Nare, Day Twentythree
Apr. 23rd, 2010 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlahttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/5914589/1/Bubbles
[his claw experiencing a sharp tug of protest at his reluctance to let go ]
[Cresselia's coral colored eyes sparked with her proud accomplishment at being able to do something more proficient than her counterpart ]
Your prose is purple. It's better to write clearly and correctly than write badly and hope your readers can't make it out and assume it was good.
Along similar lines, use said. Seriously, won't bite, lovely word, generally more appropriate for the sentence than whatever word you're using in its place.
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5914967/1/Journey_of_a_lifetime
Capitalize your title properly.
[I sat on a high tree branch, wearing tan shorts and a blue t-shirt, my name is Hikaru, I am 16 years old, my height is 5'6 and I have long brown hair and green eyes.]
1) Listing characteristics immediately is bad writing.
2) Random Japanese names are a bad idea.
3) No one will ever need to know your character's height down to the inch.
4) Write out numbers with letters.
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
[the branch broke for a unknown reason, which meant more trouble for me. You see, if there's any trouble within two miles it will find me, ever since I could walk, trouble was always there, the good news is it only happens couple times a day ]
...that seems rather sueish. Random specialness isn't automatically good just because it's a theoretically negative trait.
[Anywho back to me falling, or would be falling, four years of Akido and Karate does wonders, I landed on the ground far away from the broken tree branch, safe for now. ]
Unless this is actually a DBZ fanfic, martial arts proficiency doesn't let you fly. If the tree branch breaks, jumping to the side doesn't change the distance fell.
[my dad gave him to me when Pichu was in an egg, when it finally hatched we found out that he wasn't a normal Pokemon. A dark royal blue, covered the supposed to be black markings, ironic huh. ]
Not even in the ballpark of what "ironic" means, and also jesus, random shiny. Really getting sick of them.
You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it's a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you're thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[Pichu said looking at me with anime eyes ]
THIS ISN'T AN ANIME. IT IS A FANFIC WITH NARRATION. YOU DESCRIBE THINGS WITH WORDS, NOT A REFERENCE TO AN IMAGE.
[I know what Pokemon say it helps, Pokemon do not seem to find it weird, as if they already know. ]
Yeah, she's a sue.
...and her dad's name is Josh. Because who needs consistent naming, it'd get in the way of her being special!
Yeah, gonna stop reading here. You'd also got miscellaneous mistakes everywhere, proofread better.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5915446/1/Expirement
Your title is misspelled.
[X day, XX year]
No. If you absolutely must avoid actual dates, you could use dashes, but it's not even necessary here. And who even formats their dates like that?
[I write this journal in the event that our experiment should succeed, and we need to have proper data with which to duplicate it, or, if it should fail, we will have easily destroyable evidence. ]
What. It is standard practice to record stuff in an experiment.
...and they're stealing a random kid from a hospital or something. Look, you realize that people give birth to kids they don't want all the time, right? Seriously, just steal some crack babies for the initial experiments, it's not like anyone cares about them. (Experimental procedures generally require multiple trials, you know.) Or hire a surrogate mother if they're want to make sure their material is healthy. At the least, make sure you're getting them from some underfunded clinic hellhole, not some pristine hospital.
[We decided it must be a girl, as the vaporeon is female.]
ARG. NO. Look, if you really want her to be a girl, as is popular, just own up to it. Don't say that by amazing coincidence the one pokemon they could find is a female eevee-anything. You have any idea how rare those are? It's like saying "oh, the only metal we could find was platinum, I guess we'll have to use that."
Better yet, going back to my bit about how experimental procedures need more than one, if you had them using a bunch of eevees/eeveelutions, it'd be possible for one to be female instead of crazy unlikely, as well as the scientists actually doing something that resembles science, not "let me tell you about my awesome special super backstory of why I'm totally unique and cool!"
[Whence he was securely inside, he spread a sticky green substance on the baby's lips, and she was asleep instantly.]
...you realize there are actual real ways to knock people out that already exist?
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916006/1/Pokemon_Random_Adventures_1_Raiders_of_the_Night
A summary is not a chapter. Even if it was, this is far too short for a first chapter. You don't need to start a new chapter with each new scene. This should go in front of your next chapter, not by itself.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916185/1/Fatality
This is written decently enough, but feels completely generic.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916190/1/This_is_Home
"Its" is possessive, as in "its story" and "it's" means "it is".
