[Pokémon] A Pokemon Journey of epic proportions!

Skystrike · May 7, 2010

Hi. This is my second FanFic. Enjoy
Note this has some names from the real world.

Anthony sighed as it was another boring day in the Violet Pokémon School. Yet, he was to be a trainer. It was Graduation Day.

"Cheer up," said Gold, his friend. "This happened when I got my first Pokémon from Professor Elm."

"But was it like THIS? 12 people?" Anthony challenged, knowing Gold would say no.

"But-"

"No talking now, Gold," The teacher started. "Today is Graduation day, and as everyone knows, you get a Trainer Case and your very first Pokémon!"

"YEAH!" Everyone said except for Gold and Anthony.

"She can really kiss her life good bye. Watch Anthony as those trainers jump for some Pokéballs."

"Ok," the teacher started, setting up the floor with Pokémon balls, "Are you ready? There are 11 Pokéballs here. One of you," the teacher stopped, giving Gold a look,
"has already gotten a Pokémon. Are you ready? Here we go!"

"YEAH!" Each to-be trainer said, jumping to the floor towards a Pokéball.

"Good luck Anthony," Gold said with a grin. "You'll need it."

Anthony dove into the shoving trainers. Then he grabbed a Pokéball.

"Ok," the teacher said after the squabble was over, "Send out your new Pokémon!"

"GO POKEMON!!" Every trainer yelled, even Anthony.
The room was filled with bright flashes, then sounds of Pokémon talking and the murmurs of trainers talking about their Pokémon. Anthony got a Totodile, his friend Ishmil a Pichu, the school bully Dazanae a Snubbull, and Anthony's other friend Donny a Chikorita.

"Wow. A Totodile!" Anthony said with happiness.

"Totodiledilediledile!" his new Totodile said, warming up to him.

"Now, trainers. I have essentials for you," the teacher said. "Here!"
Each trainer lined up as the teacher gave them Pokeballs and a Trainer Case.

"Wow!" Donny said, looking inside the Trainer Case. "My own trainer case!"

"Now, also, for some of you," the teacher stated, "You'll need PASSES for the extended Magnet Train."

Anthony, Donny, Ishmil and Gold all lined up. The teacher each gave them passes.

"And now.....good-bye, students!" the teacher called. "Or should I say...TRAINERS!"

End Chapter 1 ~ A new beginning!

Silawen · May 9, 2010

Good afternoon! I saw you didn't get a reply yet, so I figured I'd help you out and leave a review. ;)

Now, before I start about the actual story, I'd like to point out a bit of a problem I had. I'm not sure what forum style you're using, but on mine it's pretty much impossible to properly read what you posted. Blue on my style's background colour is pretty much impossible to read, so I had to literally copy-paste it into Word to be able to read and review. That may also be why you didn't get any other replies. I can imagine that light blue doesn't work on quite a few backgrounds. My suggestion would be to change it back to black, as that's supposed to work on all styles.

~

Anthony sighed, as it was another boring day in the Violet Pokémon School. Yet, he was to be a trainer. It was Graduation Day.

The existence of pokémon schools is a topic that I've recently discussed with various people. Personally, I don't see their use. There are definitely exceptions to this, but I don't get teenagers willingly going to school when they could be out there with a pokémon. You've given us no indication as to how old Anthony is, but I'm assuming he's older than ten. If so, why would he go to a school? If he wanted to become a trainer, why doesn't he ask someone to catch him one, or - if you're going by anime rules - get one from a professor?

Kids in the pokémon world don't have to go to a school to become a trainer. If they did, there wouldn't be half as many out there. (This is especially important when you look at a later comment of yours regarding the twelve people graduating.) It wouldn't be realistic to say that everyone has to graduate, because you would never encounter another trainer ever. Imagine that a school has graduation day once a year. (They'd fall roughly around the time other schools have a graduation day as well.) Now, how many schools would there be? Ten? Twelve? Let's say ten. You have ten schools of twelve people graduation. One hundred and twenty people who set out and won't have much of a chance of ever meeting up, unless the school's group stick together their entire journey.

Also, connected to this, you'd meet nothing but trainers who are a lot more advanced than you are. A day, a week, or even a month between trainers won't make much of a difference, but if it's only graduation once every year then a trainer is likely to meet nothing but trainers a year, two years, three years older than he is. He'd lose constantly.

