And back to the usual spot of thirty behind.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7750076/1/A_Boy_And_His_Houndoom

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.

[Ok]

It’s okay, four letters.

[4 individuals ]

Write out numbers with letters.

[The group looked at the captain in shock. “You haven’t? Seriously? He’s been all over the news for the past . . .” The dark-skinned woman snapped her fingers as she attempted to come up with the amount of time. A boy with blue hair grinned at her. “About a year, maybe longer. His name’s Singed, although I know not if that’s his true name or if it’s just what he is called now.” ]

…you know, they make a good point. If there’s someone this disruptive in on region, than even if they were in Johto only a few days and avoided the news, they should still know because it’s a big enough story for other regions to report.

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.

[When asked for a list of Singed’s known crimes, Cory was shocked to learn that Singed had a habit of attacking anything and anyone. With a fuse so small that many speculated it did not exist, Singed would go into a rage for just about anything. He was famous for assaulting hundreds of people. Although the group noted that Singed had never killed anyone, he certainly had attempted to. ]

There really isn’t that neat of a line between assault and murder. If he’s regularly attacking people, then even if he wasn’t attempting to kill anyone he’d do it by accident pretty soon.

[He had a Houndoom that was as cruel as Singed was. Because of Houndoom, Singed had been the instigator for many fires. ]

Fires are a similar issue. They may not always be fatal, but every time there’s a fire, there’s a chance it’ll kill someone. There’s no way you can assault hundreds of people and start unknown numbers of fire and never kill a single person.

And just having a strong houndoom wouldn’t prevent anyone from catching this guy. There are lots and lots of other trainers.

[Cory was startled to learn that Singed had only one outfit he was ever seen wearing. ]

Aside from the fact people have more than one set of clothes, he can’t be wearing the same clothes if he’s constantly getting into fights and fires. They’d be torn to shreds before too long.

[The last thing they noted was that Singed was always seen holding a strange black capsule. When Cory flinched at how bizarre that sounded the group grinned and soon revealed that no one knows what the capsule holds, or even if it holds anything. ]

How is he assaulting people or doing anything else really if he’s only got one hand to do everything with? I get the impression from how much detail you go into that you think all this is really sinister, but it just makes him sound like a crazy hobo who fights with what amounts to one hand behind his back.

…and now he’s shown up to be a sue, because naturally, police officers just walk up to a felon so they can be kneed in the groin. Also could have done without the extended look-at-how-awesome-he-is description.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7750166/1/Theory_of_Mew_Vs_Belief_In_Arceus

[Tom raised an eyebrow, “You can’t tell me that you actually believe Arceus exists, do you?”]

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” he said or “Hello!” he said, never “Hello.” He said or “Hello.” he said or “Hello,” He said or “Hello” he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” He grinned, never “Hello,” he grinned or “Hello,” He grinned or “Hello.” he 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,” he said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” he said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” he said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” he said, “is it.” If there’s no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like “Hi. This – ” He looked around. “- is it.” And the same punctuation and capitalization applies to thoughts.

This is idiotic. Belief is a thing that doesn’t have evidence, a theory is a thing supported by evidence. You’re attempting to be “fair” by making them both look equal, but in order to do so you had to write the “theory” side using nothing but a creationist’s strawman.

[Bill said “First of all, how could they have found DNA of Mew unless Mew died or there are more than one Mew?” ]

I mean, seriously, this is like “but if humans evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys????” Only like, because it’s not exactly the same but even dumber, considering you apparently think getting DNA, found in every single living cell, requires a corpse to get a single strand from.

And so forth. I’d go through piece by piece, but there’s plenty of sites that already cover this bullshit and even I have limits on explaining to the willfully ignorant.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7750292/1/What_are_friends_for

Capitalize your title properly.

[stop being so afraid.” Ian said. ]

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” he said or “Hello!” he said, never “Hello.” He said or “Hello.” he said or “Hello,” He said or “Hello” he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” He grinned, never “Hello,” he grinned or “Hello,” He grinned or “Hello.” he 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,” he said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” he said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” he said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” he said, “is it.” If there’s no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like “Hi. This – ” He looked around. “- is it.” And the same punctuation and capitalization applies to thoughts.

