“Normal pokemon like Alexandra had maybe a 5. Momoko, who was born with a little extra, has one of 20, while Esp was born with a 70. Salen and Toro were born into the bloodline of the Great King, and both have an aura capability of 900. The great King however…”
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711458/1/Roosze-Kalos-adventure-Pok%C3%A9mon-x-y
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.
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
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.
[I sit strait up ]
Straight. You really need a beta reader.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711509/1/12-days-of-Kalos
[ON THE SECOND DAY OF POKEMON X AND Y GIVES TO ME
TWO CLEMONT INVENTION
AND THE KALOS BADGE GOING TO THE LEAGUE ]
Grammar is still a thing in songs, you know. Also why is this in ALL CAPS. How did any of this seem like it was a good idea.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711540/1/The-Tournament-of-Champions
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[“Two years we were together…,” Clint responded. ]
Don’t use commas after an ellipsis (or any other form of punctuation, for that matter). Also, if only two people are speaking, you don’t need to put their name after every single line of dialogue, and so you don’t need to use ever more forced speech tags to go with it – and in the event you must, just repeat said a few times, trying to use a different word every time is way more distracting.
Two.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711583/1/Amourshipping-Week-2016-Stories
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
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.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711723/1/My-Little-Pikachu
[(Serena’s Room)
It was the next morning after the party last night, as indicated by the constant peaceful, serene chirps by the Fletchlings outside Serena’s window. The sun was shining and some of the light came into Serena’s room]
Okay, so given that you give the narration twice in the first two sentences, it should be obvious you don’t need to label your scene. You should never use these sorts of labels.
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
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/11711741/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Mystery-Dungeon-The-Adventures-of-M
Write out numbers with letters.
[He stood at 5’7″ (1.7m) and weighed about 150 pounds (68kg). ]
And how exactly did the character know this so precisely? Do they have a measuring tape and scale on hand?
[We’re Pokémon ]
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[“I’m Totodile!” I cheered. “Those other four guys are Chesnaught, Espurr, Sunflora, and the world-famous Pikachu.”
“I’ve heard great things about you, Pikachu,” said M.
“Gee, I’m not really that special,” said Pikachu humbly. “I’m just an average high-schooler.”
“So, uh, M, we’re running behind our schoolmates,” said Gengar. “Since you don’t look like you have nowhere else to go, why don’t you come live with us?”
“These guys seem nice,” I thought. “Okay, I accept your offer!”]
Okay, so the whole thing was written from Totodile’s point of view, then suddenly “I” is referring to M? Proofread better. Also, don’t use quotation marks for thoughts.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711875/1/Breaking-a-Heart-of-Gold
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
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.
Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.
[“I think I’ll take the Gym challenge, because I think my… ability will help me more than most Trainers. Though I hate the idea of confining fellow Pokémon in Pokéballs, being a Trainer would be the least suspicious role I could take.” ]
And so things go as they always go.
People don’t pay attention to trainers, they’re normal, and trainers having a pokemon out is also normal. There’s absolutely no reason you couldn’t keep out pokemon, it wouldn’t even be more than a mild inconvenience. Also no one would notice if you were specifically challenging gyms or not, because again, no one is paying that much attention.
Instead of having your character announce they’re going to throw out any morality and individually because it’s slightly more convenient, they could actually behave differently than the main character of every other OT fic in existence.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711902/1/Electric-Tale-of-Pikachu
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
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.
Well, this sure is choppy and incoherent. Plan out your story more next time.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711916/1/A-Trainer-s-Big-Journey
Your story needs a more specific title than that it’s an OT fic. That’s like titling your romance story Romance Story.
Starting a story with your character waking up is terribly overdone and was boring the first time.
[(like the TF2 heavy would wear) ]
Don’t do this.
Write out numbers with letters.
[ mom said ]
Any time you’re using something as a person’s name, you capitalize it.
[wwhat ]
Spellcheck.
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.
[ a Tepig and Scynther, ]
You haven’t be capitalizing these for the most part, and that’s correct. Unless it’s getting used as the individual’s personal name, it should be written in lowercase, ie, “a tepig and scyther named Tepig and Scyther.”
