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The Red Licensed Adventure!

Chizzy

Comic coming soon...
1,475
Posts
18
Years
    • UK
    • Seen Oct 27, 2010
    Daniel Stood Waiting in the Cafeteria for his friends. He was a short Neat Kid, who had brown hair, deep blue eyes and a great personality. His Blue Patched jeans were soon overshadowed, as his friends joined him. He would get into their conversations, but there was one thing he lacked…a Pokemon. His mates had been trainers for Two weeks now, and his license was late. He hoped it would arrive tomorrow.

    They chatted away, and Daniel soon found himself asking the questions 'whats this', and 'whats that' but he, after a few minutes, delved into his lunch, hoping not to be on the end of more of his own misunderstandings. That night he decided to look up Some research on Pokemon, so when he went to see Professor Chestnut tomorrow, he would know what to do. He quickly realised that he knew what his friends were talking about, Pokeballs, potions, battles and other things. They were all simple and easy to learn how to use. He turned his computer off, and drifted away into a dream as he lay on his pillow.

    ***​

    "DAN!…DAN! Where is that boy?" Daniels Mum called up to him as she held her husbands breakfast in her hand. She was small, like Daniel, and wore a Pink Jumper, that looked as if it had been poorly knitted. Dan's Dad however, wore a bright green smart Shirt, with a Black tie, and smartly brushed hair. As he got up from his seat, he reached for the newspaper and walked out of the room. "Im off Love" He cried from the hall, as he took his blazer from the coat stand. Daniel's foot steps could be heard as he clambered from his bunk bed, which he used to share with his sister, who moved when she left school to go to College, and came plodding down the stairs. "Your License has arrived" his mum said as this scruffy boy in a dark blue Dressing Gown emerged into the Kitchen. "What?" He asked, as if he knew no other word of English. "You Heard" she muttered and continued to scrape Fried Egg from his Dads plate into the bin. He then realised. If his license was here, he had to be at the other side of the Town at 10 O'clock! He looked at the clock in shock! It was half past nine and he wasn't even dressed. He flew upstairs in a flourish. "What do you want for Breakfast?" his mum asked as she glanced up to find an empty room. Daniel Soon returned in a pair of Black Tracksuit Bottoms, a Dark Blue Hat and a Black Cap. He grabbed an Oat bar from the fridge in the corner and ran into the hall, where he pulled on a zip up jumper. His hair was still crumpled and he hadn't had a wash. "Im off to Chestnuts" he shouted and slammed the door behind him. "What?" replied his mum.

    ***​

    It was a warm, sunny day, and the lush, green grass laid back and spread out across Thistle Field.
    "What do you think your doing!" shouted a Man, dressed in a long White Coat. Daniel couldn't pick out who the figure was, but decided to see the man anyway. "You know wild Pokemon can jump out at you, you moron!" Daniel still ran towards the figure. He soon reached the man. "Tut, Tut, Daniel Roberts darting across long grass…" It was Professor Chestnut. "You don't have your own Pokemon yet, mind you, I've got to get to the lab! Do you want a lift?" Daniel Agreed, without saying a word. He Climbed into Chestnuts Silver 4 by 4 and looked around, admiring the changes Chestnut had Incorporated. "Well Dan, what do you think?" asked the professor, Inquisitively. "Its strange, to be honest" was the reply. "and more to the point…what were you doing in the field, trying to get yourself shocked by a Pikachu?" The Professor looked over his spectacles at the boy, eying the teen up and down. "I was coming to see you" said Dan "about getting a Pokemon" Chestnut quickly pressed a button, and the cars wheels lifted up as if the car was hovering. "Stupid Caterpies, should look where they're crawling" Chestnut muttered. "Oh yes, I said Ten O' clock didn't I. I hope you have your license" Chestnut said, still shaking his head at the small green worm. "Oh yes, its here!" he held a Red card up to the professor and shoved it into his pocket, which he then zipped up. "Good" said the professor. "I didn't like the green ones!"

    ***​

    Will continue! All comments Greatly Accepted!
     

    Alter Ego

    that evil mod from hell
    5,751
    Posts
    18
    Years
  • Maneachicken said:
    Daniel Stood Waiting in the Cafeteria for his friends. He was a short Neat Kid, who had brown hair, deep blue eyes and a great personality.