…okay, so if the berries are in ghost territory, and the plan of sneaking in at night while they’re asleep is a bad idea because ghosts are at wake at night instead of during the day, then why didn’t he mention this earlier instead of now and suggest, just for example, GOING DURING THE DAY. Your plot should not rely on an idiot ball.

Considering you say that just going into ghost territory messes with the sky, why not have them assume they’d be safe from the ghosts during the day only to discover ghosts are always active in this area? Then it’s a reasonable assumption that turned out to be wrong. Or if they should know about ghosts, say that the ghosts are less active in the day so it is the best time to try and have it just be bad luck that they get caught?

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7750354/1/The_Fading_of_a_Flame

[a lone Charmander ]

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.

This doesn’t make much sense. So the charmander was lost, wandered into a colder area…then just hung out for a week instead of heading back south? And then he just dies. There’s not really much point.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7750388/1/17_Moves

This is badly formatted and the battle itself is dull. Your description is vague and general at best, which is the last thing you want when the entire focus of your story is the blow-by-blow recounting of a battle.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7750850/1/Psychotic

[My name is Bane and I’m hoping to be a trainer. The only thing is I am different from others my age since I am a genius. ]

oh god

Writing a genius is actually pretty hard to do. It’s not simply a matter of smugging it up and saying the character’s very smart and better than (insert person or group known to be smart) and able to do (adult things) easily.

[I’m not kidding; a wild Metagross who is like a father to me was beaten by me in an intelligence test. I mean I passed the test to become a trainer when I was five and since then I have been training myself. You see I live in Johto right along Route 45 and my parents are almost never home since they are executives at Silph Co. The reason no one takes care of me is because my parents figure I am smart enough to handle myself. ]

…like this mess, for example.

Metagross’ intelligence isn’t directly stated, just being able to do calculations like a supercomputer. Do you know what that isn’t? Actual intelligence. Something that can do calculations isn’t necessarily going to have any score on a human IQ test, people who score highly on IQ tests don’t necessarily do calculations in their head, and people who calculate like supercomputers tend to be more in the idiot savant mold.

Intelligence and knowledge aren’t the same thing. Simply being smart wouldn’t necessarily mean he knew enough information to pass the test, although it’s possible. Being smart certainly doesn’t mean he’s able to make good decisions and can be left alone.

You don’t seem to understand what you’re writing about – when you say he’s a genius, all you’re really saying is that people should think he’s awesome in this way, not actually writing about someone who is.

Also, 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.

[Weird thing is I can speak to Pokemon and understand them. I like to spar with many of them and most who face me have to go all out to beat me since, for some reason, I am stronger, faster, and smarter than any other human I know. ]

Or in short, you’re writing a ridiculous sue who’s just specialer than everyone because you say so.

…and then he learns aura sphere and accidentally blows up a mountain. I’m out.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7750899/1/Pokemon_Ranger_Sacerfice

This is terrible. Look up a basic grammar guide before you post.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7751036/1/The_White_of_Winter

[I need to finish these.” I said]

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” he said or “Hello!” he said, never “Hello.” He said or “Hello.” he said or “Hello,” He said or “Hello” he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” He grinned, never “Hello,” he grinned or “Hello,” He grinned or “Hello.” he 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,” he said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” he said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” he said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” he said, “is it.” If there’s no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like “Hi. This – ” He looked around. “- is it.” And the same punctuation and capitalization applies to thoughts.

[My Chandelure]

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.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7751154/1/Transformation_of_the_Leaders

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.

This is weird. The whole conversation with the gym leader makes the main character sound like she’s either extremely young or has some sort of mental problem, possibly both, while Flannery sounds weird because she’s just way too overinvested in telling the kid about how awesome she is.

