Pokemon Adventures: Red & Blue

[Weedy Spyze]

On the other hand, Imaginative has a point. You'll want to remember that these characters are basically people. Imagine playing a game of soccer or insert-sport-here with your friends, but everything that happens follows a very specific pattern. As in, in the case of soccer, your friend passes to a teammate, the teammate makes a goal, and then you get to talk. Then, you pass to your teammate, your teammate makes a goal, and then your friend gets to talk. That's what turn-based Pokémon battles are like in writing. Even if it's not supposed to be epic, sticking to a specific format (command-attack description-retaliation, as Imaginative described it) feels wooden and unnatural because these characters aren't supposed to be confined to a very strict format. Attacks happen in real time for them, so trainers and their Pokémon should react accordingly in the same way you react in real time to everything that happens in a soccer game or whatever sport you choose. Sure, the basic format might be there, but it's okay to expand.

Especially if you're going with Adventures canon. I'm not a huge fan of Adventures myself, but I do know that every battle shows some level of creativity and that every battle can bend the "rules" here and there for the sake of creating something exciting, even if it's not meant to be a plot-changing match. So it really does make more sense to consider what Imaginative is saying, even if it's just a "tutorial battle," so to speak. (I have to admit that I felt the same way about your battles. They weren't terrible, but the format made them a little harder to get through. I had some difficulty picturing, for example, Rattata simply staying still and doing nothing as Poli wobbled -- which seems to imply moving slower than usual -- towards him just before DoubleSlap. It was because it's just not something that seems logical. If you know someone is about to punch you, you'd react too, right?)

I'll admit to you right now, the battle scenes are one of the things I'm most worried about when it comes to writing this story. Especially when it comes to adapting some of the battles that is in the actual manga itself. To be honest, I sometimes find the battles of Adventures a little hard to follow. I won't elaborate why because I'm tired and you've left me about ten more paragraphs to respond to first. I guess I, somewhat unconciously, decided to go for the game turn-based style for this battle, but I may try a bit more of an anime-like style for the next one. I'll say it again, I am new at this. I'm sorry if that sounds like an excuse, but it's the truth. I'm just gonna have to practice more in order to find a style for battle writing that I'm really comfortable with.

Sometimes, you don't have time to make a good impression. After all, the entire point of reading fanfiction is to enjoy some free time. Readers don't want to spend time on a fic that's mediocre in the first few chapters but slowly gains momentum when they could be reading a fic that's epic in the first chapter and maintains that level of quality throughout the fic. That's why you have to put in some extra effort to make sure your first chapters are as good as they can be. Sometimes, this involves revising because if you know your first chapters have weak points, you'll want to make sure you work those out until you're sure everything is strong, if that makes sense.

While it's true that a good writer doesn't reveal their secrets all at once, an experienced writer also understands that characterization isn't built through telling us about the character. For example, instead of telling us that Delia is a mother figure to Red, you'll want to show us scenes in which she displays some motherly affection for Red and the other children -- or at least show us a little bit of that to back up the claims you made in that paragraph that describes her. After all, just telling us personality traits doesn't actually mean anything to us. You could say that a character is the kindest, sweetest person who always cares for everyone around her, and in the next paragraph, she could make a sarcastic remark that throws all of that out the window. It's like the old saying that goes, "Actions speak louder than words." Characters (even background ones!) are stronger, deeper, and generally more memorable if you show us what they're like through their actions and the way they interact with other characters, rather than just telling us, "This character is kind and showers children with affection."

Well, if I don't catch the reader's attention with the first chapter of my story and they decide to turn away instead of reading on, that really does not bother me too much. Maybe it would if I was trying to make a profit or something off of this story, but I'm not. And of course I'd prefer it if they kept coming back and giving me a thumbs-up for my story, but if they don't? Eh, it's no biggie. You said that the entire point or reading fanfiction is to enjoy free time...well, the same could be said for writing fanfiction. I decided to start this story because I had a lot of different ideas brewing in my head about how I could change and hopefully improve Adventures. Will I end up being successful in my endeavor? Maybe, maybe not. That's all up to the reader to decide. But as long as I'm having fun writing it, and there's people out there who are having fun reading it, then that's good enough for me.

