True, this one's scales glistened with iridescent colors, just as those in the stories, but that didn't mean anything. Besides, people were walking through its body as though it didn't exist.

I like dragons.

Gianna pulled her cloak around herself more tightly and rubbed her eyes.

Don't work too hard to have her move. The pulling the cloak around her probably adds nothing (it's not an action connected to what just happened), and serves only to hide the actual meaningful action of her rubbing her eyes (expressing disbelief at what he just saw). Also, those actions are kind of in conflict. Act the motions out! Sounds dumb, but really, if you act those motions out, you'd get that they shouldn't be in the same sentence. If you gather your cloak around you, your hands are on the cloak and aren't immediately available to rub your eyes. Yes, you could take your hands off your cloak and apply them to your eyes, but really, if gathering the cloak doesn't add anything, why have it in there? Not all sentences have to be longer. Try this:
Gianna rubbed her eyes.

Now if you want the pulling the cloak around her to show that it's cold, that's good-- but not here. Here she has just seen a dead body and a dragon. If she's feeling the cold, she's probably not paying enough attention to the main event.

Watch out for relatively meaningless motions. If he's pushing his hand through his hair or she's smoothing her skirt and -- be honest here-- your only real purpose here is to use an action as a quote tag or as a "stutter" to break up the description or introspection, well, see if you can find an action that is more relevant to the moment we're in.
Casualties were nothing new in Jarentho, but dragons that seemed to shimmer in the cold winter air were another matter completely.
Good info here, but maybe too much for one sentence-- the info is getting lost. What I'd suggest is starting with two sentences and then combine them if that's better. A couple thoughts-- you're working with a "sight" motif here-- she saw the dragon, she rubs at her eyes, she sees it shimmer. So make the casualties a "sight" too. I'd suggest getting more visual there, but also more detailed. "Casualties" is a military term and deliberately distancing-- you use "casualty" to hide the reality of death and injury. You don't really need to distance here, do you? So think about a more vivid word, like "bodies". And elaborate. Remember, I'm saying to try a full sentence. Bodies were not an uncommon sight on Jarentho streets? Go with the sight motif-- don't lose your unifier.
... but dragons that seemed to shimmer in the cold winter air were another matter completely.
"seemed to shimmer"-- come on. Shimmering is a visual phenomenon. If it "seemed to shimmer," it shimmered. Watch the wimp out words.
They no longer existed, except in fairy tales she could barely remember.
"Dragons" is a keyword, and a come-on word-- don't feel you can't repeat it. You should repeat it here. That "she could barely remember"-- well, it feels sort of shoved in there. Whether she remembers them or not, she knows dragons are only in fairy tales. You got the important part in here-- that they did once exist. :)
Dragons no longer existed, except in fairy tales.

If you want to tell more about the fairy tales, good-- but modify fairy tales, like "fairy tales she'd heard as a child" or "fairy tales that frightened (place name) children." Or "fairy tales from the very dawn of history."

True, this one's scales glistened with iridescent colors, just as those in the stories, but that didn't mean anything. Besides, people were walking through its body as though it didn't exist.

Is it still there? I thought it had vanished and she was remembering. Don't know why I thought that. You might have (first line) she rubs her eyes, but it's still there.
True, this one's scales glistened with iridescent colors, just as those in the stories, but that didn't mean anything.
Well, actually, THAT doesn't mean anything. What do you mean? What does it mean or not mean?
The "just as" phrase is a bit clunky. Maybe try an adjective before "iridescent"? glistened with the same iridescent colors?
I'd suggest just going with the people walking through it. What you probably mean is that she's the only one who sees it, and besides, it's not solid, right?
So maybe--
True, this one's scales glistened with the same iridescent colors, but people were walking through its body as though it didn't exist.

I never like "people", but passers-by is clunkier. :) Pedestrians?

Now if the dragon is hovering over the body, are people also walking through the body? Are they just stepping over it? Is it just the dragon that can't be seen, or the body too?