Also, it’s a good idea to add pokemon words to your computer’s dictionary so you know how they’re spelled.
Okay, so nothing actually happens this chapter. It’s the standard opening everyone’s familiar with and doesn’t need to be shown. If you have a unique plot this is going toward, you should just start there and trust the reader to understand that the kid with pokemon calling himself a trainer as he travels on a journey is probably a pokemon trainer on a pokemon journey.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711916/2/A-Trainer-s-Big-Journey
[“I need you to grab a package for me over in the next town. I hope you can get it,” Oak said before I left the lab. ]
Okay nope I’m out. I gave this a second chance to see if maybe anything new would happen and what’s the first line of the first chapter? That we’re redoing a game fetch quest that wasn’t even interesting the first time around. Even if you eventually get to something that’s not the same, you’ve convinced me your plot isn’t going to be any good.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11711923/1/Oh-God-Oh-God-They-re-all-going-to-die
…huh. It’s really rare I say this, but this actually could use a bit more explanation instead of jumping right in. You should’ve put something about her portal-hopping in the story itself rather than just the summary, and hopefully in enough detail to make sense.
It’s “okay”, four letters.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11712231/1/Starstruck
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.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11712485/1/Indigo-League-Redone
Starting a story with your character waking up is terribly overdone and was boring the first time.
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[“Me too. I wonder what Pokémon my parents got for us,” Anjali replied. Anjali’s parents took care of both Anjali and Melanie, since Melanie’s parents weren’t around. Unfortunately, both of Anjali’s parents were busy and couldn’t come to see them off, so they got special starter Pokémon for the girls. ]
If they’re getting special pokemon, they don’t need to go to the professor. Also, if the idea here is that her parents throw money and toys at them to make up for being absent, they could’ve given a pet pokemon well in advance of becoming a trainer – the only reason to wait for the start date is to get one from a professor.
[“A Togepi! Aw, it’s so cute!” Anjali exclaimed. ]
…so what you’re saying here is her parents hate her and are hoping she dies on this journey. At least a magikarp would be able to survive a hit or two while she ran for it.
Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.
[“Aren’t you ten, too?” Ash asked.
“I’m eleven, actually,” Anjali said.
“Why are you getting your Pokémon now?” Ash questioned.
“I’m a year younger than her, and she didn’t want to go off without me,” Melanie explained.]
Questioned is a thing police do to suspects, it’s not appropriate for asking any question at all. Also, if one of them is older then it makes even less sense she didn’t get a pokemon already. It’s not like Professor Oak literally shoves you all the way to Route 1 then sits there with a gun so you can’t sneak back, you can get a starter pokemon and then go back home without the slightest problem.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11712641/1/Theogony
:D
You really nailed that weird simple-yet-confusing rhythm of really ancient myths. This reads like one of the fun Old Testament translations. And I really love the opening scholarly notes.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11712641/3/Theogony
Ah, that’s an interesting way of tying two creation myths together, and it works well with how much smaller scale Mew’s story was in comparison. Also there’s something more disturbing how very thorough a pokemonverse “flood ends all life” has to be. I guess it’s the more active role the legendaries play – when it’s just a flood, you can feel like God set it and then looked away, but here they had to broil everyone left underwater wingbeat by wingbeat.
One. One! Dammit, people.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11712673/1/Pokemon-Mystery-Dungeon-The-Lost-Legend
If you’re going to spend your entire first chapter on the quiz, it needs to be because the answers are interesting. If they’re totally boring and you’re just doing it because it’s in the game, then you should remember people already played it and know it’s a thing, you don’t need to repeat it.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11712815/1/Relic-Excavate
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[Anabel sighed, letting the ball of fluff onto her lap. “They don’t want me to. They want me to take the heirship now, bind myself to the earth and nature. I’m only thirteen. Grandmere was in her early forties before she did it. She’d at least birthed my mother before they made her make roots.” ]
Okay but trainers start at ten, so she should’ve had a culturally acceptable runaround time years ago.
