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[Pokémon] Breaking Through (PG 13)
- Thread starter FrozenFlame
- Start date
- 6,388
- Posts
- 17
- Years
- Age 35
- Dani California
- Seen today
Hello there! You asked for me to review your story and I gladly accepted it. All right, let's get right to it.
First off there are a couple writing mechanic problems you have going on here. The first one is how you did some of the dialogue, punctuation wise.
"Well look what we have here." The large human began speaking. ← That's wrong.
"Well look what we have here," the large human began speaking. ←That's correct. Notice how the period is replaced by the comma and the "t" in "the" isn't capitalized?
Two ways you can have the dialogue end in a period. First is if you'll end the sentence in the dialogue.
"Well look what we have here."
Second way is if the dialogue and the action right after are not one complete thought (I'll explain what that is in a bit). Mixing in with your sentence and something I thought up in the fly:
"Well look what we have here." To me, he sounded obnoxious and irritating, like nails on chalk.
I hope I explained dialogue good enough for you. I'm not best at explaining this because I know it gets used to how to do dialogue right. You can google some grammar stuff real quick over how to punctuate dialogue. There should be lots of info on that.
All right, another thing I noticed is a few times you have comma splices, which is using a comma to separate two complete thoughts (or what suppose to be two sentences). Here are a couple examples:
I waited for his explanation but he just kept on moving ahead. I sprinted along side him still weak from the drugs.← This should be in two sentences with the period between "ahead" and "I" as they're two separate complete thoughts.
He picked his head up looked at me solemnly; I realized that I really should as he put it, let him be.← This could be separated with either a period or semi-colon, but I prefer the semi-colon IMO because while they are two complete thoughts/sentences, they are closely related. If you haven't figured it out yet, semi-colons can be used to separated two complete but closely related sentences.
For the comma splices, I would recommend reading the sentences aloud to get an idea if the sentences sounded like it could be changed into two sentences instead.
All right, with the writing mechanics out of the way, onto the story. I'm going to be honest here, it was predictable and I didn't get much out of the story after I read it. I already knew a mile away the experiments happening will be clones and when Sero and Tristian came inside the Espeon has to be either Tristian himself or someone close to him.
The ending I thought wasn't satisfying either because I'm left wondering, how Sero got outside? True, this story is in his POV, but it would be nice to give the readers an idea how that happened, maybe have Sero think a bit about how he got outside. Also it seemed he didn't feel anything after realizing Tristian isn't there. Did he feel sad that Tristian might be dead? Still angry at him for "not beating fate"? A mixture of other feelings?
Overall it was less than satisfying because of the plot and the ending. Also, you have problems with dialogue and comma splices. However, I still enjoy it because I do like the interactions with Sero and Tristian, even if this is the first time seeing one another. I do commend you also trying out a Pokemon POV story in first person as those aren't easy and I think for the most part you did decently.
First off there are a couple writing mechanic problems you have going on here. The first one is how you did some of the dialogue, punctuation wise.
These two examples you tend to punctuate the dialogue with a period and then capitalize the letter if the dialogue won't end in a question mark or exclamation point. That's wrong. What you do instead is replace those periods with commas and not capitalize the first letter of the word if the sentence doesn't end with the dialogue. For instance, taking the second sentence here:
"Well look what we have here." The large human began speaking. ← That's wrong.
"Well look what we have here," the large human began speaking. ←That's correct. Notice how the period is replaced by the comma and the "t" in "the" isn't capitalized?
Two ways you can have the dialogue end in a period. First is if you'll end the sentence in the dialogue.
"Well look what we have here."
Second way is if the dialogue and the action right after are not one complete thought (I'll explain what that is in a bit). Mixing in with your sentence and something I thought up in the fly:
"Well look what we have here." To me, he sounded obnoxious and irritating, like nails on chalk.
I hope I explained dialogue good enough for you. I'm not best at explaining this because I know it gets used to how to do dialogue right. You can google some grammar stuff real quick over how to punctuate dialogue. There should be lots of info on that.
