Let’s start off on a high, if pre-2019, note:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13147426/1/A-Present-For-Delibird
:D
Penguins are just so, so adorable doing anything.
And now, onward into January.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13164897/1/What-it-Means-to-Hate-A-Miriana-One-Shot
[ not really any Pokémon attributes, but the world it takes part in is a Pokémon based one, connected with the characters.]
It’s not, though. If you make up your own original character and have her in one story where she’s a trainer and then another where she’s an ordinary schoolkid, the ordinary world story isn’t Pokemon-based just because there’s a non-Pokemon point of connection.
It looks like the important part here is her talking about hate and how she hates hate and so on. There’s no reason it has to be taking place in a bland school room with her taking generic notes on a generic topic. (She could be at a pokecenter, she could even just be at a park where pokemon exist as a background instead of school desks.) Even aside from the way this isn’t proper fanfic, it’s just fundamentally boring and empty. Those kinds of details should be used to ground and develop the world and the character. Right now, in a fic you mean to be focused on her feelings, they feel like they’re just popping in at a couple points.
If your OC is for a larger fanfic, then presumably some of her character has to do with pokemon themselves, or at the very least some other pokeworld elements. Right now she’s ranting at generic [people who hate others for them just being who they are] and [those who can’t accept someone simply because they are different, just because they don’t exactly follow the same ideals]. When this kind of thing has come up in canon, it’s been strongly pokemon-flavored. The anime has had plenty of episodes that are some variation on one type of pokemon trainer doesn’t think well of others and plenty more that are a variation on someone being judgmental about the worth of a pokemon. Gamewise, Alola is full of people struggling to live up to a pokemon-based metric of worth and being looked down on for failing. Unova makes a big deal about being accepting of views so long as it’s other people accepting that the Unova majority’s views on pokemon are right. Hoenn has subtler things like Wally’s poor physical health meaning people dismiss him entirely and the implied strife of there being a nearly extinct ethnic group who worships Rayquaza that everyone else dismisses.
Is this girl a trainer? If not, why not, how do other people treat her for it? Is the brother she cares about so much a trainer, why/whynot, how does she feel about how other people treat him about it? Does the part where lots of people think common pokemon are worthless have any bearing on what she says about hating others just for who they are, or is she really just talking about herself personally and doesn’t really care what’s going on outside her sphere?
And getting more into this kind of thing would also help with the fact this isn’t much of a one-shot so much as the first part of something else. There’s not really the flow of a story here. We don’t start in one point and end somewhere else. Instead, you’re packing in establishing detail: this character is good at this and bad at this, her most important relationship is this, other people think of her like that, she has strong opinions on this subject, she isn’t self-confident enough to admit to them. You’re doing a good job of establishing characterization for upcoming scenes in the same story but lacking the payoff of the rest of the story.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13164926/1/Equililbrial-Shift
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
Mind you, this really doesn’t seem like it’s got much to do with that. If the only gijinka element is you saying once that he’s a gastly and not even mentioning the species of the rest, while having the plot play out the same way it would for any human, and going so far as to claim this ghost-type got muscled up in prison…they’re just regular humans. You can write original fiction. You can even write original fiction with fantastic elements like a magic gemstone. And you can write original fiction with magic gemstones and people who look weird – regularly describing whatever you’re visualizing here would probably come off way better than one mention that they’re one of the billion options for what a humanoid pokemon could look like. If the point is just you think gijinka look super cool, sure, but that’s only relevant if you’re making a comic or something else visual.
[The other graying male ]
Don’t refer to people as “the male” or “the female”, it sounds awkward at best.
[ the erring ]
Earring.
