Hello dark'ness dementia raven way my old friend. (Part 1)

I haven't touched fan-fiction dot net in like four years, I do not know how things work around here anymore.

This book is basically me reviewing and editing terrible fan-fictions and hopefully preventing potential readers and writers from making the same mistakes.

Let's start off with a bang, first fic I'm reviewing is 'My Immortal'.

(You can find the fan-fiction on myimmortalrehost dot com)

(God, I can't believe I'm spending my Wednesday evening doing this.)

Chapter 1.

AN: Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik) 2 my gf (ew not in that way)

What a healthy dose of homophobia.

raven, bloodytearz666 4 helpin me wif da story and spelling. U rok! Justin ur da luv of my deprzzing life u rok 2!

Justin is literally never mentioned again.

MCR ROX!

Christ.

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XOXO, gossip girl.

Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that's how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don't know who she is get da hell out of here!).

Oh my LORD i love seeing the unnecessary Author inputs again, but I want to touch on another topic that may help you with your writing.

Usually in books, if you say a character looks like a celebrity, the reader is immediately taken out of the world and has the reaction that I'm sure many people have with the Amy Lee thing. I googled Amy Lee when I read this first and she literally looked like an emo version of my mom, that's not Hogwarts material. If you have a face-claim, mention it before the story starts, in the notes or something like that. Or don't include a celebrity look alike at all, and just describe the character the way that they look in your mind's eye.

Also don't include the character's entire name. Just include their first name, and maybe their last name. But the reader doesn't need to know the character's third middle name.

Also don't tell your readers to leave your book because they will.

I'm not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he's a major fucking hottie.

I'm related to a "celebrity" (he's on a tv show) but I would never call him a hottie because we're literally related. There's no point to this line by the way.

I'm a vampire but my teeth are straight and white.

Literally all the vampires in the twilight movies have straight white teeth she didn't need to include this line at all.

I have pale white skin. I'm also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I'm in the seventh year (I'm seventeen). I'm a goth (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow.

She shouldn't have looped the Hogwarts thing in with the outfit description.

Also, yes, the infamous My Immortal outfit description. It's terrible. A way you can improve your outfit descriptions is literally give the outfit as little lines as possible, which is to say, do the opposite of Miss Tara Gillespie here.

I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

She could've just said "I flipped them off".

"Hey Ebony!" shouted a voice. I looked up. It was…. Draco Malfoy!

She didn't need an ellipsis (an ellipsis is '...').

"What's up Draco?" I asked.

"Nothing." he said shyly.

Draco Malfoy can be shy sometimes (hypothetically), but I see a lot of commentators yellincoherently about "DRACO MALFOY HAS TO BE IN CHARACTER. DRACO MALFOY IS. NOT. SHY!" and bruh, Draco can be shy if he wants he's not a robot. But I think the main point from their ramblings is that you should characterize Draco (or any character you write a fic about) correctly. You can do this by re-reading the books, or re-watching the movies (and no, you don't HAVE to read the books to write a fan-fiction. If you're a good enough writer, you can make up for your lack of reading by doing a lot of research or reading the Wikipedia synopsis of the book (it's that simple).

Also, said is not dead, it is an invisible word, which means it basically functions in people's brains as punctuation (please use proper punctuation in your works though).

But then, I heard my friends call me and I had to go away.

Tara got lazy here and decided she didn't want Ebony and Draco to talk.

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AN: IS it good? PLZ tell me fangz!

Could be better, Tara, it could be better.

Chapter 2.

AN: Fangz 2 bloodytearz666 4 helpin me wif da chapta! BTW preps stop flaming ma story ok!

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That's a spicy devil's number you added in there, ma'am.

The next day I woke up in my bedroom. It was snowing and raining again.

She's better at setting the scene than I am, I'll give her that.

I opened the door of my coffin and drank some blood from a bottle I had.

I'm not concerned with the spoilage rate of blood (it's a magic school, who gives a shit about physics), but what kind of bottle is this? A wine bottle, a Hydroflask, a plain old Dasani waterbottle? These are the important questions!

My coffin was black ebony and inside it was hot pink velvet with black lace on the ends. I got out of my coffin and took of my giant MCR t-shirt which I used for pajamas. Instead, I put on a black leather dress, a pentagram necklace, combat boots and black fishnets on. I put on four pairs of earrings in my pierced ears, and put my hair in a kind of messy bun.

