[Pokémon] October's Curse Quest

Hey everyone, this is my first story being put out online and I'm sorry if my writing is sub-par- I'm fifteen and still getting the hang of things. This story is also originally from my blog, but thanks to a kindly moderator telling me I can't just make a thread with a link to my blog I will copy/paste it all here. Anyways, if you do want to visit my (very) small corner of Pokecommunity, head here. New parts will be updated there sooner than here due to me tracking a bunch of topics...

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Awwright! TIme for my first blog post. Sorry if this story is kinda lackadaisical, but I love community events like this mansion one and whoever stumbles upon this post should go try it out! I'm also new to PokéCommunity, and so far I really like it.


October's Curse Quest
in: Pokemon Blue
challenge: Mansion Extravaganza
Part 1

When aptly named October finds out he has gotten a halloween curse, he is eager to go and collect all 8 gym badges plus the champion's power to rid himself of his curse and soon-to-be curses. Unfortunate youngsters such as October have recently been getting curses out of nowhere and they found out that they must get the badges and insert them into haunted tablets that have been popping up to rid themselves of their impending doom. Within these tablets is a virtual mansion, where all the cursed youngsters go to move themselves further into the mansion, gaining curses as they go, but once they move nine times they are freed. However, to gain the power to take an action, they must insert a badge. For the ninth move, they must gain the champion's power.
Anyways. October aptly left to find Oak after receiving his curse that all of his pokemon and himself will die if they sleep. Crap! October realizes he's gonna have to pull an all-nighter every night until he can get some freakin' help. October picks Spuds, a bulbasaur, and soon afterwards loses his first ever fight against Gary.
*Facepalm*
After October gets lazy old Oak his parcel (Oak's too self-centered to notice that October's life is on the line, see) Oak yammers on about some pokedex crap that October doesn't really care about- He needs to get a move on! October gets out as fast as he can but of course he can't run because he doesn't have running shoes. Completely logical!
Some growls, tackles and tail whips later, October befriends a new monster, the dude nidoran, which he names Poke-Rex, except in all caps because he doesn't want it sticking out like a sore thumb in a world where all names are completely in capital letters.
More growls, tackles and tail whips later, October thinks he's ready for a rematch against Gary. He wins and promptly blazes through the forest filled with stupid bugs because he wants to be able to move on the second gym sooner rather than later (after he defeats Brock)
After facing a wannabe Ultra Recon Squad kid who yammers on about lightyears, October reaches Brock, preparing for an intense, scorching and exciting battle!
Two vine whips.
Buh-bye, Onix and Geodude!
Weeell, in order to avoid Brock taking out his anger which was currently taking the form of steam out of his ears, October rushes out as quickly as his lame non-runner shoes can handle. Upon stepping outside, like literally the first step he took, October feels really dizzy, like he ran into an invisible pokemon or something(oh, wait, Kecleon's not in this game). Suddenly he realizes. He's getting another curse. He better get all gym badges and gain the champion's power before it's too late!!

Oh yeah. October remembered to take out his haunted tablet and proceed to room 12.
Team currently:
Spuds (Bulbasaur) lvl. 14
Poke-Rex (Nidoran Dude) lvl. 10

In pt. 2, October's curse will mark his first loss...
Part 2 will be posted relatively soon, so stay tuned!
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The second part was already written before this thread so here it is.

October's Curse Quest
in: Pokemon Blue
challenge: Mansion Extravaganza
Part 2

Earlier...
October, a youngling forced to go out and collect all the gym badges to save himself from a wicked series of curses, is our protagonist. He started off with Spuds, a Bulbasaur, and soon after caught a Nidoran, which he named Poke-Rex. After blazing through the starting forest, and a battle from his snobby rival, Gary, October faces off against Brock and wins in two moves.
Curses: Never-ending nightmare

Now...
Upon stepping out of the gym, October heard a little wail coming from one of his pokeballs. October forgot which order he put the pokemon in, so he dreadfully picked up the pokeball that the sounds were coming from without knowing which pokemon it was. Upon releasing the pokeball, the pokemon that came out was none other than his very first one, Spuds. Spuds started choking as he fell over and blood started spatt--oh, wait, this is meant to be for all ages. Scratch that. Spuds, uhh, died a peaceful death, and was totally not wailing and bleeding even after he was put in the box...
Spuds died. The curse struck again.
Hey, at least October's never-ending nightmare curse won't deter him- he ain't sleeping anytime soon.
After that rather unfortunate event, October felt that he was all by himself and Poke-Rex felt annoyed. October decided to go back into the forest to catch a Pikachu, because they were all the rage in those days . After grinding mercilessly with Poke-Rex, October finally found a Pikachu. Startled, October yelled, "P-Pikachu!" and spontaneously sneezed at the same time, therefore making him sound more like "P-PikACHOO!" To commemorate his impressive feat, October then aptly named his new Pikachu "Achoo".

Anxiously getting out of the grass as fast as his non-running-shoed feet could handle, October left a path of charred, motionless and bloo-- whoops. Um, after leaving a path of knocked out Pidgeys and Spearows, by the handiwork of his new Pikachu.