Also, this is almost entirely a summary rather than a first chapter. You need to decide if this is backstory or not. If it’s backstory, then you should be starting in the present (oh no, the Seed is gone and he’s in trouble!) and then revealing these details over time. If it’s meant to be regular story, then you’ve got to actually write it out actually happening – show him growing up, show his mom being sad, show him stealing stuff, show him getting in trouble, etc etc.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165025/1/Pokemon-Fusion
Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[The place looked virtually untouched since Team Plasma’s frigate took off 5 years ago, ]
Write out numbers with letters.
[“They look oddly familiar,” mused Cecil, “but I’ve got bigger concerns right now.” ]
Don’t use quotation marks for thoughts, it makes it look like your character is talking aloud.
[“What?” Cecil asked. His gaze wandered around until he noticed several Pokeball-looking patterns at his and Kirsty’s feet. His eyes widened and, before he could say another word, clouds of spores filled the air around him. ]
It’s pretty weird someone would go through the trouble of getting pokemon that could use spore, then harvesting the spores, then putting them into cutely pokemon-themed spore dispersal units, then putting those on a floor, then luring people into that exact spot, when they could just use the pokemon they got in step one and tell them to use spore directly.
[“Kirsty!” he suddenly realized. He quickly stood up and patted his waist down as best as he could with handcuffs on, but his search turned up nothing. “They took her!” he yelled in a fit of rage. ]
Similarly, it’s hard to believe that, upon waking up handcuffed in a cell, he’d examine things, chat with his cellmate, watch his captors show up and drag off his sobbing cellmate, try to smash through the bars of his cell, shout impotently at those captors, stomp and tantrum, sit down, then accidentally notice he no longer has his pokemon’s pokeball.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165150/1/Hue-Cry
[Instead, her parents’ protective shell collapsed and like dominoes, their lifeless bodies dropped her out onto what was left of the bus’s flooring.]
I think this would be stronger if you didn’t have two competing descriptions here. “Shell” works. The domino thing conflicts with that, doesn’t seem to fit well with what’s going on, and also just sounds jarringly silly – I think, for something like that to work at all, you’d have to have all the writing in that space of morbid childish things but the rest of your narration is pretty straightforward.
This also really seems like it’s got nothing to do with pokemon – different personalities with different backstories and relationships, and especially if you’re saying the creatures they turn into are “unknown” and “strange” so it’s not that they’re shapeshifters in a world with pokemon, they’re shapeshifters in a different world who happen to be shapeshifting into weird creatures that, coincidentally, vaguely resemble what we in our world would say are pokemon. At that point you’re really better off just writing original fiction where they can turn into magical animals.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165155/1/Adventure-of-Ash-ketchum-Kanto-arc
People’s names are always capitalized, sentences need punctuation, it’s “you”, and generally try harder.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165196/1/Hoenn-s-Finest-REMADE
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[(8 years earlier)]
You really should not need to open a story and then a single paragraph later say wait no it’s some earlier time. This is doubly true when your opening paragraph is a dull summary. Just start with him and the arcanine meeting as the “present”, then continue on.
[Archie had barely any sleep the night before his tenth birthday. He was far too excited to sleep. He would finally be able to meet new Pokemon and explore the world! ]
Also, what’s even the point of having a character brought up by an arcanine if his life is the same as a generic trainer. Why can’t he meet any other pokemon? Why does he have exactly the same feelings about this as a kid raised normally?
[ in the kitchen finding Growly with a plate strapped to its back and a frying pan in its mouth. It slipped a few rashers of bacon and eggs onto the plate and placed it on the table. It then proceeded to put on a chef hat as it tried to make a plate of sausages. ]
I mean, are you going for some kind of absurdism here? If so it’s not working well. Also, if this pokemon is a major character and was previously called “he”, why are they now “it”? That doesn’t bode well for story consistency.
[Archie picked up a pokeball, the one on the far left. ]
Yeah, if absolutely nothing else, you’d really think the kid raised by an arcanine could manage the bare minimum of actually releasing the starter pokemon before deciding he picked that one to be his properly.
Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165345/1/Getaway-Car
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
[Amanda leaned forward off her hands. “Look, to be completely honest with you, I think that if you want them off your back, you’re just gonna have to waste their time.”
“Waste their time?” She repeated.
“Yeah. Say yes. Go through the motions, do whatever. Go over there, show them you’re not an actress and that they made a mistake, and then they’ll send you home and never bother you again. It’s practically foolproof.”
While Cynthia understood where she was coming from, it still seemed completely unnecessary. ]
Not so much “unnecessary” as “straight up batshit”. There is no universe in which hanging up a phone a bunch of times is harder than flying to another region and spending days/weeks in being barked at on set until they give up and fire you. How are either of these people able to function under with the regular demands people make of a league champion if they can’t even deal with someone calling about a totally irrelevant thing with no consequences whatsoever for blowing them off?
If your goal is for Cynthia to agree to do this despite not thinking she can act, just don’t make her hugely opposed in the first place. Maybe she gets cornered at a party or something and has to listen to some rude guy make an incredibly long pitch without listening to her saying she’s not interested, so, /having nothing to do and being fine dealing with people rather than desperate to avoid that, she decides have fun by showing up and screwing around. Spending ages on how incredibly much she doesn’t want to deal with this and how much she can’t handle even distant annoyances is not a good idea when the plot is supposed to move in that direction, and it’s extra absurd to have her supposed manager pestering her to “take revenge” when the very fact she’s getting forced into it just underlines how much she doesn’t want to and the plotline now makes no sense. She should just fire her manager and get another one who understands how to hang up on people.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165347/1/Vixon-s-Retribution
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[Standing at the opposite end of the spray-painted ring was a Mightyena, nearly two times the size of the little Growlithe. With one leg broken and dangling at an awkward angle, the Growlithe hobbled over to the Mightyena. The Mightyena took its time to inspect the crowd that watched him fight. It’s what the Mightyena lived for: the attention and the respect.
He turned his attention back over to the Growlithe, just a bit too late to see the Growlithe sink his teeth into his neck.]
Okay, so I think I see what you’re going for here but the execution doesn’t work – you have the mightyena seeing the growlithe approach in the middle of a fight and decide that’s the best time to completely forget it’s a battle and stare at the crowd instead while talking about how important it feels it is to do a good job at the fight the mightyena is currently ignoring.
For something like this, it would make way more sense to say that the mightyena has reason to think the growlithe is out of the fight. Doing this immediately after knocking the growlithe down/breaking its leg, instead of when it’s recovered and actively heading to the mightyena to attack. That would make it a reasonable amount of surprise/overconfidence for the growlithe to suddenly attack, as opposed to now, where the mightyena just looks like a complete idiot who should’ve died ages ago.
Also, they really should have genders and not be just “it”.
[ With it, any Pokémon’s speech was clearly audible in English to its wearer. This allowed Vixon to communicate more effectively with the Pokémon he used in fights. ]
Speaking of things that don’t make sense – even regular dogfights are usually not to the death but apparently this society thinks it’s cool to make talking people fight to the death, and are in fact so completely fine with it that owners would spend huge amounts of money to be able to hear the words the pokemon are saying as they die or kill another.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
[“He has small arms. They’re useless. Let’s go for the legs. Without them, he can’t function.” Teddiursa shouted, refusing to take her eyes off the Bagon.]
Furthermore, how much of an advantage is it when the pokemon can clearly hear what the plan is and are obviously smart enough to make plans in response?
[Then, Thomas turned it on Vixon and fired again. In shock, Vixon gripped his hand over his left shoulder where he was shot. ]
Oh no. How horribly unfair. Now humans are injured too. How shocking and in some way different than the talking exactly as smart as human pokemon getting murdered.
[Suddenly, Kara said, “I should’ve let you die. I should’ve let my brother bleed out.” ]
Aw, she has ethics! Good for her. I hope the asshole is a fakeout and she’s our main character.