Alicia

Starting character individuation

I was talking to a friend about how you get different characters when you're kind of drawn to a particular type, or when the readers really like that type-- say a macho hero. So I got to thinking about how we can individuate characters who start out just as a "type".

I am a firm believer in getting to know your character-- in assuming that he's real and can be revealed to you through observation, analysis, "interviewing," whatever works. You can start with one little thing you know about this character, and find out more from that. That's not to say that everyone with one trait is alike (all baseball fans are not alike), or that you aren't shaping and selecting as you go. But let's just start with a quick exercise to see how much you can individuate by making choices and figuring out what they mean.

Here are two guys, and initially they seem a lot alike to me-- both macho cops, both tough and brave. From the outside, I see a major difference.
1) Tony loves baseball.

2) Jake loves football. (They both like all sports, but when it comes to buying season tickets, you just have to order your priorities. :)

That I can see from the outside. What does that mean?

It means that Jake is willing to withstand a lot in order to get what he wants. (Let's say he's a Cleveland fan-- they play outside, right, in the north? :) Doesn't matter if the wind is coming up off Lake Erie and the rain's coming down. The Browns are playing the Steelers! He's going to be there. It also means he can love hard and hate hard (football team rivalries are much more intense). The Browns are seldom much good, so he suffers loudly and miserably. And frequently. That to him is a measure of his loyalty. He'll be a Browns fan no matter where he lives. All a guy has to do is put on that brown uniform, and he's part of Jake's team. And all he has to be is be traded, and he's the enemy. The team is all in what's pretty much the ultimate team sport-- the whole team needs to move at the same moment and with the same overall plan for success to happen.

Tony, given the choice, will be a bit of a sybarite. Baseball is a summer sport. He loves to sit out in the sun on Sunday afternoons at a beautiful stadium and watch his team. Nice if they win, but you know, if they lose, he's still had an afternoon in the sun. The season is so long, and there are so many games, any one of them (esp in the first half of the season) doesn't count much, so no use mourning them. He gets into the characters of the players, easy to do because they're so visible in their moderate uniforms and little caps. They can really show their personalities because the game is so slow. And individual effort really matters, because at any given moment, only one player has any control of the ball. And so he gets attached to one fielder who always flips the ball up after catching it to end the inning-- just a fun gesture-- and when that player is traded, Tony keeps track of him and always pauses and watches his highlights on Sports Center, and smiles when he hits a home run.


Jake is probably a pessimist. (Well, you'd have to be. Cleveland, nuff said.) He thinks that only enormous effort can win the day, and that one stupid mistake on one player's account can ruin the dogged perfection of the whole team (quarterback throws interception.... end of drive).

Tony is probably an optimist. He think style is probably most important. You're never going to succeed always. The best hitter in history made outs 60% of the time. Assume it's not all going to go well, and celebrate openly the good moments.

They're both sports fans. They both like beer. They both hang out with their friends. They both have the sorts of brains that can remember years of team statistics. But one is going to go to games with a small group of close friends, and one is going to have a dozen not so tight friends that he goes to games with. Which? (Football has only 8 home games a season; baseball has 81. So Jake can meet the same buddies for each game, but Tony's going to have to recruit a lot of pals to take that extra seat with so many games.)

I don't mean all baseball fans are alike. But I do mean that you can choose one thing you know about him, and you don't have to know any significance at all, why he's that way, what caused that, anything about his past, and you can start building an individual. Just make that one thing something that the other hero isn't. It'll send you off in a different direction. Stay open, extrapolate, ask questions. What sort of person does this or values this?

What this means is that you can truly start a story knowing only a little about your protagonist-- as long as you extrapolate from that little you know so that you can learn more about this person.
Alicia

Ransom Notes

For those of you who enjoy reading the Secrets anthologies, there's a chance for you to win a free copy of the new July volume plus Calista Fox's new novel. Both of these books are part of our regular print program. So if you win the contest, you get actual paperbacks in the mail. No downloads.