A little while later, Achoo finally came across a Spearow it couldn't kill knock out in one hit, and to commemorate that event October caught the traumatized Spearow, as it had about 4 HP left and was paralyzed. He decided to name it Jacko, after a Jack-o-lantern.

After coming across some seriously strange trainers ridiculing October for not wearing shorts, explaining why shorts are great to wear, and complaining about October poking them when they were clearly the one walking up to him; October finally got to Mt. Moon. Upon Achoo and Jacko getting knocked out inside the cave, October naturally switched to Poke-Rex. When he chucked the pokeball at the ground, however, all that came out was a flopping, embarrassing Nidoran that jerked a bit, then stayed still. October looked at his tablet, and saw that Poke-Rex couldn't use any moves. Then he looked closer, and saw the icon that annoyingly hid the Pokemon's level bar from view.

SLP

October never hated those three letters in his life more than he did now. Poor Poke-Rex was caught in a never-ending nightmare, caused by none other than-
"JIGGLYPUUUUFF!"
The opposing trainer that just watched October send out a flopping, slobbering mess and spontaneously yell "Jigglypuff" inched away slowly. October remembered his fight with one of those cursed lasses earlier, and inwardly screamed at himself for not noticing that Poke-Rex was frickin' asleep when the Lass's Jigglypuff used sing. October almost blacked out, let's say, because if he really blacked out he would be stuck in a never-ending nightmare and the story won't progress anymore
Upon restoring his two pokemon, October got to work finding more pokemon to befriend and eventually part to the afterlife. Back in the cave, October caught a Clefairy and named it Moonshine. Yes, like the alcoholic drink. I don't know where October was in his mind at the moment, but after witnessing two of his partners die it's understandable. Name your pokemon Moonshine. Do what you want. Wait, scratch that...

After defeating a lanky white man with a whip who called himself a gangster, October caught a Paras that he forgot to nickname. Therefore, he caught another Paras only to change one letter in it's name. Welcome to the team, Paris!

Going further into the cave, October soon ran out of potions and only had two pokemon left that were not knocked out. The two were none other than paralyzed and traumatized Moonshine and the rejected Paras. Both were level 10, and I think you know where this is going...

Well, during one of the final fights in that blasted cave, October blacked out ran back to the pokemon center to heal. He was exhausted and felt like sleeping. Frustrated, October took out his tablet only to find out that Gary sent a message meant to degrade him even further. The message read: "There's a guy that can fix people's sleep problems, such as your stupid curse thing, in the next town; and it's HILARIOUS that you can't even make it!! Smell ya later!"

Despite Gary's original intentions, this actually motivated October to jump right back into the cave, even though he had no potions and only enough money to buy...nothing. Oh well. I don't want to see where this one ends...

Current curses: Never-ending nightmare
Current team:
Paris (Paras, Duh)
Achoo (Pikachu)
Moonshine (Clefairy)
Jacko (Spearow)

Edit: Added the part about finding Jacko.

Hi so I decide to check this out real quick! So I'll start off with one positive, and it's the narrator's voice here. While the narrator does break the 4th wall every so often, their commentary like the violence shouldn't be too gruesome in detail and October naming the Pokemon Moonshine are amusing. Gives the narrator personality there. The premise itself also sounds fun and crazy shenanigans are a given.

Now, one of the biggest pitfall here is the pacing. Usually in journey fics taking place in Kanto and start from the very beginning it would take several chapters for the trainer to make it to Pallet Town to Mt Moon. Here you have October do that in two chapters, which is ridiculously fast.

Now for challenge journals I totally get not describing your journey blow by blow and only mention the interesting parts. In prose writing though you need your characters and scenes breathing room. For Part One you can break up like this:

>First chapter can be dedicated to October finding out he has a curse and being informed of what to do about it
>Another chapter with October going against Blue/Gary
>Another chapter or two with October doing battles and then Brock

So yeah your Part One can easily be broken down into three or four chapters there to make the pacing flow better. I would recommend reading fanfics here or published novels to get a better idea on pacing your scenes.

Another problem is some of the battles being described are too technical. What I meant by that is you would mention like, "Spearrow only has 4 HP" when instead you could describe "Spearrow's in pretty bad shape" or "There are cuts and dirt everywhere on Spearrow."

So yeah in short I see this more read as an outline of stuff going on instead of proper prose. I apologize if I sound harsh, thought this is something to consider. I do wish you luck on this challenge run, though!

Thank you for the feedback! I left a post yesterday on summarizing my thought process on it but I deleted it for this message. This is copy/pasted from my blog:

I've decided to end October's Curse Quest. There are a lot of things going on that I need to stay on top of and trying to make a long blog like this feels more chore-like than enjoyable. That being said, I'm also stopping the challenge it's based on. I'm sad because this is my first story like this, and it's had quite a lot of views for something I just started up. I may write more stories in the future, but I want to relieve myself of some burdens to focus more on my school, family, etc.. It's not just this blog, it's other things in my life. I'm still going to be dong pokemon challenges, and I may write up some summaries of what happened, but for now I'm not going to write long stories like this. I hope you all understand!

And that's it. I have potential in my writing, but I need to focus more on what I need to do rather than extra pastimes. I hope to get back to writing stories in the future.