Write out numbers with letters.
[Mewtwo, weak and exhausted from flying so far and long with little rest, had been traveling the Sinnoh region for nearly 3 months, only resting when it was most needed. Unfortunately, the last time he rested a pack of street mightyena had attacked him. Seeing as he was already tired, he stood little chance and had been forced to flee the area, continuing his journey.]
...for starters, you don't explain why he wasn't resting to start, since it seems like the only reason he's tired is he's having trouble finding somewhere safe, which is because he's too tired to defend himself.
Next, okay, yeah, they're dark types but Mewtwo can fly and teleport. And if they're "street" mightyena than presumably he was in a city, so, what, he couldn't find any roofs to lurk on? Have mightyena mastered the art of climbing walls now?
[After a rest just short of 4 hours in, he had been awoken by a group of humans nearing his rest spot, a small cave at the base of a cliff, and he had once again flown away, fearing being discovered.
Then, he had made a bad decision; trying to fly from Canalave to Sunnyshore in one night.]
Again, why? You seem to have him making a series of stupid decisions one after another for no reason. It's not like he even has anywhere he's trying to go.
Look, if you really want Mewtwo to be exhausted so he can run into another character, work out something plausible. Figure out a reason for him to be rushing somewhere. Or maybe he hasn't had any real problems, so he hadn't been bothering to fully rest, and then runs into a legitimate threat - Sinnoh is crawling with other legendaries, maybe he bumps into one of them - and that's what messes him up.
[As he neared the bright, happy city, his strength quickly waning away, he spotted a small pokemon ranch on a secluded part of the beach. He slowly flew toward it, hoping he would make it before he passed out from exhaustion. ]
And why would a pokemon ranch seem like a safe option? You've established he just nearly killed himself by leaving one area just because a couple people wandered by.
[Unknowing in his unconsciousness, Mewtwo was seen falling by a girl on the shore. Her eyes widened when he fell and she, without a second of hesitance, jumped in after him. ]
What's particularly noteworthy here is you go on to say that yeah, he is indeed nearly three hundred pounds. So if she tries this she drowns. I don't see why you didn't just say he made it to shore - I presume you wanted to show how awesome she was by rescuing him or something, but not a wise decision. If you really want this, you've got to give her a water pokemon or something, because there is no way she'd manage it herself.
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
["I don't know but he passed out and I wasn't gonna let him drown." She replied, staring at Mewtwo concernedly.
Sam looked at her. "Him?"
She shrugged again. "I think it's a he, so until we know for sure, it's a he."]
Look, I really don't care you want to have sex with Mewtwo. But the whole IC/OOC character issue, that's annoying. If you can't bear the thought of your insert crushing on someone without making it clear she thinks he's a guy (because bestiality is one thing, but two girls, THAT'S just wrong) then...don't write her insta-crushing on him, hold off like another couple minutes for him to wake up. Seriously, there's a whole continuum between friendly and fucking, she can be concerned over someone without needing to establish that IT'S TOTALLY A GUY SHE'S CONCERNED ABOUT REALLY.
Or just accept that for two whole seconds your character is hypothetically bi in a way no one else cares about because we already know he's a guy.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916689/1/How_to_Fare_Fairly_Well
Stop capitalizing random words.
[Three years ago, we had been disbanded once by our boss. I was merely a Grunt back then, and I didn't care much about being disbanded. I was a nobody, I could always go home to my family, pretend I had a good laugh being in Team Rocket. But during the three years we tried to find our boss and rise again, I had gotten the rank as an executive. When Archer announced Team Rocket was disbanded once more, I felt dazed. ]
This is really unclear, largely because it's not really explained if the first disbanding actually happened, or how the group reformed. Did he rejoin? If so, between the first disbanding and that their plan was "beg Giovanni to come back", I'd think the idea they might disband again would be less of a surprise, not more. If he ever cared about going back to his family and laughing the whole thing off, it doesn't make sense that he'd seek a high profile position the second time around, when he should have been well aware the whole thing could go south.