To enter, send an email with the subject line "Ransom Note" to eRedSage@gmail.com and put the word edittorrent in the body of the email so we know where you got the logo.

The contest lets you "Kidnap This Logo" and post it on your own blog, too. Then you can ask people to enter, too, but instead of putting edittorrent in the body of the email, they should put a link back to your blog with the kidnapped logo.

Every person who sends a ransom note is entered into the contest. As a bonus for people who post the logo, if your reader's ransom note is picked, you will also win a set of the same prize books. So the more of your readers post the logo, the more entries you get in the drawing.

Entries must be received by July 6, 2009. We've extended the deadline because entries are still coming in. This contest has generated a lot of enthusiastic kidnappings and ransom notes.

If by chance an edittorrent reader's ransom note is selected as the winner, then Alicia and I will donate our winning volumes for a second contest here on this blog.

Speaking of Contests On This Blog...

Where are all the entries in Murph's Challenge? There's no penalty for guessing wrong. Might as well take a stab at it. Click the Secrets cover with the headline "Murph's Challenge" for more information.

Theresa

Sylvia edits

Sylvia--

[His father] had discovered it on the rocky beach of one of the far islands and immediately proclaimed it the perfect gift for his queen. It took over a dozen men to bring back to the Sithein and when she saw it, she declared that it was the perfect chair, declining even the thinnest pillow. A thick double layer of wool was wrapped around her waist and then pulled around the back and over her shoulder to tuck in at her waist. She claimed it was to ward off the cold damp of the Sithein but Tyrae suspected it was to cushion herself from the hard stone of her "perfect" seat.

Watch all the "its". What is "it"-- a stone? A chair? A stone chair? Something else? A very large conch shell (well, why not? It was found on a beach :)?
[His father] had discovered (NOUN) on the rocky beach of one of the far islands and immediately proclaimed it the perfect gift for his queen.

Do you need "immediately?" "Proclaimed" is a big strong verb. You already have three modifiers in the sentence. Remember that you don't need to make every sentence bristle. :)

It took over a dozen men to bring back to the Sithein and when she saw it, she declared that it was the perfect chair, declining even the thinnest pillow.

Now if you use a noun in the first sentence, you can use it instead of one of the "its" here. The first "it" is that non-descriptive universal it, but the rest presumably refer to the chair (or whatever). Let's just see if we can get rid of that first "it"-- sometimes that's more trouble, but we'll see:

A dozen men were needed to bring the stone back to the Sithein and when she saw it, she declared that THIS (gets rid of another it) was the perfect chair, declining even the thinnest pillow.

"she?" His mother? The queen? Repetition of important nouns is not a terrible thing. Too many "its" is worse. :)

was the perfect chair, declining even the thinnest pillow.

Oh, those participles. Now what does "declining" modify? Chair? It (or this)? Oh! She!!! That's kind of a few nouns back. Try putting the modifier close to the noun it modifies or rewrite:
and when she saw it, she declined even the thinnest pillow, declaring that THIS (gets rid of another it) was the perfect chair.

That also ends the sentence on the more important word-- the chair, not the non-existent pillow.

A thick double layer of wool was wrapped around her waist and then pulled around the back and over her shoulder to tuck in at her waist.

Is there a reason you went passive here? There are reasons for using the passive voice, mostly to hide the actual subject ("This bill must have been lost, as it was not paid"). But your default should always be active voice-- use passive only when you decide it's better in this context. (There are reasons to use passive, and one is simply that in some sentences, it allows for a structure that you want for some reason... but I don't think that's true here-- maybe it is?)
Here's how that sentence would be in active voice:
She had to wrap a thick double layer of wool around her waist and pull it around the back and over her shoulder to tuck in at her waist.
Is that better? Or does it lose something going active?

She claimed it was to ward off the cold damp of the Sithein but Tyrae suspected it was to cushion herself from the hard stone of her "perfect" seat.