The second paragraph I'll take to heart, though. For me, I'm kind of someone who wants to know all of the facts about something as quickly as possible, so I guess that had to do a bit with the paragraph about Delia there. Originally, I actually wrote a lot more there, but I ended up cutting most of it out. I guess it's maybe a good thing I did. I guess this is what Imaginative meant when he said "show, not tell?"

Except you don't go on about how you've been with your friends for a long time, right? It's just awkward because no one actually talks like that, so it feels like you're making Red say it just to inform the audience that he's been with these Pokémon for a long time, rather than because he genuinely wants to have a conversation with them. If you want to bring up the fact that they've been together for a long while, you can say so through the narration or by implying that they've been long-term friends just by how they interact with one another. (Just because Adventures actually does something like this doesn't mean it's not weak writing.)

Anyway, sorry to butt in. I've read your work and may do a full-on review with specifics later. Honestly, it was okay, but for a first attempt, it certainly wasn't bad. It's just that the reason why I'm not offering specifics is because I'm noticing the way you react to reviewers. You say you're taking in feedback, but so far, you've called one piece of advice unfair (as opposed to asking what it meant, for example, or discussing it in more than just a line), objected to a large swath of other advice, and finished everything off with the "give me some time" line. (Sorry to put it like that. It's just one of those things you see a lot of new fic writers say.) I understand that you're new at this, but you'll want to be careful with how you react to reviewers. The last thing you want to do is imply that you're going to respond to most of your concrit with either excuses or objections. Yes, you can discuss things, and by all means, ask questions. But also remember that we're here to help you improve, especially given the fact that you're new. Whenever you receive a piece of concrit, don't object to it at first. Take a long, hard look at your writing. Maybe think about what your reviewers are saying for a day before responding. Toy with the ideas people offer to you and see where they can fit into your writing. If you can't figure out how to make your advice fit, ask for clarification. If you still can't figure it out, respond politely. And by politely, I mean something along the lines of, "I see what you're saying, and you definitely have a point. Thanks for bringing that up! But don't worry. I've thought about it carefully, but I think I'll go with something else." Do not make excuses, and don't imply that all of our answers are in a later chapter and that this is all mystique. (If people point out things thinking they're plot holes, that's not being too impatient to find out what mysteries lie ahead. That's pointing out that your story has weak points that look exactly like plot holes and that you may want to take a second look at what you're doing. Just saying.) If you go with that strategy and be very careful about what you say, you'll acknowledge your readers with respect, which will make new readers or more scrutinizing critics (of which there are many on this forum) more inclined to drop by and add to your readership count.

Hmm, I really don't know what to say to you here. I understand what you're trying to tell me, and I suppose I should've paid more attention to detail there. I really do want my story to be the best it could possibly be, so I guess I'll just have to pay more attention to small details like that in the future.

You're not offering specifics? Lol, could've fooled me. I don't mean to sound rude, but I'm not gonna face all of the criticism I get with a smile and a nod like I'm in a pageant or something. I like to have discussions with people, not just have someone say, "Oh, you made a mistake here and there, etc." and me just nod and say "okay!" That just doesn't really work for me. At the very least, I want to acknowledge the advice given. The piece of advice I called unfair is the perfect example of that. I didn't call it unfair because I thought it was unfair to me, it's because I thought it would be unfair to the readers. The guy told me to "maybe only explain moves some people won't know," well it's kinda hard for me to decipher which moves someone would know and what they wouldn't. Should I assume that fifth gen moves would be the ones that are unknown? Or what about a more uncommon move from an earlier generation? Meditate is a move from generation one, yet I had no clue what it was or that it even existed until like two months ago. So, it's kind of unfair for me to try and guess what kind of moves people would know, or what they wouldn't. Especially since I'm trying to write this in a way so that someone who knew pretty much nothing about Pokemon, could open it up on their browser and still be able to follow it without getting too confused. I may fail terribly at that, but lol.

