[Pokémon] The story of Burorm the freak

Mutt19 said:

I never got this respect.

Click to expand...

Well heres what happened.

Click to expand...

I was in Saffron city where I normally am.

Click to expand...

I prepared for battle. Then the pink blob changed into something that seemed to be based off of me but much more powerful. I got a glimps of it before I was knocked out. It looked like a full sized whatever you call those gray horn things. Oh right a rhydon! Except it was pink and had all of these coral like spikes on it. Even worse it seemed to be the most flexible of fighters. Looking like it could beat me just as easy upside down. I think it used an exotic amount of ground type moves. (Some not even named) I fealt like an explosion of sand hit me directly. I almost fainted again.

Click to expand...

Until I looked to my side. "Hey an iphone." I exclaimed as I absent mindedly picked it up. The only problem is that I didn't have hands. But alas, I picked it up somehow. And for the next week I played nothing but flickfishing (though I caught almost nothing but magikarp.)

Click to expand...

JX Valentine said:

*slides in before someone else grabs this*

Welcome to the forum and to Pokémon fanfiction in general. It's a tough gig, but it's easy to learn so long as you know how to take things in stride.

That being said, my first piece of advice is try checking out how other fanfic threads go. Read a lot of fanfiction to get a handle on the standards. I say this because, well, not a lot of people want to sit down and read something without any paragraphs. The larger the chunk of text (i.e., passage that has absolutely no indication of a paragraph break, like an indent or a line of space between paragraphs), the more likely you'll lose your readers' attention. It's just harder for them to keep track of what line they're on, and it's harder to concentrate on your piece because they see it as a massive wall of text.

So, what you want to do is brush up on paragraphing first. Remember to create a new paragraph every time the speaker changes or, in this case, every time you change topics. For example, you could end your first paragraph after "I never got this respect." After all, you're going from the creature's complaint that he's being overlooked to the start of his story. Of course, that's not the only part where you could use a new paragraph, so you'll want to go through and figure the rest out for yourself.

Also, when creating a paragraph, remember to hit the enter key twice. It's not done this way in print, but forums don't really recognize indentations. That and it's just easier to read on a screen if you have a blank line of space between each paragraph.

That should take care of your first problem, at least. Your second has to do with grammatical errors. You do things like neglect to put an apostrophe in "here's" (a contraction for "here is") and to capitalize a full place name (Saffron City). These are just little things, but the fewer grammatical errors you have, the easier it'll be for a reader to get through your work. To a reader, a grammatical error is like a pothole in the middle of the road. Even if they say they don't care that it's there, they'll still feel it (stop and slow down as they're reading) if they run over one.

Now, there's two things you could do to help you here. The first is to check out a few online guides. (The list in this link offers several to get you started.) That way, you can teach yourself the basics, which you can then use to proofread your work. After that, I'd highly recommend getting in touch with a beta reader. There's really no shame in that kind of thing, and a lot of them are more than willing to lend a hand to help you go over your work before you post it.

That being said, let's take a look at the actual story, shall we?



Be careful about your wording. Here, I'm not entirely sure what you mean because he's so specific. Do you mean he never got any respect?



You'll also want to avoid doing things like this. It's sort of jarring because it feels like you have to stop the story and say, "Ignore what I just said a moment ago. Here's the actual story." In other words, you really should jump right into a story after any introduction you might have. For example, instead of saying this, you could have your character go, "This one time, I was in Saffron City." That way, you keep the storytelling feel to it, but you also don't stop the flow of speech, if that makes sense.



Also, think carefully about the logic in your story. Now, I get the feeling you're young, so at the risk of patronizing you, I just have to say that I know I can't expect you to come up with an amazingly solid plot. Still, some things might end up being serious plot holes to readers who happen across your work, and you'll want to be aware of that to avoid any biting comments.

In this case, this part raises a lot of questions. Namely:

1. Why did Team Rocket release this Pokémon?
2. Why is it in Saffron City? (Unless you're going with Pokémon Special's universe, Team Rocket doesn't have a laboratory in Saffron.)
3. Why doesn't anyone notice a strange new Pokémon wandering the streets?
4. If they do, in a city full of trainers, why doesn't anyone try to capture it? (Considering it's being beaten by wild Murkrow, it probably wouldn't be too difficult for trained Pokémon to weaken it.)

Whenever you write, you'll want to ask yourself as many questions as possible so you can figure out how to make your story work in a way that answers all of them or prevents them from being asked in the first place, if that makes sense. (In other words, what I mean to say is you want to make sure your readers can't look at any particular scene in your story and consider whatever happens in it to be a plot hole. It means you'll end up with negative reviews and more work for yourself as you try to explain what actually happened there in reader responses instead of through the plot.)



It's a bit hard to tell what's going on here. We, the readers, can tell he's fighting a Ditto (or we assume as such based on your description of it being a pink blob that can transform), but somehow, it manages to turn into a Rhydon when there isn't one anywhere near it. Likewise, we can't really imagine what attacks it's using, which means we can't really picture the main character getting beaten to a pulp. (This also means your reader might have to go back and reread this paragraph to realize the creature was knocked out, that it was revived, and that it was beaten to a pulp again. This begs the question, though, of why the Ditto waited around for him to wake up again.)

In Pokémon fanfiction, you'll want to know that there's a lot of emphasis on describing battles. This is because Pokémon hinges a lot on battling. You know how it is. The games with wi-fi everywhere, the anime, the manga – everything's about battling. So, your readers expect that a battle in your fic will be some of its most exciting points (unless you're writing a romance or something). So, you want more description because the more description you have, the easier a time your readers will have imagining what's going on. The easier it is for them to imagine what's going on, the more likely they'll be drawn into your world. Drawing them into your world gets their adrenaline pumping because they'll feel like they're standing right there on the battlefield.

Long story short, yeah, description. It really does help your story.



While it's a cute moment (because the creature's resigning himself to playing basic games thanks to being beaten to a pulp), it seems to come out of nowhere. Out-of-the-blue humor doesn't always work, unfortunately. Usually, it ends up raising a few questions, like did the Ditto stop beating him to a pulp after that? How was he playing if he didn't have hands? How did he know what an iPhone was anyway – as well as, for that matter, what to do with one? Remember, the fewer times your readers stumble because they're trying to figure things out, the easier it will be to get them to laugh.


Overall, don't be intimidated by the above. Everyone starts out like this without exception. So, while it was an all right concept, just keep a few things in mind:

1. Paragraphing, look for a beta, all those little things I told you about before I started quoting things.
2. Ask yourself as many questions as possible about your work as you go along. If the answers to those questions aren't in the text somewhere, you'll probably want to think about tweaking things here and there to make it work.
3. Description. Even if you're telling this in the first person, you'll still want as much of it as possible, especially concerning battles.
4. Maybe check out a lot of other fics to get your feet wet in the fandom and help you figure out how to get started in fanfic. You could even learn from reviews people leave other fics. Don't be afraid to use as much of the community as you can to improve your own writing.

Good luck!

Click to expand...