A bit half-asleep while writing this, so if something doesn't make sense, feel free to ask.
I hate it when people don't look at fan-fiction sections or only look at a story that has an intresting title XD That's what this is now, users don't look at other stuff, they just think "THAT TITLE!! D:" and that's it, no eye for quality lmao
To be blunt... *raises her hand* Familiar face who posts on at least a monthly basis and gets one or two reviews for her serious work as soon as a chapter's posted. In fact, for the latest, we're looking at four reviews. The MST, meanwhile, got six within a day.
In other words, Asty's right on a level in that you really need to post and post often to get some coverage. If people don't see you, they don't know your work exists, and if you don't post new work in your story thread, they'll assume that despite your promises, you've abandoned your story. Abandoned fics are nothing new in this fandom. Neither are abandoned fics that the author themselves claim they'll continue.
Also, yes, they can spot quality, but that's the problem. If you've got a generic title that's a bit off when it comes to capitalization, yeah, they'll turn away. Why? Because as unfortunate as it sounds, your title is a reflection of your work. What does it say about an author if the author can't proofread or come up with enough creative material to describe their story in a single line? Not many good things about their work, unfortunately. So, yes, they'll judge you by the title, but it's not really a shame so much as it is a given. You wouldn't want to buy a book whose title was, "This book is a waste of your time and money, so don't buy it" unless you were expecting irony, right?
That being said, yeah, you'll really need a beta. I could go over the grammatical errors here, but to tell you the truth, it'd be a bit much. My advice, though, is to really brush up on grammar because even if you think it's not necessary and that this is all a hobby and whatnot, grammar really makes things easier to read. Easy reading = readers who focus on your plot, rather than trying to figure out what you're saying.
So, instead of a grammatical review, allow me to just make a few comments about plot.
A young trainer named mercury was leaving his hometown of rainfall with his first pokemon, riolu.
The first problem you seem to have is with description. Remember that your readers aren't telepathic, so you've got to make an effort to describe what things look like to help them get a full image of what's going on. Once they can get an image of what's going on, they'll be able to immerse themselves a bit more easily in your story. It's basically the difference between looking at the most beautiful and detailed painting you can possibly imagine and a spot on a piece of paper. (I'm assuming you're not into postmodernism for this analogy to work.) It's easier to keep your eyes on the really awesome painting, whereas the spot just doesn't keep one's attention for as long.
Or, in shorter terms, you don't really describe much of anything at all, and that's really one of your bigger problems. You need to make an effort to bridge the gap between what's in your head and what's on your computer screen because otherwise, that awesome story you have in your mind just won't translate to us.
Or, in even shorter terms, we know nothing about Mercury (even what he looks like), so we're already a bit lost.
they both looked up and high up, was an enormous mountain and on top of that mountain were two pokemon. one was a giant bird with rainbow wings and just behing the rainbow pokemon, was a very strange looking pokemon that just dissapeared as soon as it noticed mercury and riolu looking at it.
So, basically, less than five seconds of meeting these characters, we already see them looking at two legendary Pokémon. This tends to be a bit of a problem itself because it causes people to think of your characters as
Gary Stus because we tend to assume there's going to be something godly about these characters. The article (in the link I've just offered) should be able to explain why Stus are bad as it is, but on top of that, the Pokémon fandom tends to get a ton of stories about original trainers who each see a legendary Pokémon and eventually become uber special Chosen Ones. You'd really have to strive to prove to the reader that this
isn't like all those other fics to keep their interest.
That and it just seems rather convenient in general that out of literally nowhere, a kid and his Riolu look up to see an incredibly powerful Pokémon only a short time after the fic starts.
"not excactly, I do know that the pokemon was extremely rare and is said to leave a special shard known as the Rainbow shard"
Wait. She can't identify the Pokémon, but she knows it carries a special shard? O_o If she learned about the shard, she must know at least some of the legends surrounding it, and if she knows that much, then she'd probably know Ho-oh's name (or at least what people call it), considering the two are apparently linked.
"Yes, the rainbow shard is an ancient item that makes any pokemon holding it much more powerful!"
Oh dear. Basically, this goes back to the point I was making about Gary Stus. If you make a character godly, that tends to be frowned upon.
To go into a bit more detail as to why it's frowned upon, basically, it's like this. If your character is godly, we know how the story's going to end up. Your character wins, probably in a light show full of uber powerful moves. It's just not as interesting as watching an ordinary character struggle because they
don't have all the special shiny advantages and powers and need to rely on strategy and luck. The reason why is because, usually, the
Dragonball GT-esque display of godly powers is a straightforward battle that might last only a few rounds and already has a clear winner (because the protagonist would, of course, win). The ordinary character, however, needs to rely on creative ideas and has just as much of a chance at failing at the battle than he does of winning it, if that makes sense. Hence, the battle would tend to be longer and more suspenseful as the reader tries to figure out what he's doing, whether or not he'll win, and how he'll pull it off.
Or, long story short, if you have a character and heap godly powers onto him, that doesn't exactly make him cool. It just means he's less likely to do something that will shock the reader.
Later that day, mercury, saskia and riolu
Why is Saskia traveling with Mercury? You really don't explain that part, so right now, it seems like the random stranger is just tagging along. If she just wants to get the shard, why doesn't she just climb the mountain herself, especially considering she's got a stronger Pokémon than the unevolved Riolu.
"what pokemon is that?" wondered mercury. "i believe its called Ho-oh"
Wait. So... Mercury asked what the Pokémon was, spent much of this fic up until this point without any information about it, and suddenly gains the ability to identify it just now?