[“I’ve never even met my grandfather,” I said quietly. “Does that worry you at all? Is it bad that I’ve never met the guy that gave me my love of Pokémon?”
“Your parents are quite smart in keeping you from him. He’s a bit of a flighty one, and he’s definitely the kind of guy who would pick needless fights with you,” she told me. “He would do it with your father all the time, from what stories I’ve heard.”
I cocked my head to the left. “Is that why my dad doesn’t want me to see him until I’m strong enough?” It then tilted all the way to the right. “Or is it because it’s League rules or something?”]

Everything just sounds wrong. She’s asking all sorts of questions that should have come up long before this, and which don’t really make any sense in the conversation, and Flannery’s personality seems to be just wrapped around telling her all about herself.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7751292/1/Kanto_In_Pictures

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.

[“Pass the ketchup Piper,” my brother pointed at my plate.]

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” he said or “Hello!” he said, never “Hello.” He said or “Hello.” he said or “Hello,” He said or “Hello” he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” He grinned, never “Hello,” he grinned or “Hello,” He grinned or “Hello.” he 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,” he said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” he said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” he said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” he said, “is it.” If there’s no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like “Hi. This – ” He looked around. “- is it.” And the same punctuation and capitalization applies to thoughts.

You know, while I can believe favoritism, I can’t believe someone being so pathetic about it. She’s lived with her brother ten years, and hasn’t figured out such basic tricks as “walk out of the room so that it’s clear you can’t be poking the kid” or even “once Mom leaves, smack him so he learns not to try that again”? She’s sixteen, why is the preteen outsmarting her?

[The Pokémon Academy he and I attended required us to go there from the age of six to eighteen. The only way a kid could get out of it was if they were picked by Professor Oak of the Pallet Town Pokémon Laboratory to go on the Pokémon Trainer Adventure. ]

It doesn’t work like this, and it couldn’t. Being a trainer isn’t something most people do with their life, so training a kid for twelve years so 90% of them can dick around for six months and then go back home is a waste of everyone’s time. And there have to be a lot of trainers in order to run into each other on the road or have enough people for tournaments or make all the infrastructure for trainers like pokemon centers make sense. The older you make trainers start, the fewer people will be able to go. Once you’re up to eighteen, you’re running into time limits as well, because they’ll have to stop to get a job.

[“Who knows?” I sighed, hoping to avoid him taking his anger out on me. “Maybe today will be a good day to go?”]

God, she’s pathetic. They’re finally out of range of both overprotective mom and evenhanded dad and he’s six years younger. What good is his anger? She can smack him upside the head. Hell, she can do that even if he doesn’t do anything to annoy her.

And now the kid randomly got chosen by Oak. Cool, he won’t be bothering her. Considering how whiny he is and that the majority of kids in the school are older and presumably better qualified, this makes even less sense than when it was first laid out. It’s the sort of system that parents would get upset about and complain about the unfairness. I’d find it more plausible if it was just a luck of the draw thing, even.

Look, you really, really shouldn’t ask for characters. Doesn’t work right. You get people doing all sorts of characters, and they may each be fine but they don’t fit together properly. It’s like trying to complete a hundred-piece puzzle by taking fifty of the pieces from fifty other puzzles. They may all be good puzzles, and you may pick only the prettiest pieces, but you’re going to end up with a mess.

As an older sister, I find this story offensive in is lack of violence toward small children. God made us older siblings larger, stronger, faster and frequently left unsupervised for a reason, and that reason was not to make life easier for our victims siblings.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7751708/1/Lost_Memories

[Her black hair was blown by the harsh winds. She wore a button-down white shirt with short sleeves and tattered jeans. On her feet were a pair of black tennis shoes. Around her neck was a necklace that looked like a clear-blue fang with a dragon wrapped around it. The chain of the necklace was made of metal pokemon. On one of her wrists was a silver charm bracelet that held the pokemon she owned. On her other wrist was a black leather watch, and in her hand was a pokeball that had never been seen before. ]

This is way, way too much description. I would like to point to the shoes bit as being particularly unnecessary.

