Alaska heats up!

OOC:This is 3rd person. I apologize sincerely if it's not very good, but this is my first story so....


As Alaska trekked through the desert she felt the last of her strength leaving her. Each step grew painful and exhausting and her Taillow, Tobias, flutttering overhead, looked like a vulture waiting for her to keel over. Suddenly, Tobias swooped down and landed in front of her, spraying waves of sand everywhere. He stood up and shook the sand from his feathers. Alaska had to brush it out of her eyes.
"Taillow, tail, tail, Taillow," squawked Taillow.
"There's a boy trapped in a well?"
"TAILLOW!" Tobias shook his head.
"Taillow, tail!"
"Ohhh...There's an oasis up ahead."
Tobias stared at Alaska blankly.
"What?"
Tobias just shook his head again and took off. Reenergized by the thought of water, Alaska went running after him. Soon, the rolling sand dunes became more gently sloped and at the edge of her vision, Alaska saw green trees. Eventually, she could see an opening in the trees and bursh that led to a shimmering blue expanse of water.
"There it is!" she shouted to Tobias. She could already imagine ice cold water slipping down her throat.
"Taillow!", Tobias chirped happily.
Both pokemon and trainer were excited when they finally came to stop at the edge of the oasis.
"Wow, this place is beautiful!" exclaimed Alaska. She looked around the oasis, which was covered in lush trees and bright flowers. Small families of pokemon congregated in the shade and she saw Magikarp and Goldeen jumping in the pond. Two Marill were playing in the shallows.
"Maybe I'll catch a pokemon here," said Alaska excitedly.
"Tail, Taillow.", agreed Tobias. He was her only pokemon and often got lonely, though he did enjoy all the attention.
Alaska knelt down by the edge of a glistening pool and drank from the water. After walking for hours in the hot desert sun, her skin sunburned and chafed by the sand, the water felt good.Then suddenly, she was completely soaked!
"Aaaaghhh!" she screamed.
"Taillow, tail Taillow," laughed Tobias histerically.
"Grr....You think that's funny! How about this!" shouted Alaska as she doused Tobias with water.
The two started a massive water war splashing each other back and forth, until they heard a growl behind them. They nervously glanced at each other and turned around. A huge mama Sandslash with two baby Sandshrews, was standing there soaking wet.
"Sand! Slash!" She shouted menacingly.
"Oops. Umm, we didn't mean to get you wet, honest!"
"Sand, sand, slash!" the mama Sandslash didn't looked convinced.
"Tail, taillow, tail!" explained Tobias.
"SANDSLASH!" the Sandslash shouted and made a menacing motion with one of her claws, slicing at the air so viciously, it seemed she would cut right through it.
"What did you say to her?" asked Alaska anxiously.
"Taillow, Taillow, tail."
"YOU SAID WHAT!?"
"Taillow, tail," Tobias shrugged.
At that moment, the Sandslash curled into a giant spiked ball and rolled towards them, like a bowling ball on steroids.
"Aaaaghhhhh! Tobias, quick, use Wing Attack!"
Tobias shot a powerful twister of wind at the Sandslash, but it seemed to have no effect.
"Try Quick Attack!" Alaska shouted as she dodged out of the way. Once again the attack had no effect on the enraged Sandslash.
"Wait, I've got an idea! Use Wing Attack to make a rut in the sand leading to the oasis."
Tobias made a huge gust of wind and blew away part of the oasis's bank.
"Now hover right where the rut drops off into the oasis!"
Tobias did as he was told. The Sandslash changed course and rolled towards him, dropping into the rut in the sand. Right before she hit him, Alaska yelled, "Dodge, Tobias!"
Tobias flew up into the sky, but the Sandslash kept rolling and fell into the oasis, creating a huge splash.
"Yeah, we did it!" Alaska high fived Tobias's wing.
They celebrated for a few seconds, then began to worry when the sandslash didn't resurface.
