Nare11, Day Eighteen
Jan. 18th, 2011 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlahttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/6654818/1/Pokemon_wishing_star
Capitalize your title properly.
[jouney ]
Spellcheck. There's no excuse for this.
Opening your story with a character waking up for the day is generic and horribly, horribly overdone, and to be perfectly honest it's so incredibly dull and boring a start that even if I hadn't seen it, very literally here, hundreds upon hundreds of times before, I would still tell you you should have started at some other, interesting point.
When used in place of a name, it's written Mom, in any other constructions like my/her/the mom it's written as such.
Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.
Write out numbers with letters.
[Celia smiled and answered: ]
STOP DOING THIS EVERY SINGLE TIME.
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.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6654917/1/Olivias_Journey
There are four thousand stories just on this site in this category with "pokemon" in their title. There are three hundred "chronicles", more if you include misspellings, almost as many with "begins" and "beginning", and god knows how many "Character Name"'s whatever. There are almost five hundred with "legend". There are over eight hundred with "journey", seven hundred and fifty with "story", two hundred with "quest", and nine hundred and fifty with "adventure". "Kanto" and "Sinnoh" shows up two hundred times, with "Johto" and "Hoenn" around one hundred and fifty. "Saga", "region" and "champion" come in at around a hundred. What I'm getting at here is that you want to choose an original title that has to do with your story in particular, not something that indicates it's yet another story about a pokemon trainer.
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.
[I had never really had a strong reason to leave before, apart from the fact that I really didn't like my father. But now, my reason was much more. I had found a Pokémon, a rare Pokémon, and I wasn't going to let her fall into my father's hands. ]
Yet another of these. Does she even have any reason for disagreeing with her father, or is it just the typical "because she's a good person" tripe?
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."
And this is typical trainerfic bad writing. What did showing her catching a budew matter? The scene was boring as hell, as was the dry summation that then she trained them for a bit, and it would have changed nothing to start with her already having a pokemon. You need to learn what's relevant to spend time on and what completely isn't. In this case, pretty much solid filler up to the point the alarm goes off.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6655835/1/Pokemon_Mystery_Adventure_Story_1
[During the story, I'm going to change point of view once in a while to make the story a little more interesting. ]
God no. That's generally a marker of sloppy writing, not interesting.
[My… Err, sorry, OUR story began at the Saguenay, in the middle of summer. Oops, I forgot to tell you all my name. It's Raphael. I'm 16 years old, I have shiny brown eyes, non-brushed, extremely scruffy brown hair, and, unfortunately, I bear the family heir from my mother's side: pimples. Yep, I have pimples, so you could say I'm your typical bullied guy because, as some people say, I'm too nice and every time I try to hurt someone, either I feel guilty or it turns up against me. Now then, back to the story. Oh, but before that, I need to talk at least a little about my cousins, Jacob, 15 years old, and Marc-Alexander, 10 years old. They both have brown hair, are ]
Oh my god get to the point. Yes, when real people tell stories they sometimes do a shitty job of it. If I wanted that, I could go ask someone to ramble about shit I don't care about.
You're jumping between past and present tense. Don't do that.
["Hey, guys, have you ever wished to be a Pokemon once?"]
Not everyone's a furry. I realize this is generally the least of the numerous issues these kind of fics have, but the whole bit where everyone always secretly wishes they could be an animal is terrible from a characterization standpoint.
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."
["Whatever happens, I shouted, don't let go! Hang on with all you've got!]
That's actually pretty irrelevant to surviving this. If anything, there's better odds of any one of them living through this if they don't.
[The tornado pulled away the three boys from each other, each landing in a separate part of a new world below them: Marc-Alexander fell in an old house on top of a mountain; Jacob, in a really big lake; and Raphael, in a forest.]
You realize tornadoes don't magically set you down safely, right? It's more a matter of chucking.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656593/1/Replacement
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."
Anyway, not bad. You do a pretty good job of balancing narration and dialogue, and your sentence structure is easy to follow.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656701/1/The_War_of_the_Forest
Eh. The "people talking about stuff we don't know about" is a pretty hit or miss thing - you do drop in a few tidbits of info, but most of it doesn't make sense yet but isn't intriguing enough to make up for it or make me want to find out more.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656701/2/The_War_of_the_Forest
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.
["As the secretary of the military, I feel I should say something," Breloom interrupted. Breloom was a war veteran himself, and became a general early in his life. Breloom had been very intelligent with how to handle the military and when they were necessary.
"Well, Grovyle, you're already putting a huge amount of Hoenn's revenue into the military. In fact, over 500,000 Poké is going into keeping the military stable every day. And since we're at peace, we should be halving that amount." Grovyle's mind continued to wander, and all that he could identify was:
" Well, Grovyle, you're already putting a huge amount of Hoenn's revenue into the military. In fact, over 500,000 Poke are going into keeping the military stable every day. And since we're at peace, we should be halving that amount."]
This is terrible writing.