Also given her mom’s still around and this evidently isn’t something that requires a virgin teen priestess, why isn’t her mom the one? From how things are running I’d expect her mom to have had her late and then died young, leaving her the only one left, and if that happened years earlier it’d then make sense they might be concerned enough about her being the very last one that they wouldn’t have wanted her to leave for the regular journey.
Zero. This one’s more prettily written than usual, but I’m not sure how much the background really matters and how much it’s just for an angsty flavor to kick off a standard overage journey.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11713089/1/Hero-s-Prophecy
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
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 see, aura capabilities were measured out in a number system that could be tested by pokemon such as Psynix, although those who develop their aura can eventually tell who has aura or not. They are tested when you are born. Normal pokemon like Alexandra had maybe a 5. Momoko, who was born with a little extra, has one of 20, while Esp was born with a 70. Salen and Toro were born into the bloodline of the Great King, and both have an aura capability of 900. The great King however was said to have the most aura capability of any pokemon that ever lived, with an aura capability of 5000000.]
If you’re going to vomit numbers, the least you could do is set up an over nine thousand joke.
Stories work better when there’s more than just saying one number is super big. People can have different talents and abilities within a general area, they can have off days, they can have differing amounts of willpower and determination… When you’ve set things up so that your main character isn’t even within sight of the same scale as regular pokemon, there’s not much point to regular pokemon even existing.
[The child of darkness’s vision is just a faux however ]
If you mean fake, say fake. Faux is an adjective, you’re not supposed to use it as a noun.
Zero. Also hey, apparently FFN isn’t deleting three characters in a row now! I wonder how long that’ll last.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11713150/1/Mementos-of-the-Birth-Bound
[the Gallade ]
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
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 dare not attempt to life yourself ]
Lift?
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11713154/1/Slow-Memory-Flood
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
Use ” for speech, not ‘.
It’s interesting to see bits of the very early show here, but it’s kind of disappointing you’re glossing over the same parts everybody else does – like:
[And how he’d cried out – that boy’s name, finally: Pikapi, Ash – and unleashed a thundershock more powerful than he’d managed till then. ]
He didn’t, he jumped up with a thunderstorm above and pulled down a bolt of lightning he used to power his attack. All the early episodes have some additional reason for when Pikachu’s attacks are unusually strong – thunderstorm to beat the flock, bike charging him up to blast off Team Rocket, waterwheel charging him up to fry Brock’s geodude. And that that Pikachu was willing to get fried by lightning himself to electrocute those spearow before they tore Ash apart is actually a much better point than just that he suddenly used a stronger attack.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11713263/1/Tric-A-Jolteon-s-Journey
Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.
[fluffy, defenseless Eevees ]
[what mother described to us as a shed. ]
[ our Mother ]
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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[Two girls and a boy. ]
Given how very much the gender ratio’s skewed in the other direction officially, having two thirds of the litter be female seems implausible.
[She seemed to favour me a lot more over my two sisters, probably because I am the littlest of the four of us. I was born last.
We were born amongst shrubs and trash, due to our mother being a wild Pokémon.]
So, fun fact – which child parents (animal or human) favor is determined by the situation. If things are bad, they’ll favor the strongest one as it has the best chance of survival. If things are great, they’ll favor the weakest to try to bring it up to the same level of competency as its stronger siblings in the hopes they’ll all end up successful. This means that while you’re saying your character’s the disadvantaged runt, you’re also saying that things are generally pretty awesome for the group. That could be true – trash can mean a bounty of food so you always have a spare hot dog to stuff down the underweight kid’s throat. But be aware of what else you’re saying in a given statement.
[We eventually stopped needing Mother and one day, she wandered off, leaving us to our own instincts. I trusted her judgement and travelled with my sisters for a while. Coal and Rain stayed with me for maybe a full moon before they set off without me, saying that it was better if we all split up and learn to protect one’s self. I thought then that it was a good idea. And now, I haven’t seen either of my sisters since. ]
Either there’s no problem staying together, in which case they wouldn’t split off, or there are problems driving this in which case those should exist. What are they eating? If there’s enough for everyone, what else do they need that’s driving them to spread out? Why do other pokemon not appear to be any sort of factor in this?
Don’t ask for OCs. Make up what OCs your story actually needs to fit whatever purpose you need them for.