Oh yes, I get to my most favorite topic. Weasel words! 'Kind of' is a weasel word (well, technically, two weasel words). There's an amazing essay called 'Revising Your Prose For Power and Punch', it can be accessed with a bit of quick googling.

A quick example of how Weasel Words hurt writing:

"Jason seemed to spy a dragon out of approximately the corner of his binoculars. "Mom! Look! A dragon!" Jason somewhat yelled, suddenly tugging on his mother's floral dress."

Doesn't really seem to be anything wrong with that, right? Well, it's perfectly fine, but a way to make it better is to cut those Weasel words I underlined.

"Jason spied a dragon out of the corner of his binoculars. "Mom! Look! A dragon!" Jason yelled, tugging on his mother's floral dress."

I cut the Weasel words, and the prose is better. Try it out in your own writing, and see if you like it!

(A list of weasel words can be found in the essay)

My friend, Willow (AN: Raven dis is u!) woke up then and grinned at me. She flipped her long waist-length raven black hair with pink streaks and opened her forest-green eyes.

Mention that she opened her eyes beforehand, or not at all since she already mentioned that she woke up.

She put on her Marilyn Manson t-shirt with a black mini, fishnets and pointy high-heeled boots. We put on our makeup (black lipstick white foundation and black eyeliner.)

Unnecessary make-up descriptions are not needed.

"OMFG, I saw you talking to Draco Malfoy yesterday!" she said excitedly.

"Yeah? So?" I said, blushing.

"Do you like Draco?" she asked as we went out of the Slytherin common room and into the Great Hall.

She could've dramatized them walking out into the Great Hall instead of narrating it.

Dramatization of a scene is where the scene (walking to the Great Hall, a first kiss, etc) would be more interesting played out rather than mentioned in a dialogue tag or in passing like Tara just did.

Sometimes it makes it seem like the Slytherin common room is directly next to the Great Hall when in reality the Slytherin dorms are in the Dungeons.

"No I so fucking don't!" I shouted.

She should have whispered that.

"Yeah right!" she exclaimed. Just then, Draco walked up to me.

"Just then," another Weasel word.

"Hi." he said.

"Hi." I replied flirtily.

I'm not against making up words, but there could've been a better way to describe that, like 'I replied as I twirled my hair'.

"Guess what." he said.

"What?" I asked.

"Well, Good Charlotte are having a concert in Hogsmeade." he told me.

"Oh. My. Fucking. God!" I screamed. I love GC. They are my favorite band, besides MCR.

It's obvious that she likes Good Charlotte (I've literally never heard of them until now) so she didn't need to include another sentence saying that she likes Good Charlotte.

"Well…. do you want to go with me?" he asked.

Draco might as well be a whole-ass cardboard box seeing how one-dimensional he is, also I don't know what he looks like because Tara never described him.

My advice on character descriptions is; when in doubt, use three sentences. Or, for smaller characters, use specific features to make them stand out.

I gasped.

This is a bad chapter ending because it ends on a dumb cliffhanger (which I've noticed is a sort of trend on Fanfiction dot net for some reason?). Don't include dumb cliffhangers, because they sound really, well, dumb.

Chapter 3.

AN: STOP FLAMMING DA STORY PREPZ OK! odderwize fangs 2 da goffik ppl 4 da good reveiws! FANGS AGEN RAVEN! oh yeah, BTW I don't own dis or da lyrics 4 Good Chralotte.

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On the night of the concert I put on my black lace-up boots with high heels. Underneath them were ripped red fishnets. Then I put on a black leather minidress with all this corset stuff on the back and front. I put on matching fishnet on my arms. I straightened my hair and made it look all spiky. I felt a little depressed then, so I slit one of my wrists.

WHOA THAT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE SIS.

I read a depressing book while I waited for it to stop bleeding and I listened to some GC. I painted my nails black and put on TONS of black eyeliner. Then I put on some black lipstick. I didn't put on foundation because I was pale anyway.

At least she has vampire physiology down.

Though why would Dracula drink his victims blood when all he had to do was cut his wrists?

I drank some human blood so I was ready to go to the concert.

I went outside. Draco was waiting there in front of his flying car. He was wearing a Simple Plan t-shirt (they would play at the show too), baggy black skater pants, black nail polish and a little eyeliner (AN: A lot fo kewl boiz wer it ok!).