You'd be left with an empty world. There wouldn't be a lot of trainers - as most trainers drop out within the year - which would have a pronounced effect on the world. Pokémon centres would close, marts would no longer be necessary, the league would no longer be able to survive, and all other forms of legalised battles - gyms, conferences, etc. - would cease to exist. If there aren't enough trainers out there, then there wouldn't be a reason for these things to be there. It'd only cost money. (And, as a result, trainer schools would have no use any more and would close.)

So, yeah, basically I don't think that needing a pokémon school to become a trainer is a good idea. If you do decide to go through with this, then it would means that it had a pronounced effect on the world. Or, if the schools run alongside other means of becoming a trainer, then I don't understand why these kids would go to school instead of getting their own pokémon immediately. (Unless there are very specific and logical reasons to.)

"Cheer up," said Gold, his friend. "This happened when I got my first Pokémon from Professor Elm."

What happened? Nothing happened, that's why the day was so boring. Unless you're talking about the preparations for Graduation Day, which would mean actually describing what is going on. You have to describe things and tell us what is going on. Simply hinting at it with dialogue isn't enough. I have no idea what is going on here, where we are, who they are, or what anything looks like.

"But was it like this? Twelve people?" Anthony challenged, knowing Gold would say no.

I wouldn't use all capitals to indicate stressing. It usually comes across as yelling, which is rather insulting to the reader, and can be disruptive when reading. Maybe use italics, instead?

Write out numbers under a hundred. It's twelve, not 12.

"No talking now, Gold," the teacher started.

It being 'the teacher' doesn't mean it doesn't have the same rules. It's awesome that you're using a comma here, because very few people know how to punctuate speech, but it doesn't get a capital. You follow a comma by a lower-cased letter. (Unless it's a word that's always capitalised, which 'the teacher' isn't.)

"Yeah!" everyone yelled except for Gold and Anthony.

Same instances here. All capitals can be off-putting and 'everyone' should be lower-cased. In this instance, however, you're not stressing so much as yelling. If you want to yell then an exclamation mark is good enough. However, if they are yelling, then you shouldn't use the verb 'said'.

"She can really kiss her life goodbye. Watch, Anthony, as those trainers jump for some Pokéballs."

Wait, what? So, a teacher chastising someone for talking when they shouldn't should 'kiss her life goodbye'? At least, I'm assuming you're talking about the teacher. To be honest, I'm not sure what is going on here - mostly because you're not telling us - or who is talking about what.

Either way, I think you were addressing Anthony, in which case it's direct address and you'd get a comma.

"Okay," the teacher started, setting up the floor with Pokémon balls. "Are you ready? There are eleven Pokéballs here. One of you-" The teacher stopped, giving Gold a look.
"has already gotten a Pokémon. Are you ready? Here we go!"

When written out, it's 'okay'.

'Okay' can stand on its own, so you wouldn't get a comma after 'balls', but a period/full-stop. If you want to connect it to 'are you ready' then the comma is fine, but you'd need to lower-case 'Are'.

The verb 'stop' isn't a speech verb. You can stop saying a sentence, but you don't actively use that verb to speak it. You don't use 'stops' to speak. So it wouldn't get lower-cased words, or a comma. Instead I'd use a hyphen to indicate the abrupt halt and then continue lower-cased later on.

"Good luck, Anthony," Gold said with a grin. "You'll need it."

Again, this is a case of direct address. I won't be addressing all the instances where you get this wrong - seeing as you should be able to pick them out yourself, now - but I did want to point this out again.

Also, I'm a bit surprised at the way the students are trying to shove each other aside to get their pokémon. I can understand they'd be excited, but to the point of being rude and aggressive? They're all getting a pokémon and they can't tell which one is which from the outside anyway, so it'd make much more sense to have them approach the pile one by one. (Dropping them on the floor and urging them to make a mad dash seems rather...unnecessary and crude.)

The room was filled with bright flashes, then sounds of Pokémon talking and the murmurs of trainers talking about their Pokémon. Anthony got a Totodile, his friend Ishmil a Pichu, the school bully Dazanae a Snubbull, and Anthony's other friend Donny a Chikorita.

This is not storytelling. You're listing names and telling us things you should be showing us. We don't want to find out about the school bully by you informing us of it. We want to experience it for ourselves, possibly by you writing a scene where it's clear that this Dazanae person is a bully.