Zero.
“One. One! Dammit, people.”
This is seriously eating me. The author in question has already proven themselves to be extremely adept, so you’d think they’d have gathered some kind of a following at least. And…one review. For multiple chapters. Are people in this category allergic to quality or what?
I think it’s kind of hard to gain much of a following on FFN simply by producing quality content at the moment (if it ever was); there are so many new stories and updates posted a day that even someone who’s posted several other stories that were well-received is likely to get lost in the shuffle, unless they draw a lot of readers from an external source (e.g. people active on Reddit seem to be doing pretty well right now). This goes double if your story doesn’t neatly slot into a genre (like journeyfic) that people are actively looking for. Unless someone updates very frequently so their name’s always popping up on “just in,” or they review a great deal so people start to see them around, I think it’s hard for someone to gain a lot of name recognition.
Also, my impression is that FFN skews pretty young and, well… if their quality filter was anything like mine was in middle/high school, looking at what gets popular isn’t really surprising or an indictment of the fandom.
I don’t think it’s really updating faster than usual, though. It’s just that every year I do this there are fewer reviews at all.
I was wondering if maybe it’s that as the category expands, the backlog of stories mean that some proportion of readers are busy with those while the reader population has remained more or less stable, but it doesn’t seem like the older stories are being read all that much.
And the fact there are so few reviews should mean it’s easy to get attention by reviewing, but somehow that doesn’t seem to work…
Well, I was thinking of now relative to when I started writing, rather than the past couple years. There used to be no more than one-two pages of updates per day, so I got to recognize a lot of names even if they didn’t update constantly, since when a story got bumped up it would actually stay on the front page for more than a couple hours. I think as the section expanded, it became a lot easier for authors to get lost in the shuffle, and that when you start to get a very large number of people posting content, some of the community feel that encourages people to interact with one another gets lost. You just don’t bump into the same people as often as you would on a smaller site, so you feel less of a personal connection with them and less of a drive to interact. I don’t know at what point the pace of posting really started to accelerate in the section, but I would be that the decline in reviews started around that time. And once it begins, of course, it gets to be self-reinforcing: people don’t see other people reviewing, so they don’t review, so other people don’t see them reviewing…
I think people definitely are still reading the archives; my older stories get many more views than my current one, to my eternal annoyance. However, I don’t think it’s surprising that readers wouldn’t review stuff they find in the archives; there’s no way to know if the author is even going to see your message or welcome commentary on their years-old ‘fic. I mean, I think most people would be delighted to get comments on their old stuff, but in my experience people feel much less of a need to review old finished stuff. I think there’s not much visible activity in that area, but it’s there. It’s true that there may be more available for “lurkers” nowadays, who are here primarily to read and tend to seek out complete stuff rather than following newer stories. It also feels like, back in the day, if someone favorited my stories, I could usually check out their profile and find stuff they’ve written–now most of my favorites come from people who don’t have any stories and who often have 800+ favorites, who are probably using their account mostly as a way to bookmark stuff and who probably aren’t interested in getting involved in the reviewing scene. However, there are also way more writers running around these days, so it feels like that should cancel out…
I do think reviewing is a better way to get attention than simply posting your story, unless it’s one connected to another popular story or in one of the hyper-popular genres, and I’ve seen it work for some authors recently. It’s especially effective if you target other writers working in whatever genre your story(s) belong to, so they’ll more likely be more interested in your work. However, I think the volume of reviews necessary to get noticed like this has probably gone up quite a bit, again because you’re generally hoping to attract attention not just directly from the people you review, but also people who read reviews, may like what you have to say, and check out your stories. So, again, if you don’t review a lot of stuff, relatively few people are likely to see it outside of the authors themselves (because the story you reviewed is going to get buried quickly). But some of my thinking on this is probably due to me being out of the reviewing scene on FFN for so long–even if you don’t blitz the section with comments, a steady effort after time will probably earn you some attention.
Of course this is all speculation and heavily colored by my own perspective (I don’t even follow FFN’s pokefic section anymore–even with a bunch of filters, it’s too overwhelming for me to keep up with), but to me it definitely feels like there’s less of a community on FFN than there is on FFN, and I think sheer size contributes to that somewhat.
