Slim, Athletic, and Generic

There's a trend I've been noticing in books on the Internet. First, I found it on Quizilla, and that was expected (Quizilla isn't very reputable for its collection of "authors"). But it has spread throughout the Internet like a virus.

Character Sheets.

Honestly, they're fine to keep to yourself. A list of your characters' description, hobbies, background, etc. I often use character sheets to develop my characters (check out this: http://www.geocities.com/poetess47/100questions.html). But I sure as hell don't put these sheets as my first chapter. Basically, you're describing your character to us as if it's a Myspace profile. All of the things in the character sheets should be spread throughout the story. Some of the things on these lists aren't even relevant to the story. I don't care about all the different ways the main character wears her hair unless it affects the story somehow.

The character sheet chapters are an example of "info-dump". You're introducing many concepts in one chapter that should be spread out and hinted at instead of blatantly listed. Some info-dumps are hard to spot, so I'll discuss those later.