Another "it", and this presumably refers to the wrapping up, not the chair? Try "this" instead.

Also, you have two complete independent clauses there, so there should be a comma before the conjunction (but).

I don't know about the quote marks around "perfect". Why not let the irony be there without too much fingerpointing? Like:
She claimed this was to ward off the cold damp of the Sithein, but Tyrae suspected it was to cushion herself from the hard stone of her perfect seat.

So-- watch the pronouns there-- "it" can refer to almost anything. So:
She claimed this was to ward off the cold damp of the Sithein, but Tyrae suspected she wanted to cushion herself from the hard stone of her perfect seat.

What do you think?
Alicia

Line editing -- if I haven't gotten to yours--

If you posted a short passage for line editing (please no new ones-- I'm way behind on everything :) and I haven't gotten to it, and you still-- after reading the others-- want me to look at it, please post here. Rules:
4 sentences
Best if not the first 4 sentences, but if you post your book opening, I'm going to evaluate it as non-opening, just a line-edit.
Understand that this is YOUR job-- I seriously doubt I delve this far in when I edit. That is, if you expect an editor to do this for your whole book, you'll be disappointed. There is not world enough and time. You can do it, however. I'm just giving an example.

Repost here, please.

Leona, I have yours, so you don't need to repost.

Alicia

The Need to Revise

Picture me in a room full of writers. Not too hard to imagine, right? I'm standing up and talking to a couple of women I've met before. Nothing too dramatic, just chitchat.

Behind me, three women are seated at a table and making plans. This conversation is fascinating, and I can't stop myself from eavesdropping a little. A writer, somewhat sad and apologetic, is explaining why she has been out of touch lately. She had a deadline and put herself on internet rationing until the book was finished. (That was the part that interested me. I keep threatening to do this to myself.)

Her friend tried to offer her some advice. "If you write a thousand words a day, that's 365,000 words a year. That's three and a half novels, every year."

"No, I can't write that fast," says the deadline author.

"It's only a thousand words. And that's just where you start." She's clearly warming up to her subject. "Bump it up to twelve hundred words a day, and you get a whole extra novel every year."

The deadline writer is demurring when a third writer chimes in. "Oh, but you write much faster than that. You told me you write 15 or 20 pages a day."

She sounds skeptical. "When I'm drafting. You're not leaving time for pre-writing or revisions."

"Don't need them," the first friend insists. "If you write this fast, straight through, the story will hold together by itself."

"And even if it doesn't, so what?" This is the second friend. "Your editor will tell you how to fix it. She's going to make you change things, anyway."

"Yeah, and by the time she reads it, you'll have something else ready to sell her, too," says the first one.

"Well, that might work for some people," the skeptic said. "But not for me. I need eight months to finish a book. At least. I don't want to send it to my editor until I've had a chance to really think it through and make it as good as I can."


I made a silent bet with myself that only the third skeptical writer was actually published. I didn't think the other two had ever had an real exposure to the publishing and editing process. Over the course of the event, I had the opportunity to meet all three of these women.

The deadline author had a string of credentials including magazine articles and more than ten novel releases. A solid midlist author with the potential to breakout. Authors like this are in danger of not getting enough editorial attention, and this woman was smart enough to know it.

The third writer, the one who was merely chiming in, has never sold a story. No surprise there.

The one advocating for a thousand words a day? Sold a pair of stories to one of those places that gives e-publishing a bad reputation. You know the kind of place I mean. They push their authors to sell them lots of stories because they make up for the low returns with high volume. Every book under the writer's bed gets a slot on the editorial calendar. These places convince their authors that they're building readership with each new release. (You sold six copies of your first book and nine of the second? Fifty percent increase! Woo hoo!) And these authors are rarely exposed to anything like a real, nitty-gritty, crawling-up-the-book's-butt-with-a-magnifying-glass kind of editing which they certainly need. Some of them don't even get basic copy editing.