"I'm going to go after her, Tobias. Stay with the two baby Sandshrew."
Tobias nodded and Alaska dove into the water. The oasis was crystal clear and she could see the Sandslash struggling at the bottom of the oasis. Her claw had gotten snagged on a piece of driftwood, and was becoming more embedded in the wood as she tried to pull it out. Alaska resurfaced for air then dove back down. She had a hard time finding the Sandslash again, as the clear water had now become murky as the Sandslash kicked up dirt trying to escape. Finally, she found the Sandslash and carefully unhooked it's claw from the wood. As she helped her paddle back to the surface, she could feel her lungs about to give out. Please let us make it, she prayed silently. When they hit the surface, they both gasped for air. They'd both gone so long without oxygen, that their lungs ached as they both breathed in. For a few seconds they just panted on the shore.
"I...didn't...think...we'd...make it," gasped Alaska.
"Sand...slash...slash."
Eventually, they both sat back up and saw Tobias playing peek a boo with the Sandshrew.
"Tail...low...Taillow!" he said and pulled his wings away from his face. Both the Sandshrews giggled.
"Sorry we got you wet," Alaska apologized to the Sandslash and her babies.
"Sand...sandslash," the Sandslash said, accepting the apology.
"I guess we better leave, then. Come on Tobias!"
Tobias started after Alaska but stopped to look back at the Sandshrews.
"Taillow, tail." Tobias said, and his feathers drooped.
"You'll miss them, huh?", Alaska had also, grown fond of the Sandslash and Sandshrew. They turned to leave when they heard.
"Sand! Sandslash!", the mother Sandslash came after them holding one of the baby Sandshrew.
"Sand, sandslash!", she said, handing the Sandshrew to Alaska.
"Oh, wow, I promise to take good care of your baby. What's her name?", asked Alaska excitedly.
"Sand...Sandslash."
"Ummm...I guess i'll call her Sandy."
Tobias did loop the loops in the air out of joy. He continued to do aerial acrobatics for several minutes, performing corkscrews, turns, and dives.
Alaska started to call Sandy to her pokeball, but the mother Sandslash stopped her.
"Sandslash!"
"You want me to battle her first?" asked Alaska curiously.
"Sandslash."
"Alright, whatever you say. Go Tobias!"
Tobias cawed loudly and flew down to her.
"Let's start off with Peck!"
Tobias flew down and pecked Sandy lightly on the head.
"Sandshrew!" it shouted annoyed.
It got him back by using a Sand Attack right in his face.
"I know you don't want to hurt her Tobias, but this is the only way we can catch her!"
Tobias nodded in agreement.
"This time try Wing Attack!"
Tobias beat Sandy with his wingsas hard as he could, but his face betrayed his guilt.
"Sandshrew," She whimpered, then her face hardened and she hit him with a Poison Sting.
"Careful, Tobias! I don't have any antidotes," Luckily, Tobias wasn't poisoned, "Let's finish this, hit her with air slash."
Tobias flew high into the sky until he was no more than a speck among the clouds. Then, he started hurtling down, down, down, his claws arched forward to strike. Finally, he hit Sandy and on impact sent up a huge wave of sand that coated Alaska and the rest of Sandy's family in burning sand.
"Owwww!" Alaska cursed quietly as she danced around trying to get the sand out of her clothing. The Sandslash and other Sandshrew seemed largely unaffected.
Finally, Alaska turned back to the battle and saw both of the pokemon had fainted.
"Good enough?" she asked the Sandslash.
"Sandslash," she shrugged.
"Alright! Sorry, guys," she returned Tobias to his ball and found Sandy a new one.
"Guess this is goodbye," she held her hand out to the Sandslash who took it gingerly with one of her claws and shook it.
"Sandslash!" Sandslash called as Alaska wandered into the distance, and Alaska could only wonder what her next journey would bring.

