May 19What do you mean? You don’t have a deadline, and you can store documents on here (and many other places). You don’t need to publish every piece as soon as you copy it over.Bios are still not stories, anyway.

May 30[You’re delta from rvb right?]

???

May 30Name: Chara

Appearance:

They look about ten to twelve years old. They have chin-length mahogany hair, bright red eyes, and pale skin with rosy cheeks. They are androgynous enough in appearance and dress that people who expect to be able to tell someone’s gender just by looking at them will be very confused. They wear a green-and-yellow striped sweater, brown shorts, and a heart-shaped “Best Friends Forever” locket. In cold weather, they’ll also wear a ketchup-stained blue zipper hoodie and a large orange scarf.

Brief background of character:

Chara comes from a small town where they met a Pokemon Professor, received a starter, and set off to become a powerful trainer. Other people from that town are aware of their existence, but seem to have trouble recalling anything specific about their past. Their mother appears to be alive, but occasionally they may say something that would seem to imply they are an orphan. Sometimes when they are feeling nostalgic they may speak with vague, distant fondness about having once had a best friend who would do anything for them, and who gave them the heart-shaped “Best Friends Forever” locket they wear everywhere, but it’s unclear who they could possibly be talking about.

What are their strengths/skills?:

When Chara decides to do something, they do it no matter what and against all odds. They have a high pain tolerance and no undue regard for their own body, so they don’t tend to be slowed down by fear for their own well-being or by non-debilitating injuries. They have an uncanny ability to predict what their opponents will do before they do it. In fact, they can predict all sorts of things, to the point that it sometimes seems as though they are able to see the future.

What are their flaws and weaknesses?:

They have an abrasive personality and are not good at hiding it. They talk stiltedly, with a large vocabulary for someone their age that is both impressive and a little unnerving. They smile and laugh at inappropriate times, especially when other people are suffering. They don’t like or care about any of the people around them, and are not good at pretending to. Anyone who is put off by that sort of thing will probably not want to work with, help, or even be around them.

What are their goals? What are they focusing on?:

For now, they’re just playing, exploring things and trying to get stronger. It’s really funny how the people around here don’t seem to mind if you have deadly weapons out all the time and never expect you to use them on humans even if you’ve just disabled all of their weapons and they’re completely helpless. It’s hilarious how people travel around alone except for their pokemon and aren’t really expected to be anywhere in particular by a given time, so it takes ages for anyone to notice if they go missing.

Of course, it’s also interesting that there are potentially world-ending weapons pretty much everywhere, just sitting around waiting to be wielded by anyone powerful enough to take them. So, that makes for a good long-term goal.

How does your character get on with those around him/her?:

If they are alone with a human or group of humans that they can hurt or kill and get away with it, they will do so.

If they are in a situation where they have to interact non-violently with other humans, they will attempt to play nice out of self-preservation. As mentioned above, they aren’t particularly good at it.

Additional info:

Sometimes they may be caught speaking to someone who doesn’t appear to be there. They talk about what they want to do next, what the other person wants them to do next, how much fun they are or aren’t having. They are always facing south when they do this.

They always carry a knife. They are not from around here.

Role: Probably best as an antagonist or one-off encounter. Ask if you need clarification on anything.

Pokemon:

None of Chara’s pokemon have nicknames.

Meganium: Overexcited puppy. Utterly adores Chara and tries to imitate them whenever possible, but he’s too wussy to really pull it off. He acts really tough and intimidating and loves to make scary faces, but his confident facade will crumple in the face of extreme danger. He makes incredibly gruesome and morbid threats to other pokemon about how he’ll kill them and everyone they love, but they’re so over-the-top they’re often hard to take seriously. Perpetually bored and craves entertainment; he considers fighting alongside Chara to be the best fun he’s ever had. He enjoys killing people and is extremely powerful.
Moves: Magical Leaf, Grass Knot, Toxic, Petal Blizzard. He overall prefers painful, torturous moves, as well as ensnaring and high-accuracy attacks.

Skiddo: Adores Chara much like the meganium does, but lacks the strength to commit. He claims he would do anything for Chara and earnestly believes it, but if Chara pushes him to do something really dangerous he might balk. He’s obedient, but kind of a wuss and a crybaby. He is a little unnerved by how murderous Chara is and sometimes wondered if they were doing the right thing, but Chara has convinced him it’s for the best and that humans are just evil monsters. And if Chara says something is true, then it must be! He’s still too squeamish to kill humans directly, a fact that Chara finds to be a great disappointment. They’re working on it.
Moves: Tackle, Tail Whip, Vine Whip, Worry Seed. He’s a total wuss and has weak moves overall.

May 30Chara is whatever gender you want them to be. You can also keep them mysteriously androgynous if you prefer.[I have an idea that involves them probably becoming good friends.]

That sounds interesting. Keep in mind that Chara hates all humans by default, though.

May 30[About how I started it, I kinda did it generically for the irony of what’s going to happen in chapter 2]

It’s still such a dull opening that even using it to pull the rug out from under readers doesn’t work. Keep in mind that if you can’t capture peoples’ interest, they’re not even going to continue to chapter 2, so you need to have important things happen in chapter 1. Combining your first two chapters to have both the fake-out opening and inciting event happen in one sitting would probably be more effective.

Jun 4[I don’t have a degree in English.]

Neither do I. I don’t see how this is relevant to this discussion.

And oh, he was saying that? That makes more sense, but just makes him look like a creep. That goes quite a bit farther than “flirting”, especially when his only reaction to seeing how it made the other person extremely uncomfortable is to laugh about how funny it is. So, in addition to being a mass murderer, your main character is a creep who enjoys violating other peoples’ boundaries. I’m not sure what makes you think I would want to root for this person’s success.

Jun 5What did your teachers say is the proper way to format dialogue? I admit I’ve never heard of English teachers telling their students something so specific, so this is interesting.

[Darkrai finds funny]

Well you should probably make that more explicit then. All I see is her being extremely uncomfortable in response. A sense of humor that revolves around violating peoples’ boundaries and watching them squirm goes past “dark” and into “sadistic”.

Jun 5I’m not sure what that has to do with anything I just said.

Also, again, what did your teachers teach you about dialogue rules? How was it different than the rules I listed?

Jun 5[Finally, my teachers have taught me that a full stop ends a sentence. Ending a sentence then requires a space before a capital letter is put, like the start of every sentence. Ending your speech in a piece of text puts a full stop at the end. After a full stop, you put a space and then a capital letter.]

So no, they didn’t teach you anything about dialogue specifically. This rule is precisely what I cited in that paragraph, as dialogue does not always end a sentence. As a rule of thumb, you should be able to remove the quotes and still get a grammatically correct sentence: [Hello, he said] and [Hello. He grinned] make sense. [Hello. He said] contains a sentence fragment.

[Darkrai blushed then sent a half-assed glare.]

So a stranger embarrassed her, and then she got annoyed at the stranger. If you can’t see how that reads as “obviously uncomfortable”, there is something wrong with you.

Jun 5What you have currently isn’t really a prologue. A prologue is a self-contained story in and of itself; a lot of published books provide a good example of this. It would probably be best to fuse what you have now with your next chapter, so that your first chapter is more substantial. Remember, people aren’t going to click through to the next chapter if they’re not interested.

https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/142411850/1/First-Chapters

^ This might be helpful.