The Journey of an Unwilling Pokemon Trainer

[yuki3056]

I have started over will a mod please lock this??

[Breezy]

Bear with me. This is going to be a long review. We have a lot to cover.

Normally wild pokemon leave people alone, but this Pidgey had been sleeping until that rock hit the tree, so needless to say he was a little angry.

I'm having some trouble believing this, though I may be basing this on my experience with small birds. Agitated is one thing. Attacking something bigger than itself is another. I mean pidgeys, when we imagine them, seem to be pretty timid and simply kicking at birds such as pidgey seems to scare them away without them attacking. Would a pidgey really attack some boy because it threw a rock at the *tree* and not the pidgey itself? Maybe if it were a predator, but pidgeys aren't really portrayed as predators (pidgeottos or pidgeots maybe) so it'd probably fly away.

His hand closed around a stick, he hit the Pidgey with the stick, he realized too late this was the worst thing he could have done. The Pidgey grew louder and more violent and Brady was sure this it the end of his life.

Lol, dramatic much? I think you're overestimating a pidgey's strength. It's pecking at him which, yes, does hurt but can't necessarily kill you. It didn't use gust and kick the kid off the cliff. It didn't cry for a flock of angry pidgeot to surround him. It's. Just. Pecking.

And again, I'm also having troubling picturing a pidgey sticking around to peck this kid even though the kid has a sharp twig in his hand which could seriously injure something as small as pidgey.

The blue figure turned to Brady, it was a Sneasel. "Thank you Sneasel," Brady muttered the Sneasel just turned and ran off.

More of a nitpick than an actual criticism, but would a five year old know what a sneasel is? Lol. That being said, I think you should haven't revealed the mysterious, life saving thing to be the sneasel. It leaves some sort of foreshadowing.

Grammar wise, what I noticed the most were the numerous run-ons and comma splice errors. A run-on sentence is when you hook up two complete sentences with no sort of punctuation mark or conjunction while a comma splice is hooking up two complete sentences with just a comma. A comma isn't strong enough to connect two complete sentences together.

Originally Posted by run-on example

"Thank you Sneasel," Brady muttered the Sneasel just turned and ran off.

Read it out loud. It literally does sound like you're rambling on. Hence run on. There are several ways to connect two complete sentences together.

One way, obviously, is separating this into two different sentences:

"Thank you, Sneasel," Brady muttered. The Sneasel just turned and ran off.

You can also use a conjunction, a conjunction being words like "and" or "but":

"Thank you, Sneasel," Brady muttered, and the Sneasel nodded before turning around and running.

Originally Posted by Comma splice example

Richard ran through a bush after the Poliwag leaving Brady sitting on a log, Brady whistled to himself and began throwing rocks at a tree.

Like I said earlier, a comma isn't strong enough to hook up two complete sentences. When reading over your work (which I hope you're doing), a good way to check whether you can use a comma is if both sides of the comma can stand alone as a single sentence. If they can, you should probably be using a period or conjunction with the comma rather than a comma alone. Taking the portion I quoted as example, both sides of the comma can stand alone, therefore you can't simply use just a comma to connect the two.

Ideally, if you don't think you have a good hand in properly checking your grammar, I suggest getting a beta/proofreader.

Some ways of fixing this:

• Richard ran through a bush after the Poliwag, leaving Brady sitting on a log. Brady whistled to himself and began throwing rocks at a tree.
• Richard ran through a bush after the Poliwag, leaving Brady sitting on a log who whistled to himself as he threw rocks at a tree.

This leads us to the actual heart of the matter: Description. I'm not saying you have to describe every little rock or the line patterns on the poliwag, but you still need to give enough for us to picture what's going on. I won't bother you about character description as this is the prologue and that can be explained in the actual first chapter, though for such an intense, life changing scene, you described very little of it. This causes problems because it doesn't portray your scene as intense (or scary) and leaves the readers somewhat emotionally dissatisfied. As in the "that's it?" sense.

Unfortunately, I don't think you took enough time to properly plan this considering the time difference between your writer's lounge thread and this one. You wrote your prologue in a hurried and rushed way, listing out the events taking place instead of sitting down, thinking about it, and detailing it. "This happen. It lead to this. Then that happened" is how I would describe your prologue. Or "prolouge", rather which leads me to question if you're typing this in the reply box rather than a proper word processor (such as Microsoft Word) or properly reading over your work.