[I can already tell that many of us are discontent with the way you've been running the Hoenn region, and we've been letting it slide since you still are very young. But we've held high hopes for you since your father was such a strong ruler. ]
Also wtf why would anyone think a monarchy was a good idea?
Do not use " for thoughts. Ever. It just looks like your character is talking to themself.
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656765/1/Old_Folks
Drabble = 100 words. It's a writing exercise.
Anyway, this is pretty dull and reads like it's original fiction.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656962/1/Sinnoh_Romance
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."
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
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.
[So what'd ya think? oh i know the whole going from past to present tense thing is annoying but i'm just kinda lazy to fix it. so bear with me. ]
DIAF.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656994/1/New_Journey
There are four thousand stories just on this site in this category with "pokemon" in their title. There are three hundred "chronicles", more if you include misspellings, almost as many with "begins" and "beginning", and god knows how many "Character Name"'s whatever. There are almost five hundred with "legend". There are over eight hundred with "journey", seven hundred and fifty with "story", two hundred with "quest", and nine hundred and fifty with "adventure". "Kanto" and "Sinnoh" shows up two hundred times, with "Johto" and "Hoenn" around one hundred and fifty. "Saga", "region" and "champion" come in at around a hundred. What I'm getting at here is that you want to choose an original title that has to do with your story in particular, not something that indicates it's yet another story about a pokemon trainer.
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.
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."
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
[Unfortunately, the medicine had no effect on the dead Pokemon.]
Something designed to revive fainted pokemon doesn't resurrect the dead? No shit, Sherlock.
[In the observation room, the chief of the team was smiling wickedly at the new weapon.
"R&D team, apply the weapon into smaller, more portable versions. Preferably, into handgun-like weapons" the chief ordered.]
Or, and this is just a thought, you could just use HANDGUNS. I promise you, bullet-riddled corpses count as every bit as dead as science-magic zapped ones.
[~~ Chrone town ~~]
Learn to write scene transitions.
[This was the time that Kat stopped her archery practice to get her things together to start her Pokemon trainer adventure. While most Pokemon trainers start at the age of 10, Kat chose to hold off until age 14 so she can practice her archery.]
What an utterly useless skill in a world where superpowered city-leveling monsters exist.
Write out numbers with letters.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6657073/1/Perception
Don't use ' for thoughts, it's too close to the " being used for dialogue, and the fact it's also used for contractions and possessives just makes things worse. As long as you put a "he thought" at the end you generally don't need any markers, anyway.
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
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."
Anyway, pretty generic.
Capitalize your title properly.
[jouney ]
Spellcheck. There's no excuse for this.
Opening your story with a character waking up for the day is generic and horribly, horribly overdone, and to be perfectly honest it's so incredibly dull and boring a start that even if I hadn't seen it, very literally here, hundreds upon hundreds of times before, I would still tell you you should have started at some other, interesting point.
When used in place of a name, it's written Mom, in any other constructions like my/her/the mom it's written as such.
Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.
Write out numbers with letters.
[Celia smiled and answered: ]
STOP DOING THIS EVERY SINGLE TIME.
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.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6654917/1/Olivias_Journey
There are four thousand stories just on this site in this category with "pokemon" in their title. There are three hundred "chronicles", more if you include misspellings, almost as many with "begins" and "beginning", and god knows how many "Character Name"'s whatever. There are almost five hundred with "legend". There are over eight hundred with "journey", seven hundred and fifty with "story", two hundred with "quest", and nine hundred and fifty with "adventure". "Kanto" and "Sinnoh" shows up two hundred times, with "Johto" and "Hoenn" around one hundred and fifty. "Saga", "region" and "champion" come in at around a hundred. What I'm getting at here is that you want to choose an original title that has to do with your story in particular, not something that indicates it's yet another story about a pokemon trainer.
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.
[I had never really had a strong reason to leave before, apart from the fact that I really didn't like my father. But now, my reason was much more. I had found a Pokémon, a rare Pokémon, and I wasn't going to let her fall into my father's hands. ]
Yet another of these. Does she even have any reason for disagreeing with her father, or is it just the typical "because she's a good person" tripe?
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."
And this is typical trainerfic bad writing. What did showing her catching a budew matter? The scene was boring as hell, as was the dry summation that then she trained them for a bit, and it would have changed nothing to start with her already having a pokemon. You need to learn what's relevant to spend time on and what completely isn't. In this case, pretty much solid filler up to the point the alarm goes off.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6655835/1/Pokemon_Mystery_Adventure_Story_1
[During the story, I'm going to change point of view once in a while to make the story a little more interesting. ]
God no. That's generally a marker of sloppy writing, not interesting.