Want to know why? Because many e-houses pay their editors in percentages. That's fine if the book sells in good numbers. Not so fine if it doesn't. Then the editors, too, have to make it up in volume, so they buy up lots of projects and push them through to publication as quickly as possible. (My house doesn't do this. Obviously. My turnaround time lately ought to prove that.)

In any event, if that's the kind of career you want, then by all means, write your words every day and submit them without scrutiny. I mean, each thousand-word segment will be fine, right? Because you're jumping into it with one deep breath. And when you kick for the surface as hard as you can, every day, day after day, you build up your muscles, right?

Right. It's absolutely true that many writers find this helps with their process. Most of the working writers I know have daily or weekly page goals, and they make those goals consistently. This is how they get to be working writers in the first place.

But they also know the difference between generating pages and generating good pages. And they know that when a writer is so close to her work, dealing with little bits each day, that she might not see the total picture. It's the forest and the trees. Each individual tree might look perfect. Step back to look at the forest, though, and a different landscape might emerge.















The moral of the story: Take the time to step back from your work and see it from another perspective, or obvious design flaws might make people think you're just dicking around.

Theresa


(This picture comes via Smart Bitches from a blog called Garden Rant, which is one of my new faves. The comments are brilliant. Thanks to both blogs for giving me the perfect visual excuse to blog on the importance of stepping back from your masterpiece to give it a big picture review for global revisions, important even without penis plants, but so much better with them.)

John Harper-- edits

John:
Adrian Deep hated being planetside, but you couldn’t fly the fringe without cargo.
The barkeep slid the unbranded beer forward. “Enjoy.”
The beer looked black. Bland and bitter, but cold and wet. He took another sip and studied the patrons of the port tavern. Men sung out of tune to a scratchy three-dee unit. Laughter roared from the rear booths. A game of poker broke into a fight, and just as quickly died down.
Deep grimaced. People. Jobs would be so much easier if he didn’t have to actually meet clients.


Must say once more. This is not a critique of an opening, just how I'd edit a few lines. Everyone okay with that? This is just an exercise about editing, not selling, etc.
Adrian Deep hated being planetside, but you couldn’t fly the fringe without cargo.

Okay. Alien terms, but understandable. "Fly the fringe"-- I'd just experiment and make sure that's exactly what you want-- fly TO the fringe, fly ACROSS the fringe-- make sure it's not better with a preposition. I don't know, but that word might provide a bit more info.
The barkeep slid the unbranded beer forward. “Enjoy.”
Suddenly we're in a pub? Need some reference to that in the first sentence, I think. What does getting cargo have to do with his being in this bar? I can think of a few things-- like he's arranged to meet someone there-- but maybe actually say so? Like
couldn’t fly the fringe without cargo, and he could arrange a cargo here in this dive.
Or whatever-- I don't know, but I really don't like just jamming from line 1 to suddenly having a barkeep in there. Can you, in a word or two, establish setting before bringing in the second character? It won't take much-- just a quick reference to meeting a customer in this bar. Then the barkeep slid the beer forward, etc.

The beer looked black. Bland and bitter, but cold and wet. He took another sip and studied the patrons of the port tavern.

Okay. Minor point only-- "sip" seems sort of poncey. That's all. :) Also if you mention that this is the port tavern (as I hope you will) before the barkeep line, say something more here-- don't just repeat. Expand. Maybe "the crowded tavern" or "the dirty tavern" if you use "port" earlier.

Men sung out of tune to a scratchy three-dee unit. Laughter roared from the rear booths. A game of poker broke into a fight, and just as quickly died down.

This is okay. Just a list, nothing about him, but it's an okay list. Maybe if you had him lean back against the bar before he does the survey, something more active and physical on his part, also keeping the focus on him. That might individualize the list a little, filtering this through him, but also giving us an idea of how he thinks (because we'll get that this is what he sees and thinks as he sees).
A game of poker broke into a fight, and just as quickly died down.