All right, another thing I noticed is a few times you have comma splices, which is using a comma to separate two complete thoughts (or what suppose to be two sentences). Here are a couple examples:
Both to them have comma splices because those sentences have more than one complete thought going on. You don't do that with sentences. There are a couple ways you can go by this, and it's replacing the commas with a period or semi-colon. Using your sentences again:
I waited for his explanation but he just kept on moving ahead. I sprinted along side him still weak from the drugs.← This should be in two sentences with the period between "ahead" and "I" as they're two separate complete thoughts.
He picked his head up looked at me solemnly; I realized that I really should as he put it, let him be.← This could be separated with either a period or semi-colon, but I prefer the semi-colon IMO because while they are two complete thoughts/sentences, they are closely related. If you haven't figured it out yet, semi-colons can be used to separated two complete but closely related sentences.
For the comma splices, I would recommend reading the sentences aloud to get an idea if the sentences sounded like it could be changed into two sentences instead.
All right, with the writing mechanics out of the way, onto the story. I'm going to be honest here, it was predictable and I didn't get much out of the story after I read it. I already knew a mile away the experiments happening will be clones and when Sero and Tristian came inside the Espeon has to be either Tristian himself or someone close to him.
The ending I thought wasn't satisfying either because I'm left wondering, how Sero got outside? True, this story is in his POV, but it would be nice to give the readers an idea how that happened, maybe have Sero think a bit about how he got outside. Also it seemed he didn't feel anything after realizing Tristian isn't there. Did he feel sad that Tristian might be dead? Still angry at him for "not beating fate"? A mixture of other feelings?
Overall it was less than satisfying because of the plot and the ending. Also, you have problems with dialogue and comma splices. However, I still enjoy it because I do like the interactions with Sero and Tristian, even if this is the first time seeing one another. I do commend you also trying out a Pokemon POV story in first person as those aren't easy and I think for the most part you did decently.
- 10,175
- Posts
- 17
- Years
- Age 37
- Seen yesterday
Hi there. Hope you don't mind me also reviewing your story.
You get praise from me for writing a story from a Pokemon's point-of-view. There's a lack of those in fandom (that aren't Mystery Dungeon-based), and so finding this one was a surprise. A good surprise, mind you.
I'm not going to cover dialogue or sentence structure, since Bay already did. I am going to suggest that you should read over your story before you post it so that you can catch small mistakes. Like the missing words I spotted here and there
I do agree that this story felt a little empty and predictable. It was soon quick to see that Sero and Tristian were experiments to create clones. And yeah, the ending felt rushed because suddenly Sero was outside and he accepted that and the fact that he'll never see Tristian again. Since you're writing from the first-person POV, you should make full use of that and add more of the narrator's thoughts and feelings on the events happening. Add in more of Sero's emotions as he learns about what Tristian tells him. Like how he feels after he wakes up and finds his friend in pain. Things like that that would add to the emotional side of this story. Or add in some thoughts of Sero so that the reader isn't confused, like at the end when Sero was outside.
Really, you do have potential here. If you clean up the mechanics of your story, and use the first-person narration to your full advantage, this story would work better. Still, I'd like to see more of your writing.
You get praise from me for writing a story from a Pokemon's point-of-view. There's a lack of those in fandom (that aren't Mystery Dungeon-based), and so finding this one was a surprise. A good surprise, mind you.
I'm not going to cover dialogue or sentence structure, since Bay already did. I am going to suggest that you should read over your story before you post it so that you can catch small mistakes. Like the missing words I spotted here and there
I do agree that this story felt a little empty and predictable. It was soon quick to see that Sero and Tristian were experiments to create clones. And yeah, the ending felt rushed because suddenly Sero was outside and he accepted that and the fact that he'll never see Tristian again. Since you're writing from the first-person POV, you should make full use of that and add more of the narrator's thoughts and feelings on the events happening. Add in more of Sero's emotions as he learns about what Tristian tells him. Like how he feels after he wakes up and finds his friend in pain. Things like that that would add to the emotional side of this story. Or add in some thoughts of Sero so that the reader isn't confused, like at the end when Sero was outside.
Really, you do have potential here. If you clean up the mechanics of your story, and use the first-person narration to your full advantage, this story would work better. Still, I'd like to see more of your writing.