[As the news anchor read off the names, Vixon forced himself to zone out. He never wanted to see the PokéFighters who died because of him.]
Oh good god and now he’s all sad that the other humans murdering people for entertainment suffered consequences too, the poor innocent babies.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165416/1/Pokemon-Mystery-Dungeon-Silva-Mysteria
Well, the question opening tends to be a bit dry regardless but making it read like a conversation and not a questionnaire helps.
[“My greatest flaw? Easy… I’m a coward. I can never seem to stand up for myself. Sometimes I manage to find my way around trouble, but for the most part, I’m just a big chicken.”
Interesting…. Do you believe that there is a peaceful resolution to every conflict?
“Most of the time, yeah.”
Well, young one, I would say that I agree with you. What a curious power words have… To form and change the opinions of others. Is that something you value? Diplomacy over power?
“Well… no, not really. I bet it would be a lot easier to be brave if I were a little stronger.”]
I think it could stand to be even more of a conversation, though – this bit feels choppy because there’s that jump between “I’m scared in a conflict” to “I think there’s usually a non-fighty solution” when most of the time, anxiety comes from the fear that there isn’t any good resolution possible. If someone says they’re a coward who buckles in conflict, then the followup question is more likely to be something like, “So, you don’t expect conflicts to have a peaceful resolution?” and then he could say something about how no, he does believe there are, but he’s too cowardly to pursue them. The more nuanced his answers/overall character, the more a straightforward string of questions seems flat in comparison.
Also, to jump back:
[First, would you consider family to be the most important thing, above all else?
“Well, uh… Yeah. Doesn’t everyone?”
No. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. You would be surprised, young one, by the callousness in others… hard hearts do not love easy. ]
This seems weird to me. When someone says putting “family” above all else, I actually do picture someone who’s rather callous or at the least doesn’t “love easy”, because that means they value both friendship and general goodwill-to-all below blood connection. When this comes up fictionally, it’s often in the context of letting down a friend in need (or someone wronged by a family member), plus it’s a common mob trope. From the rest of it I’m guessing your character is more along the lines of considering his relationships with others as the most important thing.
[It’s rays ]
“Its” is the possessive form. “It’s” means “it is” only.
[“How do you know it’s really him?” Asked Sterling. ]
You seem to be getting this right other times, but there’s a couple like this. It should always be styled [“Hello!” she said] when you’re dealing with a speech verb.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165426/1/Gen-8-Team-Leader-Fight-Idea
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
So, the thing is, an idea isn’t necessarily a story idea. Stuff like [After a long 6v6 battle I lost (you would be at a scripted loss with him having 6 level 200 [that’s right! 200] shadow legendary Pokemon like the GameCube spin-offs)] makes it sound like this is more of an RP idea, where you’re constructing this around how the players will interact with it. In a straightforward story, there’s never any need to script a loss/have super high stats to ensure the player doesn’t derail things.
I’d suggest checking out the various RP forums around here and perhaps making your own. Since it sounds like you’re thinking in videogame terms, you could also look into programming this for people to play.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165470/1/Plan-for-Progress
This one is a gift that looks to have proper grammar and is a PMD fic that isn’t just doing the beginning, so there’s really nothing much for me to say. If anyone else is a PMD person, maybe drop them a review.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165481/1/Home
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
[“You don’t want to hold him… this whole time, I’ve never seen you hold him.” Ash could only whisper as he pressed Cesaire closer. “Oh Mew, you’re second guessing aren’t you?”, tears pricked the corners of his eyes as he looked at his son.
“What? No.” Paul sat down, “I’m not second guessing anything.” He sighed as he gently reached out and rubbed a cheek. “Between your parents, you, Reggie and everyone else, I wasn’t able to really hold him. And to be honest… I’m terrified.. he’s so small.. I don’t want to hurt him.”
