I confess, I have very little to say about this one. But I'm noticing a strange and intense correlation between vampires and shitty writing. No, seriously, take a look at this one. And yes I'm in italics, I'm always in italics:
As I sit here listening to the chill wind blow outside, I put quill to paper; to remember; to immortalize, to tell my story.
My very first thought: why do the semi-colons look like that? I think it should either be “I put quill to paper: to remember; to immortalize; to tell my story” or “I put quill to paper: to remember, to immortalize, to tell my story.” Though frankly I don’t like any of it, it reeks of cliché.
I tell a story that you may not believe, but mark my words as truth, for when you read this, you will believe.
Let me see if I can untangle this one. You’re going to tell us a story we likely won’t believe, but we should take your word for it anyway, because somehow despite its lack of believability, the act of reading it will change our minds.
Sure, that makes sense.
For my story begins eons ago, during a time and place that history books don’t even remember.
Bolding emphasis mine. Here’s why:
My eternal death, my immortal sorrow, began well over a thousand years ago.
So now that you’ve failed history and history books forever, who do you think you are, the lyricist for AFI? My eternal death, my immortal sorrow??? Gah.
I guess B.C.E. really stands for Before Common Error, huh?
A stroll with a beautiful woman on a sunset beach, such a setting that you see in faerie tales.
Fairy tales. Also, this is a time and place history books don’t even remember? A stroll on the beach with a Baywatch babe? What history book did you read, Ray Comfort’s Guide to Everything?
Her skin so pale, her eyes so bright. The vitality of her.
O’ stylistic sentence fragments, wherefore art thou? Look, if you want that to make sense, fix the above sentence. That sentence appears to be talking about the setting and then suddenly we’re all about the woman. Sequence, author, it’s your friend.
A beauty so vibrant as to make you catch your breath. Skin so soft and ivory as to be transparent. But as most things are, a deadly beauty, hidden within.
I’ll give you one thing, author. You wanted to make it look like journal entries, and indeed, it does read much like the LiveJournal of a sixteen-year-old boy addicted to The Used, My Chemical Romance, and fauxhawks. Could you ease back on the florid sentence fragments just a little?
Embracing, we tumble to the sand, tempting each other, tasting. Unbridled passion burning deep inside.
…I’ll take that as a ‘no’.
Unbeknownst to me, a feral passion, Unquenchable thirst to drain me, to turn me. To remold me in her image; the nocturnal hunter that preys on mortals.
I’m trying to figure out why I’m struggling to do more than complain here. Oh, right: I can’t rewrite sentences when the book doesn’t actually have any.
To describe the pain of that night.
Did someone dare you to write an entire book in sentence fragments? Is that what this is? Wait, am I being Punk’d??? Ashton, is that you banging around in the closet?
An unutterable agony that you could never imagine, safe in the sanctity of your mortality that is so frail, so paltry, but yet makes you feel safe.
Safe Sanctity®: The latest product from the Department of Redundancy Department. Don’t worry, Safe Sanctity is guaranteed to make you feel safe.
I laugh at what you do not know, what you cannot begin to understand.
That’s a funny coincidence, because I’m doing the exact same thing right now.
A pain so acute and focused, as your body dies, withering around you, whilst your soul grows.
A pain so acute and focused what??? That sentence doesn’t actually say anything. Also, I thought vampires don’t have souls. Isn’t their angst supposed to come from the fact that they sold their souls to become vampires? WAIT ARE THESE SPARKLEPIRES?
Growing more powerful. Growing more attuned to the senses.
What is growing more attuned to the senses? Wait, never mind, don’t answer. There’s no sense in the world that sentence is attuned to.
Hearing so fine it hears the guttering of a candle, three houses away. Sight so sharp to count hairs on a maidens head in pitch black.
…You know, when you fail to punctuate properly, you make yourself look like an ignoramus who thinks there are hairs on the hymen. WTG!
Smell so refined as to smell blood in the air as a shark tastes it in water, like a primordial halo hovering; clinging to every pathetic mortal.
You let Word tell you where to place your semi-colons, don’t you?
By the way, sharks smell blood in the water. And what the fuck does blood in the air have to do with a “primordial halo”? On second thought, why am I still expecting any of this to make sense?
Pathetic mortal? Understatement.
To be immortal. To live millennia. Simple mortal pleasures to be forgotten. The feel of a sunrise warming your skin. Knowing that your mere touch is foul, a creature. An abomination.
What, what, what?? Would you please finish a thought? A single goddamn thought? Is that really too much to ask???
The unnatural thirst for blood.
But as I write, the thirst is intolerable.
Something is intolerable, all right. Hey, wait, was that almost a whole thought?
God have pity on my soul, I must hunt.
God have pity on my brain, I must scream.
Okay, so far in our unbelievable story that we will totes believe by the end, we’ve learned that…Well, we’ve learned…uh, I think what the author is trying to communicate is…that is, the story is about…
Rolling around in pain on a beach with a Baywatch floozy? IDK.
*****
Entry Two
Maybe we’ll actually learn something this time.
Again I sit here at my desk in front of a roaring fireplace to tell you another portion of my eternal damnation.
Hate to break this to you, dude, but your eternal damnation is boring.
Tonight, there is a blood moon shining its garish light across my face, glistening off the crimson tears caking on my cheek.
Are you sure they’re not purple tears? You know, purple like every goddamn thing else in this monstrosity. I bet you write poetry too, don’t you?
A single damned tear I shed for the innocent whom fate drug across my ill fated path this night.
WHAT!?
Oh my god, I can’t do this anymore. I wish someone would “drug” me. DRAGGED. DRAGGED. D-R-A-G-G-E-D.
Oh, what a drag.
A lovely thing she was, so young, so tender as only a mortal can be. Alive and content in her innocence.
Okay, I think I’ve figured this out. Someone made a joke list of all the things you should do in writing i.e. tell rather than show and use lots of purple sentence fragments. And you thought they were serious. Right?
I caught her scent as I was on the trail of another.
So full of life, she was. Yes, was. I couldn't refrain. The thirst was unbearable.
Then grab a Coke or something. Trust me, the caffeine would do your emo ass some good.
The scent of her drew me. Pulled me to her as a moth to flame.
By which the author means to imply that his main character is an insect with a brain so tiny, it willingly flies to its own death?
The “moth to the flame” phrase, aside from being viciously overused, is meant to describe a character being drawn to something dangerous to them. Not to describe your creepy perv’s lack of self-control.
The sight of her. A sight I haven't seen in centuries, and shall not likely see again for just as long. Hair as ebon as a starless night,
WOW. The Corny O’ Meter just broke.
cheeks with just a tinge of rose. Eyes, by the gods, I have never seen eyes such as hers. Pale, almost as Ice they were,
Vanilla Ice, Ice Baby?
or a spring sky.
Ice: Clear unless you add dye or something similar to affect its color. Spring sky: Notably BLUE unless it’s raining, at which point it’s gray. What does this have to do with ice again?
Dressed in a silken gown that rustled as it were alive in the breeze.
So her eyes were dressed in a silken gown?
Oh, that’s the last of it. Thank god. This is one of those “I really pray you didn’t actually bother a busy professional with this nonsense” cases. You didn’t, right? Well, at least I can rest easy in the knowledge there’s no way you made it past query letter stage with those writing skills. (Please note, I use the word “skills” extremely loosely here.)