"Listing", as I like to call it, isn't interesting to read. Let's take a history textbook for example. They list fact after fact to get to the point. Listing works in history textbooks. You aren't writing a history textbook however. Simply telling the reader what's going on isn't interesting; you want to show it as well.

Richard ran through a bush after the Poliwag leaving Brady sitting on a log, Brady whistled to himself and began throwing rocks at a tree. Then the worst thing that could happen, happened. Brady threw a rock at the tree with all his might, a resounding crack sent a Pidgey falling out the tree. The Pidgey cried out loudly and charged at Brady; Brady stood up but the Pidgey was on him in a second and started beating him with it's wings and pecking at him with it's sharp beak.

What is so interesting about this? You leave little for the reader to imagine. It's just ... fact. It's just ... stated. This sort of style sort of snaps your reader out of the story. You want to make your reader feel like their inside the world of your character (separated by the fourth wall, of course).

Compare it to the following:

"Come back!" cried Richard, jumping up from the log and chasing the poliwag into the bushes, leaving his brother behind. Brady didn't bother to follow though -- he was used to being left behind.

Looking around, Brady noticed a couple of small pebbles scattered amongst the blowing dandelions. He picked one of the stones up, his fingertips running across the smooth gray surface before throwing it up in the air and catching it in his open palm. He then whistled a light tune to himself, absentmindedly throwing the pebble up and down before lazily flicking it toward a nearby tree. There was a pleasant "thunk" sound as the rock collided with the hollow tree, rolling away from the trunk and finding rest among the thick outer roots. Brady thought nothing of it though as he picked up the second pebble, examining its speckled appearance.

Then there was a loud chirp -- no, more of a screech. Brady turned his head toward where the sound was being produced, and something small and brown and feathery and --

Brady had no time to finish his thought as the pidgey began to peck at his head rapidly. He flung himself off the log and immediately covered his head as he screamed for his brother.

Gives the reader something more to imagine than just cold, hard fact, don't you think?

Anyway, I think you should take some time and plan. Don't worry about getting new chapters out and whatnot; your readers can wait. I also recommend reading some of the better fanfics to get a better idea of description.

[Saltare.]

Since Breezy covered the stuff I was gonna point out, I will say it was good, imo. Also, the Prologue could be a bit longer. Other than that, it was very good.

[Feathing]

This is the plot you were talking about in other thread, isn't it?
It seems cool, but it could a bit more descriptive (not that much or you'll be writing as me: LOTS of description XD haha)
But seriously, there are two more things... First, use longer sentences, so the action doesn't seem to happen all too quickly. Use paragrahps.
And second, the Pidgey seemed to be left almost dead in the grass :/

PD: I like the name Richard XD

[yuki3056]

Originally Posted by Feathing

This is the plot you were talking about in other thread, isn't it?
It seems cool, but it could a bit more descriptive (not that much or you'll be writing as me: LOTS of description XD haha)
But seriously, there are two more things... First, use longer sentences, so the action doesn't seem to happen all too quickly. Use paragrahps.
And second, the Pidgey seemed to be left almost dead in the grass :/

PD: I like the name Richard XD

I like the name Richard too, I never see it used though so I thought I would add it I might change Richard with Brady, and no the Pidgey isn't dead just evil :p....I shoulda mentioned this was a rough draft and I will be working on it soon I just had to get the Prolouge up before I lost my train of thought on it....

By the way I did not type this up in Word because word on my computer underlines everything in red and spell check does not show corrections. If any knows where I can find a better word processor I would be happy to type it on there before posting it here...


Thanks for all the feedback though it really does help


Oh and the question about a 5 year old knowing what a Sneasel is, he has two older brothers who are pokemon trainers after all.....


I chose Pidgey because they seem like they could be agressive if provoked.....

[Breezy]

I'm not saying a pidgey can't get aggressive. I just think you might need another explanation about why it attacked Brady. Throwing a rock at a tree it happened to be resting it would probably startle it more than piss it off.

Maybe if you provoke it enough like Brady threw not one rock, not two rocks, but three rocks in a row at the pidgey. Like literally Brady was trying to hit the bird instead of just chucking rocks wherever he wanted. You can also do the "mother's wrath technique" as in Brady, being curious, climbed the tree to look at the pidgey's nest and poked at the eggs and the pidgey began to attack Brady to protect its bebes.

As for a word processor, you can download openoffice at openoffice.org. It works similarly to Word.

[yuki3056]

Ok thanks for the ideas and the site I will download it ASAP I am not on my own laptop atm so when I am I will download and thanks for all the feedback...