What quickly died down? Notice that you have ONE SUBJECT for both predicates, and that is the "game of poker". If you want to make clear that the fight is what's dying down, say so: A fight broke out in a game of poker, and just as quickly died down.
or
A game of poker broke into a fight, and just as quickly the ruckus (or other synonym for "fight," or just repeat "fight" -- that might give nice rhythm) died down.

Deep grimaced. People. Jobs would be so much easier if he didn’t have to actually meet clients.

Okay, this doesn't really connect. First, there's nothing about the list that shows real contempt for people-- they're singing and laughing and, yeah, there's a fight, but it quickly peters out. Can you make the list more contemptuous? What does Adrian hate about people? Show that. If he hates laughter and singing, use more nasty terms, I don't know, cackling and caterwauling? Maybe too intense, but how would he say it, if he is looking at this scene and feeling scorn?
Jobs would be so much easier if he didn’t have to actually meet clients.

This would connect better if you had something about client before, like him looking around for the client and seeing the guys singing, laughing, etc. It doesn't take much to set up for these connections, but if you don't put them in there, the reader might find the paragraph a little bumpy.

Or has he come here not to meet clients but to market to these patrons? If he's actually here to GET clients, "meet" isn't a good word, as it has the meaning (which I thought you were doing) of meeting a pre-existing client, rather than getting new clients.

So see if you can connect Adrian closer to the bar-- clarify his purpose, his attitude?
Alicia

Getting the sequence of a scene

I've been working on scene design lately, and I am struck again with the essentiality of getting the events in the right order. The scene is building towards something-- an action, a revelation, a decision, a conversation, a punchline, something. And how you get there matters.

One thought -- the scene events should be caused by other scene events. Don't blow the sequence here.

So Protagonist is a teacher. She comes into her classroom and sees the mean, punitive principal standing over Mark, the student she's been hoping will overcome all the obstacles of his background and go to college.

Now imagine the principal immediately tells her that Mark was caught smoking weed on the football field. If instead you have the principal say, "I'm kicking him out," without explanation, then Teacher can bristle and protest, and the principal can yell at her for going against him, and it can get really close to her quitting as a protest against his treatment of her student, and THEN finally Mark can be driven to admit his crime—so that he can cut this short before she quits or gets fired.

Make sure you don't have the big reveal (the moment where we learn what Mark did) happen too early. Also understand that it matters who reveals it. Should the principal use the truth as a weapon? Or do you want Mark to acknowledge his own error? This depends on what your purpose is (and where in the book this scene is). But usually big reveals, disasters, and realizations happen near the end of the scene, for greater drama and plot propulsion.

Here's another:

A young couple is packing to go away for a weekend.

The phone rings. It's the husband's brother, who says he's coming to town with his irritable wife and four loud, disobedient children (well, the brother doesn't characterize them that way).

Husband says, well, we won't be here.

Hangs up. Wife says, isn't it fortunate that we were leaving town.

They leave town.

Now that's no fun. They planned something, and what they planned isn't changed by the events in the scene. It means that what happens in your scene doesn't matter.

Now how hard is it to make characters react? To make their actions reactions?

Let's try it:
Husband and wife are sitting around, contemplating a nice relaxing weekend at home.
Phone rings.
Husband's brother says he's coming and bringing wife and kids.
Husband thinks fast and says that unfortunately, he and wife are just packing to go out of town-- and he gestures to wife to start packing so it won't be a lie. Oh, shoot, we won't be here to visit with you when you and the family come into town!
Now they have to go out of town, just in case bro comes by and knocks on the door.
So they pack quickly and leave town, as a result of what happened in the scene-- the phone call.

Scene design is all about sequence, about designing the events of the scene to create the most powerful effect. Cause-effect is not the only organizing principle, but in the western tradition, it is probably the most powerful.

Whenever you think, "And they just happen to ... (do something, plan something)," that "just happen to" is a signal that you are not thinking causally. I'd go so far as to say virtually nothing should "just happen to happen" in a story. It might SEEM that there's no cause, that it's random, but we are Westerners, and we don't actually think very much happens at random (at least not in fiction).