Even if I object or dispute with certain pieces of advice, it does not mean I don't take it in. That's just not true. Like I just now said, I like to have discussions with people. For some of these suggestions, I may not really understand what the reviewer is trying to tell me, so of course I'm gonna ask them to elaborate in that situation. Maybe I even disputed something because I didn't quite understand what someone was trying to tell me. And if I've come across as rude to anyone here, then I sincerely apologize. Not once has it been my intention to scoff at a suggestion, but I know that it's sometimes hard to decipher tone from text on the internet. It's not my intention to make any kind of excuses, either, but if something sounds like one, well then so be it. I'm not gonna claim my story to be perfect, and there probably will be a plot hole I overlooked here or there. In that case, I'll be glad if someone points that out to me.

On that note, if a lot of people don't care for the prologue, that may mean you'll want to take a closer look at it. I mean, the whole point of posting your story on a fanfic forum is to get objective feedback, and if practically everyone who comes by points out the same weak point... that may be a bad sign.

Anyway, I've rambled too much and criticized you into the ground by this point. Don't take any of this personally or anything, and I hope you're not offended that I had to speak up here. It's just that while I'd love to review your story in the depth that I usually do (and people can tell you how hilariously that usually goes over), I'm just not even sure how you'd react to it, given how you react to other reviewers who actually have pretty good points that I would've said myself in my review anyway. Either way, I'll keep an eye on this thread and see how you react to other reviewers (and to me, for that matter), and if it seems like a pretty chill environment, I'll drop a review.

That and, to be honest, I think I like this better than the actual manga anyway, which is actually saying something despite what I said earlier about not being a huge fan of Adventures to begin with. And I may or may not be eager to see how you handle "But Fearow Itself."

Hmm, that's definitely some good advice. Maybe tomorrow I'll look into both the prologue and first chapter again and try to make a few more edits, before I post the story over on fanfiction.net. Hopefully it will be a good improvement.

Feel free if you want to review the actual story itself.

I'll take that as a compliment, thank you. I hope you decide to come back and read on as I write on, and enjoy the story for what it's worth. And lol @ the strikethrough. Is it because you hated that chapter or loved it? :P

Let me try my hand at clarifying if it helps you at all. You can't have people presently gathered and listening to something in the past because that's a time paradox. In other words, you can't do something in the past while simultaneously doing something in the present. You're either doing it now, or you did it already. Dialogue is the same way. Dialogue tags (the things that describe lines of dialogue) should be consistent with every other verb tense in your work because the audience and the background characters are perceiving that line of dialogue as happening at the same time as other events of the fic. In this case, the battle commands don't take place before people gather; they take place while people are there. So you can't use past-tense verbs for dialogue and present-tense ones to describe the gathering because the crowd can hear the battle commands. Using past tense says they can't because they're not there yet to observe the battle. It's a matter of grammatical logic, basically.

If you want them to listen to something someone is saying in the present, you should use present-tense verbs. The reason why you see most narratives use past-tense verbs when describing dialogue is because most narratives use past-tense verbs for the entire work anyway. It's very rare to see a novel written in any other tense, just because it's an author's natural inclination to use past-tense. Which I admit is a shame because it's always interesting when someone tries to tackle a different narrative spin. If you want to see a present-tense work, though, I'd suggest any of these.

The rest I've basically described in my earlier post (including an attempt at explaining the "show, don't tell" part when it comes to characters), so I'll let you read over that instead of possibly making you feel like I'm beating you over the head with something you already read over. However, if you'd like me to expand on them, feel free to ask.

I think I am beginning to understand what you mean now. Allow me to make this proposal:

In one area of this town, a small group of three children have gathered in a small field, taking part in one of the most popular of Pokemon practices: Pokemon battling.

Would "have gathered" be a better word choice than "are currently gathered" in this situation?