Ash blinked up at Paul, looking at him. “Paul, you can’t hurt him. Here, hold him.” He held out his arms as Paul backed away, shaking his head. Ash frowned and got up, wincing as he stood, “Think fast!” And he placed the baby in Paul’s arms.]
This is not only really cliché, it’s a pretty bad cliché. You can absolutely hurt or even kill babies by holding them wrong and I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s cute to shove a baby at someone who just explained they don’t know what they’re doing instead of teaching them how to hold a baby safely. People don’t just know this. It isn’t a secret test of if you really love your kid. Like 99% of parenting, it’s learning and effort.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165458/1/A-New-Year-s-Hope
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[Other pokémon from school called me the ‘Ice Queen.’ Why they called me that, was simple. I wanted to be a Glaceon, and nothing else. Sod off if you think it was something about my personality, I wasn’t that cruel back then! ]
I mean, it’s not exactly like that’s the one and only time the word “ice” comes up in English, and it’s not like “queen” has any glaceon-related connection. You evidently want them to be calling her that and it’s in line with the rest of her well enough, so why introduce the inconsistency of her being embarrassed and defensive about having an ice queen type of personality?
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165491/1/Tales-of-a-Rising-Master
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[“…”- This denotes regular speech
“…” This denotes thoughts, flashback or telepathy when stated directly.
“…” This denotes a Pokemon’s speech.
“…” This denotes a Pokemon’s thoughts or telepathy or Pokemon speech in flashbacks when stated directly.
“(…)” (This denotes a Pokemon’s speech, but only select characters can understand it).]
This manages to both be way more distinctions than you should need while not actually being distinct because you have completely unrelated things sharing the same mark.
Flashbacks don’t need to be marked, they should be clear enough from context. I have no idea why you’d think a pokemon thinking thoughts needs a different mark than a human thinking thoughts, and you really don’t need a mark for thoughts at all – you can do italics, sure, but if you want italics for something else, just write thoughts as regular text followed by So-and-so thought. Similarly, if you’re always writing translated pokemon speech for the reader, you can just use context to indicate when that pokemon’s speech is understood by other characters, that shouldn’t need an extra mark. Even telepathy can be handled by treating it like regular speech and a mention it’s telepathic if there’s no particular plot importance to it – and if it’s mildly important to keep track of but not coming up constantly, it’s also much smoother to just use narration to remind people that’s come up again rather than having them refer back and forth to a key to decode what they’re supposed to be noticing.
Look at quotation marks as the baseline for this. We have an established system for that because it’s almost always important readers be able to distinguish between spoken dialogue and narration. Media sometimes denotes foreign languages vs the main language the work is in, primarily when the reader needs to know who in the scene understands what’s happening, so drawing a distinction between human speech that everyone can understand and pokemon speech that only some people can understand often fits.
Also – going by this first chapter, you’re writing this in first person, in which case you don’t need any distinctions because you’re in Ash’s head reporting on what he alone experiences. If he understands a pokemon, then the dialogue is understandable, if he doesn’t then it isn’t. If he hears telepathy, then that dialogue exists, if he doesn’t then as far as his viewpoint goes, it doesn’t. If this is actually in third person, then it’s really not a good idea to open your story presenting in first, and even then, unless you’ve utterly misrepresented your story, it’d still be third-limited, which is to say, Ash knows his own thoughts but shouldn’t be reporting on what other people are thinking.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165512/1/The-Road-to-be-a-Pokemon-Master-Hoenn-Arc
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
[“Norman, we’ve already talked about this. May’s twelve years old now. She can handle herself just fine. She’s wanted to go on her Pokemon journey ever since she turned ten, but you’ve held her back,” Caroline told him.
“I just want her to be safe,” Norman sighed.]
