*rolls eyes* I hope you capitalise his name when you write this. This idea thread is full of grammar and punctuation errors, which doesn't make me want to read your story.
I'm inclined to agree that bad grammar and spelling in the teaser (i.e., idea thread) has an unfortunate tendency to turn people off a potential fanfic. Likewise, I've skimmed your first fic, dark_giratina, and your penchant for neglecting to punctuate tends to be a bit worrisome, particularly after a reviewer has already told you when you should punctuate. (Granted, Citrinin could have offered to show you through specific examples and actually defining
why you should place punctuation in those key areas, but at least he tried. Also, may I just facepalm at the fact that he advised you to make a perfectly decent clause wordier than it should be? I mean, yes, you can see the blur of orange and red, but what
is the orange and red, particularly given the fact that Chimchar
is orange and red by itself already? It's perfectly possible to simply stop at mentioning there's fire and assuming the reader can not only envision the color but also the heat, the pain from being hit by it, and the light, which the description Citrinin offered as an example completely lacked. In other words... bad, Citrinin. Wordier is not always better. *whacks with a newspaper*)
Uh, back on topic...
The point is, yes, you have a problem when it comes to grammar, and that problem is mainly not entirely knowing where to place punctuation.
However, there are ways to improve on this, and that's by not only
learning the rules (and realizing that just because it's the internet doesn't mean this is a place to forget what you learned in English class and use chatspeak and shorthand everywhere) but also by finding yourself
a beta reader. Betas are people who work closely with you
before you post a chapter by going over your work and helping you to fix up potential errors in grammar, spelling, and/or content. They're your proofreaders, basically, as well as advisers and counselors who are experienced enough with writing to give you a guiding hand in developing your work.
In other words, yes, your work has some glitches, and if you're going for a second story, you'll need to be aware of the fact that you're going to have to do better than you did with your first story. As in, "this is my first story" is only good as an excuse for the first one. Anything afterwards, and some of us might not be lenient. However, don't be intimidated by this because you can easily find solutions through proofreading by yourself
and with someone who can look over your work for you.
Other than that, while the "this is the story of a grunt in an evil organization called Team Insertsomethinghere" has been done, kids on the wrong side of the law tend to be more interesting to write about because there's a lot of pressure from higher up to be a certain way. (That is, the boss will expect you to be evil, or you're probably in a crapload of trouble.) This means your character could go one of two basic ways: go with it or go against it.
Now, a character who goes with the evil organization just means that everything you do in the story will need your main character to actually be evil. As in, there's no "I'm suddenly going to turn good and work to stop the organization." It's "my organization is doing this, and I either can't stop it or don't really feel like doing it for my own personal reasons." In other words, your character turns out to be evil either way for working with the bad guys in this case. It's just that your character could be too weak or too intimidated to break out of the system and fight or your character could just not give a crap that they're doing something evil (either because he's genuinely apathetic or because the ends somehow benefit him).
A character who goes
against, meanwhile, is inherently good, but it takes a bit more effort to explain this one. The problem is you can't really have a character who's good off the bat
and aware of what the organization is doing (and of the fact that it's generally evil) because then you'd have to explain why the kid never just quit the gang. (The fear of death could be one way, although Jessie and James have been kicked out of Team Rocket at one point, and Wes of Colosseum just didn't give a crap about that part.) The other option is having the character learn about it sometime during the story and turning after, which also means you're open to working with the idea that the character decides to attempt to dismantle the organization's plans from the inside, if not just defect completely. (Read Pokemon Rebirth: Ultimatum for an example of the latter.)
The short of it is that you've got a lot of potential routes and interesting drama for a character who's originally evil -- drama that a good character like your average OT doesn't really have.
However, yes, I'm going to have to voice concerns over the last sentence. If you have to say "you obviously know how this will end," I'm sorry, but that's exactly what you should be avoiding. A good story knows the art of subverting clichés -- as in, completely blowing off what's expected of the norm. While, yes, every organization and their mother (except Team Rocket in the games, actually) tends to want to capture and manipulate legendaries for their own power, there's so many other methods of world domination
without them that it's not even funny. In fact, the capture of legendaries reminds me of a quote from the Princess Bride:
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia."
Now, what that means is kinda simple. Asia's a big continent, and in Asian history, it's been noted that they're very fond of forming armies and barricades that laugh at land invaders. (Russia is notorious for this. Yes, technically, kids keep on invading the European half, but just ask Napoleon and the Nazis about what happened when they thought it'd be a good idea to knock on Moscow's door and go, "So, um, can we have the entirety of your huge, continent-spanning nation?") Point is, legendaries are supposed to be the most powerful creatures in the Pokémon world, and every criminal organization (again, except Team Rocket in the games, which had
nothing to do with the legendary Pokémon whatsoever) has a tendency to lose against a ten-year-old (or, in Cipher's case at one point, an older teen) fighting them singlehandedly as soon as they decide it'll be a great idea to harness a legendary's power.
In other words, yeah, as soon as you have the criminal organization go after a legendary, we're going to know how it's going to end, and we're really not going to be surprised that it happened that way. Instead, perhaps it'd be a better idea to toss around other concepts. Maybe the organization is slowly manipulating people into supporting them and becoming their little army. Maybe the organization is developing a device to brainwash Pokémon into attacking their trainers. Or maybe they're just going to go with the classic Bondian (but not often seen in Pokémon) idea of building a doomsday ray. Play with ideas, but don't just settle for clichés. Audiences want to be surprised, and the way to do that is to make them keep guessing what the ending will be by going for something new and different.
Long story short, get a beta, and really think about what you're going to be doing. When you do both, you'll be able to weave something your audience will enjoy.