[The ship arrived in Sinnoh, stopping shortly in Canalave before leaving for Snowpoint. Archer offered me to come along with him, be his training partner. It was tempting, but I didn't want to just follow him to the Battle Zone. As I said, our Rocket days were over, and I wanted to start a new life on my own. So I refused and got off in Canalave, bid farewell to those two.
Now what? I had to get a job here, in an entirely unfamiliar region. My resume wasn't going to be good. For one thing, I can't tell anyone that I was a Rocket Executive – that was a big disadvantage. And second, I didn't have many job experiences. Getting a job here was going to be hard. Looking back, I guess rising to the rank of an executive wasn't all that difficult. All you had to do was act evil and suggest ideas to gather money – in a quite immoral way. ]
...see, this doesn't make sense. If he wants to start a new life, he must be at least reasonably sure he's capable of it, while if he thinks he's got no job experience and no idea what to do next, it doesn't make sense he'd wait for all his friends to leave and turn down a direct offer. If his friends were all going to join up with another team, you could maybe say he figured it'd just end the same way and not join, but this doesn't make sense.
[some weird guy stared at my lower body parts and told me he was interested in my belt. As if I'd buy that lie. ]
[My belt, by the way, was a priceless gift. I wasn't going to hand it over to anyone. Nobody touched it, not even my fellow ex-executives. A Grunt had touched it out of curiosity one time and I kicked him out of my office and fired him from my squad. This belt could be sold for a high price ]
Seriously, this whole story is contradicting itself at every turn!
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916727/1/Adventures_Through_Kanto_and_the_Orange_Islands
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
[Ash wasn't expert on girls or their feelings but he'd been around Misty long enough to know what angry looked like on a girl.]
Look, Ash may not be brilliant, but he's not a moron and neither are girls some sort of rare mysterious alien thing. Pissed off looks like pissed off, it's not a hard concept.
[ And this girl differently looked mad. ]
Proofread.
You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it's a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you're thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
It's really easy to overrely on dialogue to tell your story. Dialogue is easy to write - not only have you heard people talking all the time, but you also talk yourself and you can easily imagine talking about what's happening in your story. The problem is that this doesn't mean that dialogue is actually moving the story along or interesting to read. You need to strip out unnecessary conversations and spend more time on narration, describing the setting around them, the actions they're taking and what they're thinking.
[We'll learn a bit more about Gracie next chapter ]
Yeah, we should really have learned it already. Maybe someone told you to it was a good idea to do this, but if so they were lying to you. Having her show up and chat meaninglessly with the main characters without giving any explanation for what her purpose in the story is and why we're paying attention to her is both annoying and boring. If she's here for a reason, get to it.
[his claw experiencing a sharp tug of protest at his reluctance to let go ]
[Cresselia's coral colored eyes sparked with her proud accomplishment at being able to do something more proficient than her counterpart ]
Your prose is purple. It's better to write clearly and correctly than write badly and hope your readers can't make it out and assume it was good.
Along similar lines, use said. Seriously, won't bite, lovely word, generally more appropriate for the sentence than whatever word you're using in its place.
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5914967/1/Journey_of_a_lifetime
Capitalize your title properly.
[I sat on a high tree branch, wearing tan shorts and a blue t-shirt, my name is Hikaru, I am 16 years old, my height is 5'6 and I have long brown hair and green eyes.]
1) Listing characteristics immediately is bad writing.
2) Random Japanese names are a bad idea.
3) No one will ever need to know your character's height down to the inch.
4) Write out numbers with letters.
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
[the branch broke for a unknown reason, which meant more trouble for me. You see, if there's any trouble within two miles it will find me, ever since I could walk, trouble was always there, the good news is it only happens couple times a day ]
...that seems rather sueish. Random specialness isn't automatically good just because it's a theoretically negative trait.
[Anywho back to me falling, or would be falling, four years of Akido and Karate does wonders, I landed on the ground far away from the broken tree branch, safe for now. ]
Unless this is actually a DBZ fanfic, martial arts proficiency doesn't let you fly. If the tree branch breaks, jumping to the side doesn't change the distance fell.
[my dad gave him to me when Pichu was in an egg, when it finally hatched we found out that he wasn't a normal Pokemon. A dark royal blue, covered the supposed to be black markings, ironic huh. ]
Not even in the ballpark of what "ironic" means, and also jesus, random shiny. Really getting sick of them.