I personally would never wear eyeliner, but yes, a lot of boys wear it, and it doesn't look to bad.

"Hi Draco!" I said in a depressed voice.

Contradictions can be fun, but not ones that make no sense.

"Hi Ebony." he said back. We walked into his flying black Mercedes-Benz (the license plate said 666) and flew to the place with the concert.

She could've just said 'we flew to the concert.'

On the way we listened excitedly to Good Charlotte and Marilyn Manson.

Marilyn Manson scares me.

We both smoked cigarettes and drugs.

sMoKiNg DrUgS

When we got there, we both hopped out of the car. We went to the mosh pit at the front of the stage and jumped up and down as we listened to Good Charlotte.

"You come in cold, you're covered in blood
They're all so happy you've arrived
The doctor cuts your cord, hands you to your mom
She sets you free into this life." sang Joel (I don't own da lyrics 2 dat song).

Pretty sure that lyric is about a baby being born? I'm never going to listen to that song, I'm more of an Elton John kind of guy.

"Joel is so fucking hot." I said to Draco, pointing to him as he sung, filling the club with his amazing voice.

Suddenly Draco looked sad.

"What's wrong?" I asked as we moshed to the music.

Fuck yea dude we MOSHED. That sounds like a British word for sex.

Then I caught on.

"Hey, it's ok I don't like him better than YOU!" I said.

"Really?" asked Draco sensitively and he put his arm around me all protective.

"Really." I said. "Besides I don't even know Joel and he's going out with Hilary fucking Duff. I fucking hate that little bitch."

I think she's a queen. Hilary Duff is an Icon.

I said disgustedly, thinking of her ugly blonde face.

That is a top tier insult.

I'm not kidding, just imagine someone calling you out for having an ugly blonde face.

The night went on really well, and I had a great time. So did Draco. After the concert, we drank some beer and asked Benji and Joel for their autographs and photos with them. We got GC concert tees. Draco and I crawled back into the Mercedes-Benz,

Crawled is an unnecessary synonym for 'got' 'went' 'started the car' she literally could've said any of those things? What the fuck?

but Draco didn't go back into Hogwarts, instead he drove the car into… the Forbidden Forest!

God, please no more ellipsis. Also, she could've ended the chapter on 'he didn't go back to Hogwarts' and stretched the tension out on where they went for the next chapter so people would be interested.

Well my dudes that's about as much as I can take, so I'm gonna completely rewrite the first chapter of My Immortal.

If you have any requests please share them with me either by Private Message or a comment, I have nothing better to do this summer, so I'll probably check them out.

Scroll down to read the My Immortal rewrite I just wrote. (this was my chance to have fun and recuperate from working on a work in progress all day)

Chapter One

Snow beat down on Hogwarts castle as Ebony Way stalked the edge of the forbidden forest, looking for a small squirrel or first year to sink her white canines into. Her long black hair stuck to her face as her steely grey eyes desperately glanced past the spindly trees like a predator. Lighting struck the sky, illuminating a dark crevice of a rodent's cave. In the crevice lay a small fox.

Ebony hadn't fed in weeks. She did all she could to control the urges she'd been feeling over the past year, resorting cutting herself open to get a semblance of control. Yet, the more she didn't feed, the more her animalistic instincts took over. The regret over letting Raven manipulate her into becoming one of them made Ebony physically ill.

Still, the fox was asleep. Defenseless. Ebony took off her boots, and grabbed onto a tree branch, careful not to make a sound.

She swung up into the tree, using superhuman feats of balance to nimbly tip-toe across the branches. As she neared the fox's den, she retrieved her wand from her school robes.

"Avada Kedavra." She whispered as she crouched down on the branch.

The fox's breathing ceased as the green energy washed over its body.

Ebony jumped down from the tree and accio'd her boots back to her, after she put them on, she sidled down next to the dead fox.

"Sorry, critter." She dragged the fox out of the crevice, and onto the forest floor.

Ebony's fangs sunk into the furry mammal, blood spurting out of its body and onto her icy wrists.

When she was done feeding she gave the animal an unmarked burial and gave a small eulogy.

"Thank's for the meal, Mister Fox."

She wiped the warm blood off of her face with her robes, put her hair up, and tread back to the castle that she called home.

Wrote that while brushing my teeth, which explains why it isn't the best.

Enjoy, and sayonara.