    I read about this far before I had to rush off to find a quiet spot where I could scream 'Gary stu!' without disturbing the other people in this house. Came back, fresh after the scream, and slowly read through the rest. -.-

    Quite frankly, this fanfic could use a lot of work. First of all, your descriptions; they're practically nonexistent. This far you have only provided us with the name of the main character and an in-depth desciption of his clothes, and a very vague description about what he looks like otherwise. And what's more, this gets even worse with the other 'characters'; I mean come on, you haven't described his 'friends' with a single word! They're just 'friends', a vague, fuzzy collection of stuff which he holds a vague, fuzzy conversation with. Speaking of which, you haven't described the conversation either, which is something I don't approve of at all. Furthermore, your description of the environment is very poor; you have provided absolutely no picture of what 'Thistle Field' looks like, only a few brief words about the weather. :\ You're really going to have to go into a lot more detail about everything the character(s) come(s) across if you want this fic to get anywhere.

    My second main issue; quite frankly, your main character is a Gary-Stu, the bane of all good RPing and writing. The faultless, perfect prettyboy who always succeeds at everything he does and always does the right thing at the right time. Needless to say, characters like that are extremely dull for readers and personally make me want to throw bricks at someone. That dude needs faults, okay? I mean come on, one night he just randomly logs onto the computer and "easily" learns everything there is to know about pokémon? <.< Not only is that completely unrealistic, but it also removes one of the key elements of a beginning trainer fanfic; the character's personal development as a trainer and the learning curve for a rookie. And really, this dude's Gary-Stuness even reaches into the weather;

    Maneachicken said:
    It was a warm, sunny day

    See what I'm talking about? <.< Now I'm not saying that I have anything against the day being all warm and sunny, I'm just saying that this 'Daniel' seems to be having it way too easy and handling the situation far too well for a guy who's just about to become a trainer. (I mean seriously, wouldn't the dude maybe be just a little bit nervous about such a big step?) Oh, and just as a suggestion; don't ever use terms like 'a great personality'. That's like saying 'he was a Gary-stu', which is not a good thing. I don't know about the general majority of readers out there, but personally, I hate it when the narrator of any given story tries to push that kind of bland generalization on me right at the beginning. I like to decide for myself what kind of personality I do and do not find 'great', thank you very much. Also, personalities should be described through the thoughts and actions of your characters, not spelled straight out. Your readers most probably aren't idiots, you know, so don't treat them like they were. ;)

    And while I'm going on about personalities, the rest of your characters seem to have none whatsoever. What little dialogue that you have provided is generic in the extreme and there are no particular speach patterns present (Not every character needs a very distinct speach pattern, but everyone should have at least a certain degree of lexical choice (I.e. Choice of words) that reflects their past, social standing, personality, education level etc. to distinguish the characters from each other.). I've said this before and I'll say it again; every character, no matter how trivial, needs some kind of personality, otherwise we'll end up in a 'Bold and the Beautiful' situation where we have a bunch of names that don't mean anything to most people simply because the characters' 'personalities' are so plain and undeveloped that they are almost impossible to distinguish from each other. Remember, it's the characterss flaws and quirks that make them interesting, not their merits.

    Moving on...you have some grammatical issues to tackle here too. First of all, only the first letter of the first word in the beginning of a sentence (With the sole exception of names) is capitalized. E.g. This;

    Maneachicken said:
    Daniel Stood Waiting in the Cafeteria for his friends.

    Shouldn't have any of the bolded letters capitalized. Incidentally, the word order is wrong here too, it should be;

    Example said:
    Daniel stood in the cafeteria, waiting for his friends.

    or

    Example said:
    Daniel stood waiting for his friends waiting for his friends in the cafeteria.

    Furthermore, this is a very bland sentence to start out a fanfic with. What you'd want to do is to begin with something that awakens the readers interest and makes him/her think; like a general statement about the world, a sentence from a conversation (I tend to use that a lot in my RPing), or a direct question to the reader or the world in general. Starting out with a plain description however, is by no means going to raise the reader's expectations for the rest of your fic. Another grammatical thing that struck me straight off is the way you handle dialouge. Enormous chunks like this one;
    Maneachicken said:
    "DAN!…DAN! Where is that boy?" Daniels Mum called up to him as she held her husbands breakfast in her hand. She was small, like Daniel, and wore a Pink Jumper, that looked as if it had been poorly knitted. Dan's Dad however, wore a bright green smart Shirt, with a Black tie, and smartly brushed hair. As he got up from his seat, he reached for the newspaper and walked out of the room. "Im off Love" He cried from the hall, as he took his blazer from the coat stand. Daniel's foot steps could be heard as he clambered from his bunk bed, which he used to share with his sister, who moved when she left school to go to College, and came plodding down the stairs. "Your License has arrived" his mum said as this scruffy boy in a dark blue Dressing Gown emerged into the Kitchen. "What?" He asked, as if he knew no other word of English. "You Heard" she muttered and continued to scrape Fried Egg from his Dads plate into the bin. He then realised. If his license was here, he had to be at the other side of the Town at 10 O'clock! He looked at the clock in shock! It was half past nine and he wasn't even dressed. He flew upstairs in a flourish. "What do you want for Breakfast?" his mum asked as she glanced up to find an empty room. Daniel Soon returned in a pair of Black Tracksuit Bottoms, a Dark Blue Hat and a Black Cap. He grabbed an Oat bar from the fridge in the corner and ran into the hall, where he pulled on a zip up jumper. His hair was still crumpled and he hadn't had a wash. "Im off to Chestnuts" he shouted and slammed the door behind him. "What?" replied his mum.