[JX Valentine]

I'll admit to you right now, the battle scenes are one of the things I'm most worried about when it comes to writing this story. Especially when it comes to adapting some of the battles that is in the actual manga itself. To be honest, I sometimes find the battles of Adventures a little hard to follow. I won't elaborate why because I'm tired and you've left me about ten more paragraphs to respond to first. I guess I, somewhat unconciously, decided to go for the game turn-based style for this battle, but I may try a bit more of an anime-like style for the next one. I'll say it again, I am new at this. I'm sorry if that sounds like an excuse, but it's the truth.

Lemme try to rephrase my point in a way that isn't as wordy or irreverent as I usually am. Yes, you're new, but the point of posting your fic on a writing community is to get feedback. We're trying to give you tips on how to improve your battles. Instead of blowing us off, you might as well listen to what we have to say. Otherwise, you're not going to improve, and you'll never grow up from being new.

The point is you can't use "I'm new" as a counter to polite constructive criticism. (By all means, if someone's being a dick in their concrit, politely tell them that you're new at this and gtfo.) Concrit is given to you because we understand you're new, so we want to help you fine-tune your writing so that you might become something more than new. It's definitely not given to you to tell you that it's a mistake or that we're expecting you to be an expert already. That would be silly, and anyone who actually does that is a very silly person. It's given to you so that you know what and how to improve in order to avoid making the same mistake again.

So, yeah, sure, you're new. But that's the point of why we give you concrit.

Well, if I don't catch the reader's attention with the first chapter of my story and they decide to turn away instead of reading on, that really does not bother me too much.

Well, sure, but half the point of posting your work to be viewed by countless people you don't already know instead of keeping it in a notebook or sharing it with friends only is to entertain those extra masses. I mean, you had to have thought of those extra masses on some level because, well, you're here. Most of the point of concrit is to help you keep as much of those masses as possible because otherwise, there's no real point in posting your work. Sure, you have a handful of fans now, but you're basically saying you don't care about anyone but them. That excludes people, and saying that out loud could drive away the fans (and silent readers) you currently have because, well, there's some folks who don't take kindly to you admitting that you essentially don't care whether or not they stick around, if that makes sense.

In short, when you post your work online, you're automatically an entertainer, so you're no longer writing just for yourself. If you wanted to write just for yourself, then there's no point in needing an audience because you're not writing for them (as obvious and redundant as that statement sounds, I know). So that's why you'll want to be careful and put forth some effort in showing that you're going to improve and that your story is worth sticking around for. Otherwise, it's going to feel like people (including your current readers) are wasting their time, and that's something you'll probably want to avoid.

The second paragraph I'll take to heart, though. For me, I'm kind of someone who wants to know all of the facts about something as quickly as possible, so I guess that had to do a bit with the paragraph about Delia there. Originally, I actually wrote a lot more there, but I ended up cutting most of it out. I guess it's maybe a good thing I did. I guess this is what Imaginative meant when he said "show, not tell?"

*le nod* Pretty much. Glad it made sense. b)'')b

You're not offering specifics? Lol, could've fooled me.

I tend to get rambly. Sorry.

I don't mean to sound rude, but I'm not gonna face all of the criticism I get with a smile and a nod like I'm in a pageant or something.

Oh, don't worry; I'm not asking you to do that. In fact, feel free to have discussions and ask questions. As I've said, if you can't figure something out, your reviewers are more than happy to explain things to you and reword their reviews in a way that hopefully makes sense.

What you can't do is word things defensively. There are ways to word your responses clearly civilly and using tones that show that you're clearly taking into careful consideration everything a reviewer says, and my entire point was that you'll need to be careful and choose those ways so that it reflects well on you as a new writer. It's actually extremely important that you do that as a new writer because you'll want to establish your reputation as someone who's keenly interested in improving or at the very least interacting with readers on a friendly level because otherwise, you end up with bad press. While that may not drive away the readers you've already gotten, it may hurt your chances at doing cool things within the community like collecting reviews from all of the Old Hats, getting nominated for the yearly awards, or even establishing connections with fellow writers. (Tip: The Café is awesome for intelligent discussion on literary topics, but it's especially so if you're friends with literally everyone. If you really like discussing things concerning writing and whatnot, definitely make sure you take a side trip there as well.)

