A Waterbottle- Could use a Grader!!!

Author: flamealex1
Length: 5,100
Intended Capture: Elekid

Flame Darius, a simple boy was staying at the Pokémon Center. The night before he was traveling through the woods and lost his water bottle when he was helping his Charmander reach an apple. Great he thought to himself no water now. He stayed in the forest until 11:30 PM that night searching for it, he didn't want to spend any of the money he had gotten at the beginning of his journey. He decided to go back to the Pokémon Center he stayed at the night before to see if anyone had found it. “I'm sorry, no one has found it” Nurse Joy says. He spent the night there.

~~~~~~

"Thanks Nurse Joy, here is my PokéGear number in case you find it." Flame says

“Okay, I'll let you know Flame. Goodby!” Nurse Joy says waving as Flame walks out and back into the forest. Flame occasionally stopped to look around, he had no results. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon now.

He saw an Elekid. "Hey there little one, have you seen my water-bottle." Flame asks the Elekid. It shakes its head.

"Oh well, if you find it could you come give it to me." Flame suggests. Elekid nods.

~~~~~~

Around 5:30 PM: The Elekid found a bottle, it had the initials F.D. on it. The Elekid assumed it was the human's he had encountered before so the Elekid left in search of him. Flame walked through the forest occasionally looking around again when he came upon the Elekid again.

"Hey there, did you find my water bottle?" Flame asks.

The Elekid shakes it head no, it was playing with him.

"Oh well." he says. As Flame leaves the Elekid snickers and holds the bottle up.

~~~~~~

Elekid left Flame and went into the bush next to him. Elekid occasionally made some sounds in the bush causing Flame to hopelessly look into the shrubbery not seeing anything. Elekid hid from him again and again. Unfortunately one of the times Elekid tricked him, Flame looked into a Beedrill nest. Flame and Charmander fled as several Beedrill enveloped him, the whole time Elekid was laughing at his misfortunes. It was almost nightfall and Flame was miserable, it could have been a nice day, but no he just had to keep on hearing things in the bush.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As nightfall fell on the duo, he decided to set camp up on a river that was just up ahead of him. He slowly arrived at his base camp, disheartened from the Beedrill and miserable from walking. He gathered water as his Charmander got kindling for the fire. Once he finished gathering water for the two he got out his fold-able tent and set it up for the two, it had just enough space for them. Charmander returned with wood and he sat it in a pile. Charmander lit it with his flaming tail. Flame went over to his bag, he got some marshmallows his mother put in there for a sad day. The duo roasted marshmallows and ate in there sweet peace. The two sat close together and went to sleep after eating and going into their tent.

~~~~~~


Late that night the Elekid that was playing jokes on them snuck into their camp and sat down next to the fire, for it was rather cold out and he enjoyed the company. Elekid looked at Flame and his Charmander. Should I give it back, it is fun being with them but this sure is fun. the Elekid thought to itself several times. Elekid made its decision and walked over quietly and went to sleep next to Flame.

~~~~~~

Flame awoke, he was stirred by another Pokémon next to him. "Elekid, is that you. Its good to see you again buddy." Flame says drowzily waking up. The Elekid jumps up, excited, not frightened. It leads Flame and Charmander near the river. "My water-bottle! Thank you Elekid, thank you so much!" Flame says grabbing it and filling it with water. "Charmander thank the Elekid for its help." Flame says. Charmander walks over and give the Elekid a high-five. "Thanks again Elekid, but we have to go." Flame says.

~~~~~~~

Flame begins to walk off when the Elekid shoots a Thunderbolt at him. "Whoa, what was that for." Flame yells. The Elekid takes a fighting stance winding up his arms as lightning crackles between his points.

"Oh I get it now you want a battle don't you Elekid?” Flame asks. The Elekid nods. Charmander's flame revved up and was preparing for battle as well.