    are a downright pain to read and cause confusion about who's saying what. For clarity reasons, there should be a whole line of empty space between every switch of speaker. Ergo, it should look more like this;
    Example" said:
    "DAN!…DAN! Where is that boy?" Daniels Mum called up to him as she held her husbands breakfast in her hand. She was small, like Daniel, and wore a Pink Jumper, that looked as if it had been poorly knitted. Dan's Dad however, wore a bright green smart Shirt, with a Black tie, and smartly brushed hair. As he got up from his seat, he reached for the newspaper and walked out of the room.

    "Im off Love" He cried from the hall, as he took his blazer from the coat stand.

    Daniel's foot steps could be heard as he clambered from his bunk bed, which he used to share with his sister, who moved when she left school to go to College, and came plodding down the stairs.

    "Your License has arrived" his mum said as this scruffy boy in a dark blue Dressing Gown emerged into the Kitchen.

    "What?" He asked, as if he knew no other word of English.

    "You Heard" she muttered and continued to scrape Fried Egg from his Dads plate into the bin.

    He then realised. If his license was here, he had to be at the other side of the Town at 10 O'clock! He looked at the clock in shock! It was half past nine and he wasn't even dressed. He flew upstairs in a flourish.

    "What do you want for Breakfast?" his mum asked as she glanced up to find an empty room.

    Daniel Soon returned in a pair of Black Tracksuit Bottoms, a Dark Blue Hat and a Black Cap. He grabbed an Oat bar from the fridge in the corner and ran into the hall, where he pulled on a zip up jumper. His hair was still crumpled and he hadn't had a wash. "Im off to Chestnuts" he shouted and slammed the door behind him.

    "What?" replied his mum.

    Furthermore, your writing could seriously use some apostrophes. As it is, "As she held her husbands breakfast in her hand" would imply that Daniel's mum has many husbands, and that she would be holding all of them. On top of that, it would also be stating that there's breakfast to be had in her hand. o.O In short, when you're adding a possessive article you need to put an apostrophe between the word and the 's' at the end. I.e. "her husband's" is significantly different from "her husbands", even though it might not look like a big deal. Simialrly, Daniel is also caught saying that he's going to go visit some chestnuts. Now I have certain suggestions about what should be done with people who socialize with chestnuts, myself. (Yes, I'm being a terrible prick here, I know. =P) As in the previous case, you need to add an apostrophe between the word and the last 's' to differntiate it from a plural article.

    Finally, and this is a bit of a prickishness thing, but still; why must every proffessor be named after a tree? That's one of the oldest pokémon clichés and it's really starting to bug me. If you do insist on going that way, then might I suggest that you at least go with a more suitable tree? Because I'm quite sure that 'Chestnut' isn't an accepted name. There are things like 'Larch' that would fit into the same field a lot better.

    Also, I would like to stress that this is a very clichéd theme you are working with, which means that the audience will have far less tolerance for blunders like the ones listed above than with other genres. Furthermore, you'll need to put a lot of thought into how you are going to distinguish this fanfic from the countless other similar fanfics out there.

    Yeah, that's quite a lot of critcism, I know. *Dies* I'm not sure if I managed to cover everything, though. Meh, hopefully Lily or some other experienced reviewer will come by and take care of that. It's kind of late around here so I'm afraid I'm not at my sharpest. Still, I'll give you brownie points for the effort but you've got a long way to go before this will amount to a proper fanfic. Oh, and please don't take this as me having a go at you personally, I'm just trying to do my best to see you improve as a writer, so don't shoot me, okay? ^^
     
    Last edited:

    Chizzy

    Comic coming soon...
    1,475
    Posts
    18
    Years
    • UK
    • Seen Oct 27, 2010
    I really do apreciate that. My capital letters problem is one i have had for life, and sometimes it happens, and others, not. I understand that my character is possessed for a start by 'Gary-stu' and i will try to drag that out of him somehow. I need to work on speech seperation, as you said and to go into more depth in my detail. I hope to continue working on this with the changes you have helped me implement and i still would like any comments that you have.

    I won't take that as RPing, that was good constructive critisism that i hope to take on board.
     
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