Should I assume that fifth gen moves would be the ones that are unknown?

While I can't speak for the person who said it (because, given that they're not active reviewers, I'm not sure what they were trying to tell you either), but I'm pretty sure it's another case of "show, don't tell." As in, it sort of got tiring to read definitions of moves every time they happened because, speaking for fans of the franchise, we'd already know what Quick Attack and Bubble were. So we really don't need to have it defined, and it felt a little like it was slowing down the pace of the battle just a bit. That's how I saw it anyway. Like I said, no idea about the original poster, sorry.

Especially since I'm trying to write this in a way so that someone who knew pretty much nothing about Pokemon, could open it up on their browser and still be able to follow it without getting too confused. I may fail terribly at that, but lol.

Quick word of advice to make it easier on yourself: Assume that everyone who's reading is a fan. It makes sense; you're on a Pokémon board writing a fanfiction based on one of the most popular forms of Pokémon media and showing it off to people who are Pokémon fans. Unless you post this fic elsewhere, your readers can follow along just fine. Attempting to write for anyone else would be basically writing for the wrong audience -- like attempting to write a Saw sequel aimed at young children. It creates more work for you and tends to net you negative feedback from the readers who are fans and wondering why you're explaining the basics to them.

Even if I object or dispute with certain pieces of advice, it does not mean I don't take it in. That's just not true.

I'm sure you're telling the truth here, but you'll want to be careful because the way you word things implies that you don't. For example, every time you don't understand something, you object by saying that your way is the correct way or the best way to write things. (For example, instead of simply asking what we meant concerning our criticism of the way you write your battles, you objected by saying you're new at this, that the battles aren't meant to be epic, and so forth.) If that's not what you meant, I apologize; it's just how you tend to come off. So I'm really just saying be very careful with word choice because tone is difficult to decipher on the internet, and it's extremely easier to interpret things negatively than positively.

Hmm, that's definitely some good advice. Maybe tomorrow I'll look into both the prologue and first chapter again and try to make a few more edits, before I post the story over on fanfiction.net. Hopefully it will be a good improvement.

Good luck! And sure, I'll drop a review when it's not insane o' clock at my end of the world. (The only reason why I'm up is because coffee is a terrible mistress.)

I hope you decide to come back and read on as I write on,

Oh, don't worry. I stalk the crap out of God knows how many fics on this forum, and you're on the list because...

And lol @ the strikethrough. Is it because you hated that chapter or loved it? :P

...I'm notoriously a Bill fangirl. Like, super-notoriously. Like, that is literally half my reputation on this forum. He is literally the #1 reason why I read Special/Adventures at all. Like, seriously. There's a list out there, and that's all that the first spot says. And I think I'm beating this joke into the ground, but the short of it is, I am totally not reading this for selfish fangirl reasons that will totally not make me squeal quietly in my dark and shady corner regardless of what happens in that chapter once it's out.

Would "have gathered" be a better word choice than "are currently gathered" in this situation?

Perfect, actually! "Have gathered" says that they've gathered in the past before the past (yeah, I know, definitions of tenses tend not to make sense if you actually word them, but if you need it for the future, Wikipedia explains it better than I ever can), so it accurately places when the crowd formed in the timeline.

[Weedy Spyze]

^ I'm not gonna write another long-winded response, but I read all of that and I want to thank you for taking the time to give me all of that advice. I've definitely learned a few new tips and tricks from you.

I removed the fic itself from this thread in wait to prepare it for a new revision. I'm not gonna promise it will be finished anytime soon, however. I'd like to request for this thread to be closed so I could create a new thread for the new start, but I don't know what exactly is allowed around here in regards to that so...I guess the thread will just be left empty until then.