Norman is a gym leader and canonically fine handing sickly Wally a random wild pokemon, and figuring that’s good enough. Moreover, the main difficulty anyone’s going to face on a pokemon journey is facing challenges without their pokemon being up to the task. Actual concerned parents would get their kid pokemon as soon as possible and demand they train before leaving, not act like there’s a meaningful difference between a L5 starter in the hands of a ten year old and a L5 starter in the hands of a twelve year old.
[“Relax, Dad. I promise I’ll be fine. Remember, I’ll have Brendan with me so it’s not like I’ll be by myself,” May reminded.]
It’s also ridiculous that Brendan’s family would be precisely as concerned about his wellbeing in precisely the same way.
[If she gave in, not only would she have to wait another year, but Norman would try to convince her to stay the next year, too. It would be a never-ending cycle. Even Max would start his journey before she did!]
Also, I feel like this can’t seem to decide if the point is Norman is an overprotective parent or if the point is Norman is a sexist asshole. A big deal is made that actually Brendan’s parents are fine with him going on his own (but waited two years still, because ???) and you have May certain here that her dad has no such problem letting her baby brother go, and then Norman is fine with her going with Ash. Plus you have her mom being fine with her going but apparently her mother isn’t allowed to make any decisions in the household and it’s Norman’s decision alone if his daughter ever gets to leave. If that wasn’t what you were going for, you should really make things more balanced.
[However, the fact that May disliked Pokemon sort of made her the black sheep of the family, even if no one was aware of her secret. ]
That’s not how being the black sheep works. There’s a reason the metaphor is about being visually distinct from the rest, it’s not about being different on the inside but being treated differently by everyone around you. If you mean she feels awkward and stressed about her secret, just say that.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165731/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Heroes-of-the-Highway
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
“Its” is the possessive form. “It’s” means “it is” only.
[“So what one do you think I’m giving you?” Mack asked, now in a playful mood. “It’s a basic starter. Same as the kids get. They are capable enough for this assignment.”]
That’s…really not what you wrote. To quote Mack on the subject just moments ago, [If some Rhyhorn or Pyroar goes nuts and tries to attack the truck how are you going to stop it?] I don’t see a baby fenniken being the solution to that, especially when he’s got no experience training pokemon and is unlikely to want to put in the time to do so either.
If what’s going on is you really want him to have a fenniken, then it’d work better to say there isn’t a good chance it’ll actually be needing to fight off a rhyhorn or enemy team but it’s just some sort of insurance thing or in case the truck breaks down and the driver needs to travel on foot for a while. You seem like you’re trying to make a really strong case for why he needs a pokemon to get over the fact he’s not that into them, but you did that just by having his boss say it’s a requirement. Learn into the bureaucracy side of this and have it not matter if his pokemon is particularly useful in a crisis, just that he legally needs to have one at all – especially when that’s precisely how it works out in canon, no one cares what you’re carrying but they demand you have something.
I think this might be a story for people who like trucks a lot. If you’re one of those, check it out and report back.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165817/1/Why-the-distortion-World-is-Empty
Capitalize your title properly.
[AN: Can’t use ‘you’]
Well, you can, so far nobody’s getting deleted for second person. It’s just a good idea to have a backup in case that changes.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[ it’s closed eyes.]
“Its” is the possessive form. “It’s” means “it is” only.
[But the eldritch creatures were too successful. Once all the sidereal organisms were consumed, the horrors began to focus their unsated hungers on the terrain itself. Swarms of ▶ A drank whole forests. The dreaded ‘M slowly assimilated entire floating landmasses. ]
I really like the idea that the distortion world was once inhabited by glitch pokemon.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165956/1/Pale-Fire
[Fifty three miles above the surface the wings of Draco took flight into the night soaring well above habitable conditions for the human body, the pressure would have otherwise collapsed any lung. The thin air chill any bone to dust, however, she was all but human.]
This is painfully overwrought and nonsensical. Focus on communicating what you mean first.
[Spotted with her keen scarlet eye- Zinnia by instinct recognized the sweeping lands of fire that she had once called Heijiv -home.]