No, seriously. I'm actually confused about this part. How was he able to identify it as a Ho-oh when Saskia told him it was an undiscovered Pokémon?
Mercury got out his pokedex "Ho-oh, the rainbow bird pokemon, it is said to have created 3 ancient pokemon that restored peace to an old village"
If Ho-oh is an undiscovered Pokémon at this point as Saskia pointed out earlier, the Pokédex shouldn't be able to identify it because no entry would have been written for it.
shrieked the Ho-oh as it unleashed its sacred fire attack and created a huge explosion and clashed with the attacks of Riolu and Piloswine...
Tip about trainer fics: The battle is probably the most exciting point to a trainer fic because when you think of Pokémon, what do you think of first? Pokémon battling. So, in order to make things exciting, you really can't leave it at "Pokémon A uses Move A on Pokémon B." It goes back to the painting analogy I offered before. Basically, if you just tell us a move is being used, we sort of shrug and say, "That's nice." However, if you show us the blazing fire and the intense heat engulfing Ho-oh and then roaring towards its opponents, we're more inclined to sit up straight and go, "Oh." And if you do that and then show us the opponents feeling the heat and getting thrown off their feet by the explosion, we're inclined to respond with, "Holy crap." In other words, naming the move leaves only a vague concept in our mind. Actually describing how it's being used and what happens as a result (including what injuries happen) make us cringe and generally evokes some kind of emotion in us because we tend to imagine things if they're described to us.
Also, there's an explosion, but we can't quite tell how big it is or what happens as a result because no one reacts. It's like, "BOOM, oh, by the way, let's go look for the shard." No one's hurt, and no one's fazed at all by the fact that there was enough smoke to obscure Ho-oh's departure or a nice-sized explosion. It just seems like no one does anything in response. While I know you're trying to get to Point B, keep in mind that you want us to be able to imagine what's going on and react to it. We'd be able to cringe or feel excited if we saw an explosion and saw the characters do something other than shrug it off.
"Ri-ri-riolu!!!" said Riolu as he noticed noticed a glow in the distance.
Riolu had foind the rainbow shard!,
So, wait. Legendary Pokémon who's been carrying around an ancient artifact decides to leave it and another one behind in the hands of a pair of trainers that just tried to attack it and hadn't proved at all that they won't use said artifacts' apparently awesome powers to take over the world or do some other generally frowned-upon thing with the universe... why exactly?
Legit question here as well.
piloswine had seen another gem, the aura shard.
Going back to my first point in this actual review, you tend to just say things happen, but you really don't go into detail about them. Hence, a reader is left in the dark about the things you bring up in your fanfiction. For example, what is the Aura Shard? What kinds of powers do the shards possess that would increase the power of its holder? What do these items even look like? What did it feel like to pick them up? How do the kids know what they are?
These are all questions you should be answering with the story, by the way, not outside of it. As in, your narration and the things your characters do and say should be enough to give us an idea of what we're looking at, but it just doesn't. Hence, we don't get the complete story -- or even enough of a story to guide us into asking the kinds of questions you want us to ask. As in, it's one thing to be vague and bring up the answers later in the story, and it's another to leave the reader completely in the dark. You're aiming for the former, and to do that, you need to describe just enough to lead them to speculate as to what's going to happen. If they ask questions because they're genuinely lost and can't form ideas as to what's possibly coming up in a future chapter, that's not good.
As the heroes left the mountain and headed of for the next town,
Come to think of it, we don't actually know where this story is even taking place.
In other words, I'm really sorry, but you've really got to take your time. Slow down and add a lot more detail. Tell us about your characters. Show us what's happening. Try to think things through and plan out your work a bit more so that you don't have things happen seemingly out of nowhere. Explain things a bit more thoroughly so you don't leave your readers with unintentional questions.
And, yeah, the language could use a bit of cleaning up, but as I've said, I tried not to touch that for now because, as you can see, this is already a pretty long review.
Also, if you're looking for reviews, we've got stickies for that. In fact, one of them is in my signature, under the link marked "Writers." (Alternatively, it's
this one. The other sticky, the Fanfiction Announcement Thread, is neither by me nor something you'd want to use unless you've got new material to show us.) Try it sometime and see how it goes. It's in beta anyway, so it'd be just as helpful to me as it would be for you if you used it.
Edit: Also...
but also, the reason I havent done episode 2 yet is because no-one seems to notice this thread
It's because you only post once in a blue moon. There's over 140 pages of fic in this forum, and your fic ends up being suspended somewhere in the middle because you're not updating it. We don't exactly have time to go back and find your fic, especially since you don't participate in the community (meaning your name doesn't get around enough to remind us you're here). In other words, you're obscure because... you're obscure. It's not that we can't review new authors. We could if that author posted something that isn't half a year old. It's just that you keep letting yourself be drowned out by everyone else. And, well. *points up* You really could use a beta, and you haven't posted anything new. Your reasons in responses or not, one chapter from December of last year makes us think that your fic's abandoned.
I mean, to be honest, you got a reviewer back when you started this fic, which is a lot for a new fic. I mean, I'm lucky if I get that number when I start something new unless it's comedy. Be glad for any sort of hook at all, really, because reviewers just take time to gain.
And at this point, I'm incredibly tired, so if I'm repetitive and/or not making my point clear enough, feel free to ask. But the point is, you had one reviewer, and now you have another one. So now you don't really have too much of an excuse to hold back chapter two unless you've decided against continuing or are really hoping for something to happen that really doesn't even happen when you're a veteran around here unless you're lucky or have a lot of groupies as it is.