 

I fixed it. :yahoo:

 

I actually have a friend named Alaska, who is also a girl. /irrelevant

One note I’d like to make before I start is that it’s usually easier to read stories that have spaces between each paragraph. It just looks nicer on the whole. Anyway…

Introduction:

The introduction was alright. It included a little bit of description (I liked your Taillow/vulture comparison, that was nice), but what it didn’t include was a description of the main character. Not that you should be completely bogging down the story to describe every little detail of Alaska’s body, but it would’ve been nice to have a general image of what she looks like in my mind. You could focus on certain things that might even give a window into her personality, too. For example, if Alaska is wearing thick hiking boots, I would know that she is probably an outdoorsy person. Sneakers might suggest she’s athletic, while high heels (in a desert, of all places xD) would let me know she’s either a girly girl or she’s running away from prom… which leads me to my next point. Why was Alaska in the desert? The story starts and oh, look, there’s a girl in the desert. Even a simple motivation such as looking for Pokemon would have made the story fit a little better. An introduction should somehow lead into the plot. If there’s no reason for the events in the introduction, then it makes the plot look like a jumble of events that just kind of happened. These are a couple of things to think about when you start a story.

Plot:

For a simple Pokemon, it was pretty much up to expectations. Like I said, I think there needed to be some sort of reason why Alaska was in the desert in the first place, but once the plot actually started, it was alright. The only real plot twist, though, was Sandslash getting caught at the bottom of the pool. Sure, for an easy Pokemon like Sandshrew, it’s enough. However, you do need to remember that for harder Pokemon, you need to come up with original plots that are less predictable.

Detail/Description:

I can see that you added more detail to the story after I asked you to. Where it appeared, your description wasn’t half bad, but it was definitely pretty sparse. One thing that tends to bother me, though, is when every other line is something saying something. As a matter of personal preference, I really don’t think that Pokemon need to be yelling out their names all the time. Anyone who has ever seen the anime knows that that’s all they say. I think you should focus more on how they say things, and body language. For example:

The bolded part doesn’t really add anything to the story. The important part is the chirping, which already tells the reader that Taillow is making noise, and it also helps to show how Taillow is feeling. And if you took the quotation out, then you could add ‘Tobias chirped happily’ to the end of the preceding paragraph. If you did that for each time one of the Pokemon makes a noise, the story would look a lot less choppy and would flow better.

Otherwise, just remember that you need to describe all five senses, so that the reader can really visualize the events around themselves. You had the beginnings of this, but now you need to develop your descriptions more.

Grammar/Spelling:

There were two big things I noticed you did incorrectly as far as grammar goes. First of all, ALL Pokemon names (Charmander, Marill) and Pokemon attacks (Swift, Quick Attack) are ALWAYS capitalized. (Also, Taillow has two L’s).

Secondly, you had some punctuation problems with your quotations. I’ll quote two of them for you:

In the first example, you were right to end the quotation with a comma. The problem is that you put the comma on the outside of the quotation marks. Punctuation always comes before the ending quotation mark. So:

“Taillow, tail, tail, Taillow,” squawked Taillow.

…is the correct way to write it.

The second example had a similar problem. If you end a quotation with a punctuation mark other than a comma, you don’t need to add a comma to the outside of the quotation marks. So, this is the correct way to write it:

"There it is!" she shouted to Tobias.

Other than that, your grammar seemed fine.

Length:

You had enough.

Battle:

Hmmm… Here’s where it gets tricky. The problem is, there really wasn’t much of a battle. I mean, you had Taillow battle Sandslash for a very short time, and I liked the creative way you conducted that particular battle, especially since it led into a really nice plot point (Alaska saving the Sandslash), but Sandslash wasn’t even the Pokemon who you were trying to capture. Sometimes, it’s okay to not have a battle against the Pokemon you’re attempting to capture, but I am a firm believer that you have to know the rules before you can break them. I think you could’ve implemented a battle between Taillow and Sandshrew pretty easily, making it look like the Sandshrew wanted to see if Alaska was ’worthy’ or something like that. I think that since this is your first story, it’s really important that you learn the basic ropes of URPG story-writing, which means having a battle with the target Pokemon. THEN, you get to be really creative in your subsequent stories, to the point where it’s possible to omit a battle altogether (though that doesn’t happen often… and some graders will treat it worse than others).

Overall:

For a simple Pokemon, and for a first story, this was almost good enough for a capture. You’re a fairly good writer, but before I allow you to capture the Sandshrew, there are a couple of things I’d like you to do to show me you’ve continued to take my advice. First of all, go back through the story and capitalize all of the Pokemon names. Secondly, fix the punctuation issues in your quotations. Thirdly, add a battle between Sandshrew and Taillow. It doesn’t even have to be that long; two or three attacks from each side will suffice for this rank of Pokemon. However, you did a good job overall, and you can PM me for a regrade as soon as you’re done editing.

 

Hey, good job with the corrections. There are still a few places that you missed where there are commas on the outside of the quotations, but it looks like you got the majority of them, and the battle is alright. Remember that the harder Pokemon require longer, much more detailed battles, and you'll get better as you go. Again, great job, and congrats.

Sandshrew captured!