Also, why are only these three important? If you want us to know more about Ishmil, Dazanae and Donny, then you need to show us more about them. Now it just seems like you wanted us to know this and thus threw it at us.

Now, I do also want to point out the capitalized pokémon names. I know this is a hot topic that people never quite agree on, but since it's my review I'll point out what I think is wrong.

I wouldn't capitalize the names of pokémon species, because it's not correct according to the rules of the English language. You wouldn't capitalize 'mouse' or 'elephant', so why would you capitalize 'pikachu' or 'charmander'?

Copyright, I know, that's usually the response, but that only concerns copyright in this world. You're talking and writing about theirs, where copyright wouldn't be an issue. Ash wouldn't know that 'pikachu' is copyrighted here, so you wouldn't write that way either. Plus, if you were to follow copyright and the way Nintendo capitalizes in copyrighted material, then you should be capitalizing running shoes and berry as well, because those have been capitalized in canon materials as well. Not to mention that if you're following game canon, you should be writing pokémon names as PIKACHU, or anything poison as PSN.

That's my reasoning, but you're free to stick to yours. (I have just never seen solid reasoning for sticking to capitalized names of species, because it only gets confusing. Are you talking about the species, or a pokémon named that?)

"Totodiledilediledile!" his new Totodile said, warming up to him.

You're telling us again. You're telling us his totodile warmed up to him, even though they've barely known each other a few minutes and there's no evidence indicating why the totodile would warm up to him so fast.

Regarding the telling, I think my best suggestion would be for you to google 'show, don't tell'. Explaining you here would take a lot of time and space, but there are some great explanations around for you to understand what I mean.

Anthony, Donny, Ishmil and Gold all lined up. The teacher each gave them passes.

Why? Why do these four get passes and the others don't? You give us no reason for it. It just reeks of conveniently giving your four favourites these passes so they can go special places.

"And now...good-bye, students!" the teacher called. "Or should I say trainers!"

If you're intent on using the ellipsis there, which I'm not sure about, you need to stick to three. Ellipsis are made out of three dots, not two, four, five or whatever else you had in mind.

~

All in all, I think this needs a lot of work. You're not really telling a story. All you're doing is listing some things that are happening and throwing some dialogue in. Try to slow down and focus on actually telling a story. Take a look at a book and see how it begins. Does it start with nothing but vague dialogue? No, probably not. It sets a scene and describes what is going on.

Think about what you're going to write about. Where are they and how could you best introduce them to us? For instance, if you are going to go with the graduation idea, then think of something like this:

___

The constant trickle of sound drew his attention more than anything as he entered the room. Excited voices - high-pitched and shrill - rang through all around him, causing him to duck his head and move towards his friend. Gold, lounging comfortably in a corner, didn't seem fazed by the noise and just watched his fellow classmates walk around aimlessly. Anthony plopped down next to him, gazing up in much the same manner as prospective trainers nervously wrung their hands. Today surely was a special day.

"Crazy, isn't it?" he murmured, receiving a grin and a nod.

"Almost impossible. I can't believe that everyone's so nervous. Stupid, really."

Anthony stored, looking down pointedly at the red-and-white pokéball strapped to Gold's waist. "Maybe that's because you already have your pokémon. You were lucky. We've had to wait while you were out training!"

The crowd around them simmered down as a group of teachers pushed their way to the front, each carrying a tray of glinting pokéballs. Anthony felt a flutter in his stomach at the sight and turned his attention away from Gold and towards their headmistress, who'd taken the stage and shushed people into complete silence. Everyone watched her with baited breath and barely contained excitement.

"Good morning, students," she began, aiming a smile towards them. "As you all know, we're here-"

"To finally get our pokémon and stop going to this horrid place," Gold interrupted with a hiss, grinning sideways at his friend. Anthony poked him, but couldn't fight back a smile.

"Gold," the headmistress warned, immediately shutting the boy up. "As I was saying..."

___

See what I mean? You're telling more of a story, instead of informing us of things happening.

Basically, what I would suggest - which will help with punctuation and such as well - is getting a beta-reader. Read up on 'show, don't tell' and more general storytelling guides and then work together with that person to make you a better writer. It may take quite a bit of work, but I think it'll be completely worth it in the end. :)

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Good luck and let me know if you have further questions!
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[Pokémon] A Pokemon Journey of epic proportions!

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Skystrike

[i]As old as time itself.[/i]

Silawen