Also, foreign word – immediate exact translation is a bad way of doing this. If it’s meant to have exactly the same meaning, just say home. If there’s different nuances to it the way language normally works, then you should need more than one word to express the translation.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165970/1/Bangam-Academy-Book-4
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13166027/1/The-One-That-Almost-Got-Away
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13166148/1/Pokemon-Heroes-of-Light
Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech
verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13166311/1/Don-t-Want-To-Fight-Love-Away
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
“Its” is the possessive form. “It’s” means “it is” only.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13166425/1/Everlume-Academy
[I only want to bring you entertainment and not a fanfic that will cause riot in the reviews section.]
To be clear, if you block me and whoever else she’s currently trying to hassle, she’ll only leave a review or two complaining, but if you let anyone review that she ordered you not to, she’s going to show up repeatedly to contradict each one unless you’ve blocked every last sockpuppet she could use and deleted the anon reviews she’ll use to get around that. Your choices are just who you’re blocking and how much blocking you’re doing because Hybrid of Fate is going to keep going whether you want it to happen or not.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[screeh]
Also, spellcheck.
[Anyway, like I said, this is an SYOC story. Your characters are gonna be part of the gang!]
So, going by your profile, you’ve done a number of these and most of them are incomplete. That’s pretty common with SYOC and pokefic academy stories seem even worse off than usual, probably because even regular pokefic has problems with getting characters designed for the role into position for interesting plot stuff.
Think about why you’re asking for OCs. If you want inspiration and variety, you’re better suited looking at existing characters and picking them out yourself – you’ll be ensuring there’s actual variety and not a lot of people happening to submit the same idea, you can tweak them as necessary instead of being locked into an enormous amount of trivia, etc. If you’re hoping to get reader investment, well, as you say, [ I’ve been into some SYOC Pokemon stories but they mostly forget about my characterand stuff] – people who are reading for their one particular character are invested in that, not the story as a whole. So you can either throw in way too many characters and string people along with cameos, or you can limit your cast to something manageable to produce a better story only to torpedo your readers. Even with getting reader attention, you’d do better to pick existing characters from various popular media so that more people are interested in each character who appears.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13166466/1/Before-I-Leave
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
This is normally where I’d say this three-paragraph chapter was too short of an opening, but it shouldn’t be at all. She eats, goes to school, you explain about her school without anything happening, she heads home. If what you want to write about is the meetings she’s going to or the tasks she’s ordered to do, start with her showing up at a meeting or doing a task.
Also, spellcheck.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13166590/1/Alola-to-Greatness
Yeah, this really needs to be expanded.
Remember, your opening is supposed to be telling people what’s special and worth coming back for in your story. What you’ve said right now is that your character is a trainer, she’s enthusiastic, stuff happens, and it works out great in the end. You don’t really raise any questions – even the stuff you’re vague about matches fine to the game plot everyone already knows, so even if you mean for something else to be going on, it doesn’t come across.
Look at published books that have prologues. They’re often set as scenes apart from the main story without the main character even being around. Books almost never open with a summary of the story you’re about to read and when they are, their summaries tend not to make much sense because they’re really meant to be making you wonder how the events they’re talking about could’ve fit together.
And that’s books, where you don’t have to rely on readers actually coming back later to continue the story but just convincing them to bother turning to the next page. In a serially published work like this, it’s far more important to get people’s attention.
In addition to what DPLxBeAsTxSnIpE bought up, “its” is the possessive form. “It’s” means “it is”.
So I was really looking forward to a light and easy January where half the people had me blocked beforehand but apparently Hybrid can’t do anything at all right.
You have black text blending with the background in the review of Getaway Car and some quotes in Pokemon-Mystery-Dungeon-Silva-Mysteria review.
Interesting! I was messing a bunch with copy/paste settings. I guess some formatting leaked through.
You just realised?
Also, will you be doing this throughout all of January?