[My… Err, sorry, OUR story began at the Saguenay, in the middle of summer. Oops, I forgot to tell you all my name. It's Raphael. I'm 16 years old, I have shiny brown eyes, non-brushed, extremely scruffy brown hair, and, unfortunately, I bear the family heir from my mother's side: pimples. Yep, I have pimples, so you could say I'm your typical bullied guy because, as some people say, I'm too nice and every time I try to hurt someone, either I feel guilty or it turns up against me. Now then, back to the story. Oh, but before that, I need to talk at least a little about my cousins, Jacob, 15 years old, and Marc-Alexander, 10 years old. They both have brown hair, are ]
Oh my god get to the point. Yes, when real people tell stories they sometimes do a shitty job of it. If I wanted that, I could go ask someone to ramble about shit I don't care about.
You're jumping between past and present tense. Don't do that.
["Hey, guys, have you ever wished to be a Pokemon once?"]
Not everyone's a furry. I realize this is generally the least of the numerous issues these kind of fics have, but the whole bit where everyone always secretly wishes they could be an animal is terrible from a characterization standpoint.
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."
["Whatever happens, I shouted, don't let go! Hang on with all you've got!]
That's actually pretty irrelevant to surviving this. If anything, there's better odds of any one of them living through this if they don't.
[The tornado pulled away the three boys from each other, each landing in a separate part of a new world below them: Marc-Alexander fell in an old house on top of a mountain; Jacob, in a really big lake; and Raphael, in a forest.]
You realize tornadoes don't magically set you down safely, right? It's more a matter of chucking.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656593/1/Replacement
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."
Anyway, not bad. You do a pretty good job of balancing narration and dialogue, and your sentence structure is easy to follow.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656701/1/The_War_of_the_Forest
Eh. The "people talking about stuff we don't know about" is a pretty hit or miss thing - you do drop in a few tidbits of info, but most of it doesn't make sense yet but isn't intriguing enough to make up for it or make me want to find out more.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656701/2/The_War_of_the_Forest
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.
["As the secretary of the military, I feel I should say something," Breloom interrupted. Breloom was a war veteran himself, and became a general early in his life. Breloom had been very intelligent with how to handle the military and when they were necessary.
"Well, Grovyle, you're already putting a huge amount of Hoenn's revenue into the military. In fact, over 500,000 Poké is going into keeping the military stable every day. And since we're at peace, we should be halving that amount." Grovyle's mind continued to wander, and all that he could identify was:
" Well, Grovyle, you're already putting a huge amount of Hoenn's revenue into the military. In fact, over 500,000 Poke are going into keeping the military stable every day. And since we're at peace, we should be halving that amount."]
This is terrible writing.
[I can already tell that many of us are discontent with the way you've been running the Hoenn region, and we've been letting it slide since you still are very young. But we've held high hopes for you since your father was such a strong ruler. ]
Also wtf why would anyone think a monarchy was a good idea?
Do not use " for thoughts. Ever. It just looks like your character is talking to themself.
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656765/1/Old_Folks
Drabble = 100 words. It's a writing exercise.
Anyway, this is pretty dull and reads like it's original fiction.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656962/1/Sinnoh_Romance
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."
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
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.
[So what'd ya think? oh i know the whole going from past to present tense thing is annoying but i'm just kinda lazy to fix it. so bear with me. ]
DIAF.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6656994/1/New_Journey
There are four thousand stories just on this site in this category with "pokemon" in their title. There are three hundred "chronicles", more if you include misspellings, almost as many with "begins" and "beginning", and god knows how many "Character Name"'s whatever. There are almost five hundred with "legend". There are over eight hundred with "journey", seven hundred and fifty with "story", two hundred with "quest", and nine hundred and fifty with "adventure". "Kanto" and "Sinnoh" shows up two hundred times, with "Johto" and "Hoenn" around one hundred and fifty. "Saga", "region" and "champion" come in at around a hundred. What I'm getting at here is that you want to choose an original title that has to do with your story in particular, not something that indicates it's yet another story about a pokemon trainer.
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.
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."
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
[Unfortunately, the medicine had no effect on the dead Pokemon.]
Something designed to revive fainted pokemon doesn't resurrect the dead? No shit, Sherlock.
[In the observation room, the chief of the team was smiling wickedly at the new weapon.
"R&D team, apply the weapon into smaller, more portable versions. Preferably, into handgun-like weapons" the chief ordered.]
Or, and this is just a thought, you could just use HANDGUNS. I promise you, bullet-riddled corpses count as every bit as dead as science-magic zapped ones.
[~~ Chrone town ~~]
Learn to write scene transitions.
[This was the time that Kat stopped her archery practice to get her things together to start her Pokemon trainer adventure. While most Pokemon trainers start at the age of 10, Kat chose to hold off until age 14 so she can practice her archery.]
What an utterly useless skill in a world where superpowered city-leveling monsters exist.
Write out numbers with letters.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6657073/1/Perception
Don't use ' for thoughts, it's too close to the " being used for dialogue, and the fact it's also used for contractions and possessives just makes things worse. As long as you put a "he thought" at the end you generally don't need any markers, anyway.
You really should use said more. Said is invisible. You should only use other words occasionally, when you mean to draw attention to how it's being said.
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."
Anyway, pretty generic.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-20 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-20 05:10 am (UTC)Personally, I blame capitalism.