Is this a good idea for a fanfic?

Well I have this idea,
and the plot just poping all in my head at once now.
I'm wondering if this idea is good to make a fanfic, I came up with some strange stuff before this and I would like to know about people thoughts on this.

Idea:

Summary:
Maria, a 14 year old trainer one day woke up in abody of a pokemon. Searching for a way back to her body she met up with Ash and the gang, her long time friends, but the meeting came out wrong when Ash wanted to capture her for his pokemon team.
She later on met Volkner and Roark on her journey to her real body and she wondered to herself, if these people for real when they started to treat her kindly.

Can Maria transform back to her normal body?

-if I'm going through with this, I'll change the girl's name to something else later on.

Please tell me what you think about this idea.

Good?
Bad?
Okay?

I've always personally liked the concept of "kid gets changed into a Pokémon and it's not Mystery Dungeon time," but there's something that you may want to consider: Maria herself.

First off, you'll probably get a few raised eyebrows over the idea that Ash and company are her longtime friends. Unless this is a canon character, the first question people are going to ask is probably going to be, "If she's a long-time friend, why wasn't she ever mentioned?" As in, it's really a lot harder to shoehorn an OC into the group because it means trying to work around the problem that Ash and company just wouldn't completely ignore or never mention someone they're close friends with. Ergo, it ends up being incredibly awkward to just have her appear with little to no prior explanation as to why she was never even mentioned.

Basically, fanfiction's based on a fan's what ifs, of course, but the writer needs to remember that canon is the least common denominator in a fan's mind. As in, you don't violate canon in part because you're a fan (and are therefore doing this out of respect) and in part because if you do, you're going to confuse the crap out of your readers. That and it's just easier to acknowledge and work with canon than it is trying to come up with the explanations to avoid the second problem (in which the fan gets incredibly confused because a random character appeared, claiming to be one of Ash's best buddies when Ash hadn't even mentioned this girl canonically).

Second, you'll want to be wary of the concept of a Mary Sue, or a character who suddenly appears and tries to bend reality to her will. I say this mostly because, well, one of the classic examples of a Mary Sue is the ultra-awesome character who, to the readers, appears out of nowhere and happens to be the canon characters' BFFs that just were never mentioned in canon. (There's parodies of this, even, particularly in the Harry Potter fandom, in which every Mary Sue tries to be the daughter of Severus Snape for some reason.)

Rambling aside, while the concept itself is interesting, I'd probably try to rethink Maria herself to avoid treading awkward points and the Land of Sue. Perhaps, for example, she met Ash later instead of being a long-term friend. Perhaps she doesn't know him at all.

Or, perhaps, you could consider using one of Ash's actual long-time friends as well, such as Misty, May, or Dawn. Is it necessary that she has to be an OC?

In any case, good luck, and I hope you think carefully about your characters.

Thanks for the insight.
This really having me thinking now, I'm not planing on have Maria be a Mary Sue at all.

Thanks for your help :D

pretty much wat valentine says. I think that the idea behind it is just old. i mean, there is a whole game series about a girl or boy that transforms into a pokemon and finds out how to turn back into a human. i think you may wanna re think it ;)

Pink Twilight said:

pretty much wat valentine says. I think that the idea behind it is just old. i mean, there is a whole game series about a girl or boy that transforms into a pokemon and finds out how to turn back into a human. i think you may wanna re think it ;)

Click to expand...

There's a difference between reusing a vague concept and reusing an idea that's already canon. Mystery Dungeon has a kid turning into a Pokémon, yes, but there's more to it than that. The kid's transported to a completely different world, is regarded as suspicious at one point due to the world's folklore, and ultimately finds him/herself to be the center of a plot to save his/her new world from imminent destruction via meteor. Moreover, there's no real "how" in the kid's method of turning back into a human. The kid has no control over whether or not they get to be a Pokémon or a human until the very end, as s/he's returning to his/her original world. There's also no quest to become a human again. It's more that the main character of the MD games sets out to find the root of the natural disasters plaguing the MD world.

Meanwhile, Serenade Angel's idea has the kid retain both her memories and her world. There's no world-jumping, and there's no memory loss the way MD had. Likewise, the main point seems to be figuring out how to change back into a human, unlike in the MD plot, where it's mentioned as more of an afterthought. Moreover, there's humans to interact with her (some of whom are trying to be her trainer), and there seems to be an implication that relationships will play a heavy part in this story, unlike in MD where although there's the ties between the main character and the partner, the focus is mostly on the folklore of the world and saving it at all.

In other words, one instance of canon does not a cliché make. Simply put, yeah, there's been kids turning into Pokémon, but it's only a plot element, not a plot by itself. This is a lot like saying having a trainer who sets out to earn badges in X region is old. Yeah, it's been done since the dawn of the franchise, but it's what's also in the plot that defines it as either a cliché or not.

I agree with Valatine.

The idea sounds great, and it's not a mystery dungeon fanfic, it's something else! Sure it's probably been done before, but try to make it stand out from the rest. Make it something that people say

"oh, i've read stories like this, but this one is the best"

And yeah, I agree with Valatine on making the girl not a life long friend with Ash. The idea of her randomly coming in contact with Ash while she's a Pokémon is a lot better. Maybe she can get really annoyed at him for trying to catch her and then run onto his head and bite him or something. Ha.

also, what Pokémon would she be?