“Charmander standby for battle!" Flame yells. Elekid runs at Charmander, the battle had begun..............

~~~~~~~

"Charmander use your Scratch attack." Flame calls out. The Scratch impedes Elekid's attack. Charmander jumps back.

"Do it again!" Flame yells. Tiny electrical bolts go across him,

"Paralyzed? Oh no I forgot! Static!" Flame yells.

"Hang in there!" Flame says. Elekid tackles Charmander into the thorn bush. "NO!" Flame yells

"Charmander use Rapid Fire Scratch!" Flame yells desperately. Charmander stands, barely. He attacks knocking the Elekid into the ground. Charmander and the Elekid were both extremely tired now. Elekid looked at Flame and fell back for a moment, but just enough for Flame to throw his PokéBall "GOOOOOOO! PokéBall!" Flame yells and throws the Pokéball at it, it hits and shakes. "COME ON!!!!" it goes back and forth attempting to capture the Elekid inside............

 

Claimed for Grading.

 

Introduction:

Your introduction gave us an idea of what was going on in the story, and explained Flame's current situation, which helped to set up the plot for the rest of the story. However, there was one thing that your introduction lacked that would have helped the story out in the long run: a strong hook.

Basically, a hook is an introduction that draws the reader into the story. A hook usually causes the reader to think, "I wonder why this is happening?" or "Wow, that's interesting! Let's keep reading." By writing your main character off as simple in the first line of the story, you lost any impact that the rest of your introduction may have had. That first line is always important, because when readers look for a story to read, they want to feel involved and be interested in it right from the start.

There's a pretty easy way to create a strong hook for the beginning of your stories. You can take a moment from your story in which there's a lot of action going on, or something interesting is happening to one of the characters, and place it in the beginning of the story. Let's use an example to better illustrate, and say that one of Flame's Pokemon will evolve during the story. You can't do this unless you already have that Pokemon in your stats, but again, it's just an example. So what you do is, you start the story by describing the moments leading up to the moment of evolution. Then, just as the light goes away and the new Pokemon shows itself, you cut away from that part of the story to earlier events. From there, you show how that Pokemon ended up evolving, and lead the readers up to the moment in the beginning of the story.

By including a strong hook in the beginning of your story, you'll draw your readers in, and make your story much more interesting overall.

Plot:
Flame lost his water bottle recently, and he isn't having any luck finding it. After resting at a Pokemon Center, he goes to look for it again. Meanwhile, an Elekid has found his bottle, but doesn't intend to give it back so easily. The Elekid plays tricks on Flame several times, even leading him into a Beedrill nest. At the end of the day, the Elekid decides to return the bottle; to do so, he stays at Flame's campsite until he wakes up. He then leads Flame to the water bottle, and requests a battle shortly afterward. Flame then tries to capture the Elekid.

This is a relatively simple plot, which is fine for the Pokemon you're going for. Something that I really wanted to know all through the story was why the water bottle was so important. I'd imagine the Pokemon Center has water bottles available for trainers who don't have any, so looking for a specific bottle didn't really make much sense if that bottle didn't have some sort of significance. In the future, if you use objects as central points in the story like you did here, it might be a good idea to give a better reason why the character has to find it. Otherwise, the plot comes across as kind of bland, and you don't want that.

Dialogue:
Dialogue is a great way to show the personality of your characters. This story really didn't do that enough for me to really understand the feelings of your characters; while you did show that Flame wasn't too happy about the day he spent searching for the bottle, it would've been better if you showed this through a few lines with his Charmander.

It's not too big of a deal that there wasn't a lot of dialogue in this story because Flame is the only central character that speaks English (Nurse Joy isn't really a main character). As you write in the future, if you introduce new characters, it would be a good idea to give them dialogue with Flame. Not only will this make the story more realistic, but it will also give your readers the ability to connect to Flame's personality and feelings during the story. That's something that Graders tend to look for, so it's an important thing to include.

Grammar:
I noticed several grammatical errors in this story; the best way to show them all is to correct a few sections with you, bit by bit. So, let's get started, shall we?

Okay, here's the first section we'll correct:

The first thing we should do for this is make a new paragraph whenever there's a new person speaking or thinking. You did this at other points in your story, but it's worth showing here anyway. Here's the correct version:

Let's fix up your punctuation now. When you're writing your stories, try reading it out loud every so often. If you read a section and notice that you have to pause at any point, that point needs some sort of punctuation mark. Usually, a comma will do in these situations, but sometimes, another mark will do, as you'll see below:

Something you struggled with throughout the story is staying in the same tense. It's important that you write the whole story in the same tense; it looks quite awkward when a reader sees that one action in a sentence happened in the past tense, and another in the same sentence happened in the present tense. Here's a different section to use as an example:

Here's the same section, written entirely in the past tense and corrected with the stuff I mentioned above:

Lastly, as a suggestion, if you want to include the time of day in your story, you have to physically write it out. This is the same for any number less than or equal to one-hundred. So, with the times written out, "5:30 PM" would become "five-thirty in the evening". Basically, you write the hour first, then put a hyphen, and then you write the minutes. AM or PM changes depending on what time of day it is; generally, the morning ends at noon, the afternoon ends at five, the evening ends at eight, and night ends at midnight. Then, it goes back to morning again.

Be sure to keep these suggestions in mind next time you write, because proper grammar takes a lot of practice. Once you get it down, your stories will flow very well, and that's important for your overall Grade.

Detail and Description:
You showed some details in this story, but I would have felt better about it if you had included some details on Flame's surroundings as he searched for the water bottle. You mentioned that he was in a forest, and he passed by a river. What did the forest look like? Was the river rapid or calm? Were there any other Pokemon running around in the forest or swimming in the river besides Beedrill and an Elekid? And for that matter, what does Flame look like?

All of these details would have made the story better because your readers would be able to see the area that Flame was in much easier. This would allow them to visualize all of the situations that Flame was in during the story. Both of these are a large part of what makes a story great, so putting a lot of detail into the story would definitely get you a better Grade.

Battle:
The battle was pretty good, though it was a little on the short side. I would like to remind you that your Pokemon and the wild Pokemon in your stories know all of the moves they learn when they level up, and both are considered to be at Level 100 in all stories. So you didn't have to rely only on Scratch with Charmander; instead, you could have used any of its level-up moves, from Fire Spin to Dragon Rage.

When you write in the future, you should definitely expand upon the battles, and make them longer and more suspenseful for the readers. This sort of battle always earns high marks in a Grade, so it's a great place to aim in all of your stories.

Length:
Elekid is in the Simple category; the suggested length for Pokemon in this category is 5,000 to 10,000 characters. Your story is 5,100 characters; it's a little on the short side, but it still makes the cut.

Outcome:
Drum roll, please...

...

...

...Click!

Gotcha! Elekid was caught!

I'll be entirely honest with you, kid: this story was pretty boring, and the mistakes that you made hurt the story overall. But I think that you can do much better in the future, especially now that you know what you need to work on, so I made the capture successful. Remember that you can do absolutely anything in these stories, and you aren't limited to walking around in the forest looking for Pokemon. For all I know, the Elekid could have been from the Moon, and rode through the cosmos on his electrically-charged comet chariot; if you could make an original story out of it, I'd be fine with it. Also note that you don't need to actually capture the Pokemon in the story in order to get it, if the plot of your story doesn't allow you to catch it. As long as it's about Pokemon, and the Pokemon you want appears in the story somehow, you can capture it.

I'll be looking for your future stories to see how you improve. Make me proud, kid!

Oh, and enjoy your catch. ^^