He walked down the alley, and saw a person. He followed the person because the person looked weird, and then the person pulled out a gun, and shot him twice. The man ran away, into a store, and when he ran in pursuit, he couldn’t find the man.

There is no backbone, nothing to tell you anything that may be of significance (how the man looked, where the character was shot, etc.). This is bad, and will more likely than not ruin your novel’s plot (if your reader doesn’t know enough to follow the plot, what’s the point of the plot being there?)

Now, you might be thinking “Okay, I’ll saturate my novel in descriptive terms.” Well…let’s see how that turns out:

He walked down the dark, dismal alley, and spotted his target, a man in a black suit, black tie, black top-hat, and shiny black shoes, as dark as a moonless night in August. He followed the man stealthily, steadily, quietly, like a puma stalking her small pathetic prey. The person who he had been oh-so silently and stealthily stalking turned around, his ears pricking up like that of a dog who heard something nobody else did, and he  turned around. As the two made eye contact, the man pulled out a metallic object, who’s black, small-yet-threatening, heart stopping figure cause his walk to stop dead. The man turned to him, and without saying a word, quickly and abruptly shot two holes in the his chest. The man then ran into a black shop which’s windows were filled with books and was identified as a Barnes and Nobles by the man who was now lying on the ground, gasping his  last breaths and crawling into the store, hoping, quite pathetically and weakly, that he could still catch the man despite the gore-filled hole in his chest. Then he succumbed to the constant flow of red, wine-like, pulpy blood that was  leaking out of the two massive holes in his chest.

*Whew!* That’s pretty hard to read through (and write). That’s a lot of description. Not as bad as some works I’ve read, but it’s still pretty bad…the point is, moderate your descriptive words use. Use enough to give the general a vivid picture, but if you put too many, it’s as if your reading through molasses (if that analogie makes sense)

At first I thought it was a bright idea. Then I realized, I was ignorantly immature. While ignorance is indeed bliss, that doesn’t stop it from being a big pain in the rear at the wrong times. I was just about to click delete on my bid and send the failure of the poem I had written to kingdom come, when I got a PM from the person who was looking for my work. He loved the poem (or so I gathered, though he didn’t say it), and wanted me to start working on the articles he had chosen for me to work on, immediately!

Which shows that if you want a freelancing project, don’t give your prospective employer any of that cut and paste junk. Invest time in making a quality, creative, well thought out (or just really creative) peice of work, and then submit it. It’s like blogging. Quality, over quantity.

Prologue

“I felt it, days before it came. I doubted it would be able to reach me. Enveloped in a sense of self-security, I ignored it. It didn’t feel, or, at least, before I was OverWritten, it’s presence didn’t feel characteristically evil. It just felt…there.

Two day’s before it took me, I heard it. It didn’t threaten me, didn’t say anything that struck fear in my heart, I just heard it’s whispers. The whispers were inside my head, or so I figured, as I went to my parents complaining that I was being haunted.

Twenty-Six hours before I Left, I could feel a strange sensation in the core of my body. It was the push of something from the outside, and the pull of something in me, as if there were two magnets inside me, each one desperate to come out. As the day went on, the push-pull feelings got stronger. As I lay in bed on the night I was Forgotten, I heard it speak. The voice was there, but not only was it in my head-it was as if the thing was right beside me. I felt something touch my shoulder, and I turned to look at it, but found my body was far away. The magnetic feeling in my chest was unbearable-I couldn’t breath. The worst part was I seemed to have two heartbeats-or two hearts inside of me. One-the one I could feel the most, so I believe it is mine, was beating strong and proudly, as a result of my exercise. The other wasn’t strong, or weak. It was there, too. I believe it was the beings heart.

I lay, struggling to breath, struggling to comprehend what was happening. The magnetic feeling was reversed-the part that was outside was in, the part that was inside was out. And there was this tear-oh a terrible tear, as I felt myself being ripped from my Earthly body, to become one of the Forgotten.”

I watched in horror as the memory replayed itself over and over, a terrible paradox of what ruined my life. As I saw it for the fourth time, I wept.

Any questions, comments, or concerns would be appreciated.