You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it's a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you're thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[Pichu said looking at me with anime eyes ]
THIS ISN'T AN ANIME. IT IS A FANFIC WITH NARRATION. YOU DESCRIBE THINGS WITH WORDS, NOT A REFERENCE TO AN IMAGE.
[I know what Pokemon say it helps, Pokemon do not seem to find it weird, as if they already know. ]
Yeah, she's a sue.
...and her dad's name is Josh. Because who needs consistent naming, it'd get in the way of her being special!
Yeah, gonna stop reading here. You'd also got miscellaneous mistakes everywhere, proofread better.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5915446/1/Expirement
Your title is misspelled.
[X day, XX year]
No. If you absolutely must avoid actual dates, you could use dashes, but it's not even necessary here. And who even formats their dates like that?
[I write this journal in the event that our experiment should succeed, and we need to have proper data with which to duplicate it, or, if it should fail, we will have easily destroyable evidence. ]
What. It is standard practice to record stuff in an experiment.
...and they're stealing a random kid from a hospital or something. Look, you realize that people give birth to kids they don't want all the time, right? Seriously, just steal some crack babies for the initial experiments, it's not like anyone cares about them. (Experimental procedures generally require multiple trials, you know.) Or hire a surrogate mother if they're want to make sure their material is healthy. At the least, make sure you're getting them from some underfunded clinic hellhole, not some pristine hospital.
[We decided it must be a girl, as the vaporeon is female.]
ARG. NO. Look, if you really want her to be a girl, as is popular, just own up to it. Don't say that by amazing coincidence the one pokemon they could find is a female eevee-anything. You have any idea how rare those are? It's like saying "oh, the only metal we could find was platinum, I guess we'll have to use that."
Better yet, going back to my bit about how experimental procedures need more than one, if you had them using a bunch of eevees/eeveelutions, it'd be possible for one to be female instead of crazy unlikely, as well as the scientists actually doing something that resembles science, not "let me tell you about my awesome special super backstory of why I'm totally unique and cool!"
[Whence he was securely inside, he spread a sticky green substance on the baby's lips, and she was asleep instantly.]
...you realize there are actual real ways to knock people out that already exist?
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916006/1/Pokemon_Random_Adventures_1_Raiders_of_the_Night
A summary is not a chapter. Even if it was, this is far too short for a first chapter. You don't need to start a new chapter with each new scene. This should go in front of your next chapter, not by itself.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916185/1/Fatality
This is written decently enough, but feels completely generic.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916190/1/This_is_Home
"Its" is possessive, as in "its story" and "it's" means "it is".
Write out numbers with letters.
[Mewtwo, weak and exhausted from flying so far and long with little rest, had been traveling the Sinnoh region for nearly 3 months, only resting when it was most needed. Unfortunately, the last time he rested a pack of street mightyena had attacked him. Seeing as he was already tired, he stood little chance and had been forced to flee the area, continuing his journey.]
...for starters, you don't explain why he wasn't resting to start, since it seems like the only reason he's tired is he's having trouble finding somewhere safe, which is because he's too tired to defend himself.
Next, okay, yeah, they're dark types but Mewtwo can fly and teleport. And if they're "street" mightyena than presumably he was in a city, so, what, he couldn't find any roofs to lurk on? Have mightyena mastered the art of climbing walls now?
[After a rest just short of 4 hours in, he had been awoken by a group of humans nearing his rest spot, a small cave at the base of a cliff, and he had once again flown away, fearing being discovered.
Then, he had made a bad decision; trying to fly from Canalave to Sunnyshore in one night.]
Again, why? You seem to have him making a series of stupid decisions one after another for no reason. It's not like he even has anywhere he's trying to go.
Look, if you really want Mewtwo to be exhausted so he can run into another character, work out something plausible. Figure out a reason for him to be rushing somewhere. Or maybe he hasn't had any real problems, so he hadn't been bothering to fully rest, and then runs into a legitimate threat - Sinnoh is crawling with other legendaries, maybe he bumps into one of them - and that's what messes him up.