Just keep that in mind: You are in charge. You can design a scene. This is fiction. You can make the events happen in the way that leads to the most drama.

(Of course, if you are writing, I don't know, Waiting for Godot, you'll want to subvert this Western need for causality by making it seem as if something is going to happen, but nothing does. Story of my life. :)

Alicia

Jeanne's edit

Jeanne--
set up: she's looking at her reflection in the mirror and she is covered in blood, but only in the reflection

It dripped from her hair, weighing it down until it resembled a weeping willow. There was a jagged crimson line separating her head from her body. Blood trickled down from it forming red rivulets that merged with the innumerable cuts marring the porcelain perfection of her body. Some were long thick gashes created by hands hyped on the adrenaline of battle. Some where thin straight lines crafted with surgical precision. Some were symbols whose meanings had long since been lost.


It dripped from her hair, weighing it down until it resembled a weeping willow.

I thnk your difficult task here is to make clear (without being too obvious) that she's looking in a mirror, and the mirror image is different than reality. So let's be in her. She's looking in the mirror and sees blood. (You might have this already, but carry it through.)

You might have done this purposefully, or maybe you're just resonating to the centrality of the mirror motif in amplifying and contradicting the notion of identity and self. The "looking in the mirror" exercise is used, you know, to test consciousness-- that is, when does a baby realize that it's her image in the mirror-- it's not another real baby? (It's very amusing to do this with a cat-- he'll try to get behind the mirror to get at the other cat. Of course, being a cat, once he realizes he can't figure this out, he ignores the mirror in his lordly fashion.) The reversal of the image is also important. How long before we automatically scrub the smudge off our right cheek when we see the smudge on the left cheek in the mirror?

Anyway, as soon as we incorporate the idea that this is a reflection of us, we react by taking in the information about us. So if she's seeing her own image there, what's the first thing she's going to do? I think she's going to put her hand to her head, to make sure that it's not really bleeding. Then she might look at her hand-- no blood. Then back at the mirror, and then she would catalog the rest of what she sees.
It dripped from her hair, weighing it down until it resembled a weeping willow.

Watch your "it"-- use the noun when you can-- you've got three "its" here, and two of them are about hair, I presume, and one about blood. Use the noun:

The blood dripped from her hair, weighing it down until it resembled a weeping willow.

That "until it resembled" feels more clunky and "written" than the rest of the passage. How about:
The blood dripped from her hair, weighing it down like a weeping willow.
or till her head looked like a weeping willow? A bloody weeping willow? A willow is green, so you might say "red weeping willow" so we don't get the wrong idea!
There was a jagged crimson line separating her head from her body.

Where was the line? Across her throat? Again, she might touch her throat (and does her hand in the reflection go to its neck too?) and look at her hand again. Be in her body, and see through her eyes. What does her body do? She's not just a seeing machine-- her body is going to move instinctively.
Blood trickled down from it forming red rivulets that merged with the innumerable cuts marring the porcelain perfection of her body.

If she's naked, say it-- of her naked body.
Some were long thick gashes created by hands hyped on the adrenaline of battle.
Some what? Some of the cuts? Don't worry about being too long here-- length will help, I think, because you want this to be important.
Now "hands hyped on the adrenaline of battle"-- does she know that? Is she the one observing that? It seems sort of omniscient.

Some where thin straight lines crafted with surgical precision.
Proofread. :)

Some were symbols whose meanings had long since been lost.

Are you in her viewpoint? If so, does she know the meanings had been lost, or does she just not know what they mean?

I would suggest ending with something that is hers-- her thought or her movement. Don't lose her here. Now you might be going for something different-- maybe this is a common experience for her, to look in the mirror and see the future, maybe? No matter what, though. I think the sight of blood on your head and slashes in your body would be primal enough that it would be really hard not to react somehow. If she doesn't respond, make some point of that, that she's clinical, maybe?

Great idea!
Alicia