>I think people definitely are still reading the archives; my older
stories get many more views than my current one, to my eternal
annoyance.
Haha I’ve seen “Clouded Sky” on sveral off-FFN rec lists, on TVtropes and reddit for one, so that’s another way people are getting into stories without actually trawling through FFN’s entire archive.
Well, I was excluding that one, because yeah, it has plenty of external feeders. :P I was looking instead at my even-older chapterfic and various short unfinished ones.
The silly fanfic I wrote when I was fifteen will probably get more attention than anything else I ever create, alas.
Is it really that much faster? It seems like it’s about a page a day in terms of new stories themselves, which is a lot but not impossible. Other years I would do stuff like skip all humor and romance just to have a chance to keep up.
Definitely! I mean, it used to be about a page a day for everything, not just new stories. Right now the “Just In” page only goes back five hours and there were over 75 stories updated in the past twenty-four hours, not counting M-rated ‘fics. Fics only appear on the front page for a very brief window before sinking. People who browse with filters (e.g. only new stories) will see a more stable subset, but I’m willing to be that most people just check out the Just In page periodically.
Hm. I only did 590 reviews this year, which is lower than it’s been, and unlike previous years I didn’t skip genres. It’s definitely faster than it was a good while ago, but I think it’s slower than it’s been in recent years.
It might also be that the proportion of chaptered fics has risen. Maybe people are responding to how difficult it is to get reviews by updating the same story over and over.
Yeah, I can’t really say as much about ~2010-forward, in terms of activity. It would definitely be interesting to take a look at those sorts of things, though–whether and how much new stories are falling off, whether there’s a proportional increase in the number of chapterfics, etc. Pity FFN makes it kind of hard to analyze chapterfics in particular because they only mark the update date of the latest chapter, so after the fact it’s actually impossible to ask e.g. “how many chapterfics were updated in March 2012?”
You could probably mine some data with “what proportion of fics published at X are chaptered”, “what proportion of fics updated today are chaptered”,and “what’s the average length of time between published/updated for chapter fics” might be interesting. It’d just be harder to pull out.
Reviews are work and there’s no guarantee that they’ll be received positively by the author. I’ve seen every variation of review wank under the sun: how dare you unsolicited concrit, how dare you leave me a fluffy one-sentence review, how dare you only kudos instead of comment, how dare you make mild criticism, how dare you point out SPAG errors, how dare you post “I love this, write more!” on a ‘fic that’s finished, etc.
If FFnet had a kudos system that might draw some more activity out of the woodwork but for now I just look at my hits counter and go “well, I hope they didn’t backbutton.”
But AOOOOOOO lets you see how authors react to comments so that should make people more willing to comment on works where they can see the author isn’t screaming in response to “great story!!!” But reviews are even worse over there. Maybe the addition of tumblr problematic unending dogpiles have made people significantly more nervous about doing anything that could be noticed?
I think favorites/follows functionally is the kudos button, especially now that the number is visible. It used to be that you’d get way more reviews than favorites and now it’s the opposite.
>Maybe the addition of tumblr problematic unending dogpiles have made
people significantly more nervous about doing anything that could be
noticed?
YUP. And also just it’s so easy for short messages to get misconstrued and have it be no-one’s fault, as commonly as it’s just somebody taking them in bad faith or unreasonable interpretation.
I’m comfortable sending people asks out of the blue now on tumblr but they’re to people that I’ve successfully interacted with or just like “I love your work” to someone with a big following. But in the past I’ve had to unfollow a couple of people because I made what I thought were innocuous replies* that upset them, and it’s just better for me to not be tempted to speak to them regularly.
*Not even about SJ or LGBT stuff, but like,
them:”hey I got new glasses and I straight up couldn’t see before”
me:”oh noooooo I can’t imagine that, I’d be blind, I’m glad you’re doing better”
them:”WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M STUPID I HAD NO INSURANCE BEFORE”
and like I see how what I said made them think it was an attack, but also just way too much work to smooth over that interaction and much better to just bookmark their “art” tag