[As he neared the bright, happy city, his strength quickly waning away, he spotted a small pokemon ranch on a secluded part of the beach. He slowly flew toward it, hoping he would make it before he passed out from exhaustion. ]
And why would a pokemon ranch seem like a safe option? You've established he just nearly killed himself by leaving one area just because a couple people wandered by.
[Unknowing in his unconsciousness, Mewtwo was seen falling by a girl on the shore. Her eyes widened when he fell and she, without a second of hesitance, jumped in after him. ]
What's particularly noteworthy here is you go on to say that yeah, he is indeed nearly three hundred pounds. So if she tries this she drowns. I don't see why you didn't just say he made it to shore - I presume you wanted to show how awesome she was by rescuing him or something, but not a wise decision. If you really want this, you've got to give her a water pokemon or something, because there is no way she'd manage it herself.
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
["I don't know but he passed out and I wasn't gonna let him drown." She replied, staring at Mewtwo concernedly.
Sam looked at her. "Him?"
She shrugged again. "I think it's a he, so until we know for sure, it's a he."]
Look, I really don't care you want to have sex with Mewtwo. But the whole IC/OOC character issue, that's annoying. If you can't bear the thought of your insert crushing on someone without making it clear she thinks he's a guy (because bestiality is one thing, but two girls, THAT'S just wrong) then...don't write her insta-crushing on him, hold off like another couple minutes for him to wake up. Seriously, there's a whole continuum between friendly and fucking, she can be concerned over someone without needing to establish that IT'S TOTALLY A GUY SHE'S CONCERNED ABOUT REALLY.
Or just accept that for two whole seconds your character is hypothetically bi in a way no one else cares about because we already know he's a guy.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916689/1/How_to_Fare_Fairly_Well
Stop capitalizing random words.
[Three years ago, we had been disbanded once by our boss. I was merely a Grunt back then, and I didn't care much about being disbanded. I was a nobody, I could always go home to my family, pretend I had a good laugh being in Team Rocket. But during the three years we tried to find our boss and rise again, I had gotten the rank as an executive. When Archer announced Team Rocket was disbanded once more, I felt dazed. ]
This is really unclear, largely because it's not really explained if the first disbanding actually happened, or how the group reformed. Did he rejoin? If so, between the first disbanding and that their plan was "beg Giovanni to come back", I'd think the idea they might disband again would be less of a surprise, not more. If he ever cared about going back to his family and laughing the whole thing off, it doesn't make sense that he'd seek a high profile position the second time around, when he should have been well aware the whole thing could go south.
[The ship arrived in Sinnoh, stopping shortly in Canalave before leaving for Snowpoint. Archer offered me to come along with him, be his training partner. It was tempting, but I didn't want to just follow him to the Battle Zone. As I said, our Rocket days were over, and I wanted to start a new life on my own. So I refused and got off in Canalave, bid farewell to those two.
Now what? I had to get a job here, in an entirely unfamiliar region. My resume wasn't going to be good. For one thing, I can't tell anyone that I was a Rocket Executive – that was a big disadvantage. And second, I didn't have many job experiences. Getting a job here was going to be hard. Looking back, I guess rising to the rank of an executive wasn't all that difficult. All you had to do was act evil and suggest ideas to gather money – in a quite immoral way. ]
...see, this doesn't make sense. If he wants to start a new life, he must be at least reasonably sure he's capable of it, while if he thinks he's got no job experience and no idea what to do next, it doesn't make sense he'd wait for all his friends to leave and turn down a direct offer. If his friends were all going to join up with another team, you could maybe say he figured it'd just end the same way and not join, but this doesn't make sense.
[some weird guy stared at my lower body parts and told me he was interested in my belt. As if I'd buy that lie. ]
[My belt, by the way, was a priceless gift. I wasn't going to hand it over to anyone. Nobody touched it, not even my fellow ex-executives. A Grunt had touched it out of curiosity one time and I kicked him out of my office and fired him from my squad. This belt could be sold for a high price ]
Seriously, this whole story is contradicting itself at every turn!
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5916727/1/Adventures_Through_Kanto_and_the_Orange_Islands
Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said or "Hello" he said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned. Note that something isn't a speech verb just because it's a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category.