[The girl turned and smiled at her friends behind her. Some looked at her sadly, while others couldn’t bear look at her at all. Then, she ran off the cliff into the tumbling waves. Her friends shuffled closer to the cliff and look over the edge. Several of them began to cry. Others wondered why it was her that fate was cruel to. ]

And this is way too melodramatic. It’s the distilled essence of a kid talking about how everyone will be so sad after they’re gone. If they didn’t want her to jump off that cliff, they’d be trying to talk her down, not watching her tragically kill herself in respectful silence and then weeping lovely tears over her death.

[That one moment was engraved into their minds. The moment when she smiled. ]

You know what moment is engraved in people’s minds? The jumping part. It’s not because the jumper is super special, it’s because people find watching other people commit suicide to be upsetting and respond as such. She could be a complete stranger, she could be a jerk they barely knew, they’d still remember watching her die. This is really not the best way to try to sell that she’s so important and tragic that everyone cares, because suicide is one of those attention-grabbing things all by itself.

I really hate combining suicide and specialness.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7751708/2/Lost_Memories

[He was walking along the beach, minding his own business, when he saw a girl lying in the sand. The first thing he saw was a charm bracelet with pokeballs dangling off of it and a strange pokeball in her hand. ]

No, pretty sure the first thing he saw was a body on the sand. Depending on if you mean for her to have washed in at high tide and left on solid ground or to be still half in the water, she may have looked like a drowned corpse. Kind of more attention-grabbing than a charm bracelet, as well as visible at a distance well before he’d even be able to see that bracelet.

Also, you’re really not going to keep your grip on a pokeball after jumping off a cliff, smacking into the water at some unknown force, and then washing up on the beach sometime later.

[He heard her breathing faintly, but it was barely audible. ]

How did he hear that? Did he go over there? Did he try to get a pulse or touch her? Someone barely breathing isn’t going to be very obvious about it, it’s why trained people rely on finding a pulse and untrained people do stuff like the mirror trick to see if breathe fogs it up. Actually describe what’s going on.

[Sorry for such short chapters! ]

Instead of apologizing, just don’t post such short chapters. This is only a few paragraphs, save it, come back later, write more.

Complaints aside, this is some very readable badness. I wish this was what I had to deal with instead of misspelled chatter.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7751732/1/Not_Really_A_Hero

[my trusty Sewaddle, Sai, ]

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.

[“Awesome,” I held out my arms ]

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” he said or “Hello!” he said, never “Hello.” He said or “Hello.” he said or “Hello,” He said or “Hello” he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” He grinned, never “Hello,” he grinned or “Hello,” He grinned or “Hello.” he 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,” he said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” he said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” he said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” he said, “is it.” If there’s no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like “Hi. This – ” He looked around. “- is it.” And the same punctuation and capitalization applies to thoughts.

[I saw that they were both armed with pistols. ]

Guns are generally not a good idea to include in fanfic, since it raises a lot of questions about why the gun-users don’t generally win and how pokemon can be a viable force.

[“Well, you see. Tree sent me here to go undercover and help with saving the Lillipup that was kidnapped.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I never heard anything about that…”
“Oh! Well, Tree wanted it to be kept a secret, I guess.”
“I see…But, if you really are my ally, then why did you alert everyone to my presence? And why did you attack us?…What is your name anyways? If you do know Tree then why haven’t I ever seen you around HQ?”
“Whoa! Slow down!” Blondie laughed nervously, “My name’s Jason, but I go by Jace.”
“Jason. So if you’re with Tree, why did you attack me? And alert the people here?”
“I never alerted anyone. I just wanted to provoke you and see what your reaction would be,” I felt my eye twitch, “I’ve heard from a lot of people at base that you’re a really strong battler, and I guessed that you wouldn’t fight me if you knew I was on your side. But I never really expected for you to be the one to fight my Bisharp! You’re pretty tough.” He smiled nervously and rubbed at the back of his neck.]

This is idiotic. It’s not how anyone would act given the stakes involved – particularly given those stakes involve guns and therefore at any moment someone could have shown up and shot her before either of them could have done anything about it. And given that, it makes no sense she’d believe him and go along, let alone so trustingly.