Furthermore, if you're breaking up two complete sentences it's "Hi," he said. "This is it." not "Hi," he said, "this is it." or "Hi," he said "this is it." And if you're breaking up a sentence in the middle, it's "Hi. This," he said, "is it." If there's no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like "Hi. This - " He looked around. "- is it."
[Ash wasn't expert on girls or their feelings but he'd been around Misty long enough to know what angry looked like on a girl.]
Look, Ash may not be brilliant, but he's not a moron and neither are girls some sort of rare mysterious alien thing. Pissed off looks like pissed off, it's not a hard concept.
[ And this girl differently looked mad. ]
Proofread.
You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it's a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you're thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
It's really easy to overrely on dialogue to tell your story. Dialogue is easy to write - not only have you heard people talking all the time, but you also talk yourself and you can easily imagine talking about what's happening in your story. The problem is that this doesn't mean that dialogue is actually moving the story along or interesting to read. You need to strip out unnecessary conversations and spend more time on narration, describing the setting around them, the actions they're taking and what they're thinking.
[We'll learn a bit more about Gracie next chapter ]
Yeah, we should really have learned it already. Maybe someone told you to it was a good idea to do this, but if so they were lying to you. Having her show up and chat meaninglessly with the main characters without giving any explanation for what her purpose in the story is and why we're paying attention to her is both annoying and boring. If she's here for a reason, get to it.
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Date: 2010-04-24 03:14 pm (UTC)What is it with all these Mewtwo/OC crap? I mean, fine, right romance. No problem, but why does logic always seem to go out the window? If anyone says "love is illogical" I will have to kill them.
Personally, I think romance, in fanfiction and in literature, should be a subgenre. Romance can't stand alone and make for an interesting and engaging story. The few times I've seen it happen was because the author incorporated ideals and conflict into her plot... and I mean real conflict.
Romance goes better when mixed with other genres and even then, it should be kept to a minimum in order to keep the plot from disrupting. Why is this an issue? I want to blame Twilight, but this has been going on for far longer.
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Date: 2010-04-25 03:59 am (UTC)I've seen some okay romances in other fandoms, but they're one of the most character-driven kinds of writing, and people take this to mean they don't need a plot, rather than that they have to embed the plot into the fabric of the story.
It's funny, actually, that romance even is a genre. We don't class "people conquering a kingdom" as its own separate genre, or "people repelling aliens" or "two people clashing over something other than their UST".
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Date: 2010-04-25 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 07:19 pm (UTC)So, say, early-season Ash/Gary could work, and apparently Paul is a good current contender. Mewtwo is actually one of the few good characters for this under my theory, so I'm just going to blame furries for not having enough work ethic.
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Date: 2010-04-25 09:10 pm (UTC)Screw the novel made from heart, sweat, and tears of a dedicated author. We have porn! :D
It's a sad realization, but it's the dark truth. -_-
Also, as far as rival!couplesgo, those normally work out, but after so many chapters the rivals get really annoying with their constant bickering. Writers often go for the whole "Why am I blushing? Do I possibly like him? No! That's crazy. I'm totally not in love with him" bit which is so overused it hurts. It wasn't good the first time and the millionth author isn't going to do it any better.....
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Date: 2010-04-25 09:30 pm (UTC)Also, as far as rival!couplesgo, those normally work out, but after so many chapters the rivals get really annoying with their constant bickering. Writers often go for the whole "Why am I blushing? Do I possibly like him? No! That's crazy. I'm totally not in love with him"
Or as I refer to it, Yugioh fanfic.
Rivalshipping itself isn't any better or worse, I think, but in Pokemon, it's the only one I can think of where there's a valid subtype - namely, both parties having some sort of legitimate reason to dislike each other, and the story centering around that changing. Most characters have so little personality there's nothing standing in the way of them just hooking up, and you can't do a good normal "slowly develop feelings for each other" because they aren't fleshed out enough - you have to invent the traits, on both sides, that they end up falling in love over, so they're functionally OCs if you do it properly and cardboard cutouts if you don't.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-26 03:18 am (UTC)Another thing is the heroXvillain and while this couple is very rarely written well I have seen authors make it happen. Of course, the ending wasn't happy, but the result was so satisfying that I couldn't be angry.
Anyways, I apologize for the rambling. I got a little carried away. Anyways, I'm watching your livejournal. I can't help but love what you're doing. Keep marching!~