Damien

Target Pokémon: Charmander

Target CC: Hard (20k-30k)
CC: 3,233

I know my story won't make it, but I did the best I could.

Damien was a bad Pokémon trainer. After his Charmander (a Fire type) lost to a Poliwag (a Water type), he decided to abandon his Charmander in the rain, not caring about the fact that if the flame on its tail gets extinguished, Charmander would die. It didn't seem to cross his mind the Charmander was at disadvantage against Poliwag. Also, he didn't bother trying to make his lizard strong.

Poor Charmander! Thanks God (or Arceus, if you want) that Ash saw him and rescued him. Bit the Lizard Pokémon didn't know that his so-called Trainer abandoned him, so he went back to wait for Damien. But Damien didn't care. For him, Pokémon are just battling machines, not friends. May he burn in Hell (or get sent to the Reverse/Distorted World, if you want)!

Pokémon are not our slaves, they are supposed to be our friends, and that's something a pure-hearted Trainer named Ash Ketchum knows very well (which is why Ho-Oh appeared to him). Ash/Satoshi treats all his Pokémon as his friends, and tries to not discriminate between them (even though his Pikachu is his favourite).

Later, when Damien saw Charmander's strength, he regretted his choice, but it was too late! Charmander chose to go with Ash, and what a good choice that was! And to Damien's loss, after Charmander became a Charizard, he managed to defeat an Articuno, a Legendary Pokémon! So you though it was weak Damien? Take that! The Pokémon you though was weak defeated a Legendary one. I hope you hear that and cry! But it's too late now, deal with it!

Damien was someone who though about only winning, and unfortunately, Charmander inherited some of these traits when evolving into a Charmeleon, and then a Charizard. Charizard used to only fight an opponent he deemed worthy and not listen to Ash, and when Richie sent his Pikachu, Charizard fell asleep, costing Ash the Indigo Conference. But unlike other Trainers, Ash didn't give up. When Charizard was frozed by the Ice Beam of a Poliwrath, Ash spent the whole night taking care of Charizard, in order to ensure the flame on his tail doesn't get extinguished. Seeing how his Trainer cares about him, Charizard started to listen to Ash, and after that, he started to get stronger and stronger.

Ash sent Charizard to the Charizadic Valley, where is under the care of Liza, a Trainer who trains a group of Charizard. She initially didn't want him, seeing him as not being strong enough on training, but after the Flame Pokémon spent the whole night in the lake (with Team Rocket secretly throwing rocks on him to keep him awake), Liza saw his determination and accepted to take him in.

Had Damien been a good Trainer, he would have had a Charizard powerful enough to beat a Legendary Pokémon. But he probably though Pokémon are like machines. This reminds me of another so-called Trainer, named Paul, from Sinnoh. He would abuse his Chimchar (another Fire-type starter) hoping he would get angry and activate his Ability: Blaze. And this time too, Ash not only got the abandoned Pokémon, but also managed to make it evolve into its final form: Infernape. He too would release the Pokémon he deemed weak and would only care about winning. It seems he got humbled after Ash defeated him during the Sinnoh League Conference.

 

dropping a reservation claim here per author request~~

 

Cool. Okay. We talked about this a bit on Discord, but this story is a little bit too short to capture a Charmander. While the character count guidelines you mentioned at the top aren't necesarily the end-all-be-all of whether a story is "long enough," it's usually a good, easy metric to strive for.

So. All that being said, how do we make a longer, more complicated story? Let's take a look at your story--it's basically a retelling of Charizard's story in the anime. But if you were to read your story out loud and then watch all of the clips of the anime with Charizard in them, you'd find that watching all the anime clips would take much longer--the anime has things like dialogue, description, and character growth to turn this plotline into a complicated story.

Think about summaries on a Wikipedia page for a movie versus actually watching the movie. If you have the time and the means, watching the movie is usually better than reading a few sentences summarizing it, right? Try adding more details into your summary to make it into a story: describe the battle versus Articuno! Did Charizard use fire attacks, or was Articuno able to dodge them? How did Ash feel after Charizard left the team to train under Liza? What does a Charmander even look like? Description is a key element to a story: try using your five senses to convey to someone else what it would be like if they were standing there next to you, watching your story unfold.

Finally, a few notes on plot: while the anime did a good job with this Charizard arc, you don't need to recap it here. Someone already wrote this story a long time ago, and there's no need to limit your story by holding it to that plotline. Do you want to write the story of a boy and his Charizard challening the League? Go ahead! It doesn't have to follow Ash's struggles at all. Do you want to write a story about people riding Charizard to fight off against giant alien mechas? That works too! The amazing thing about storytelling is that there's really no limit so long as you have a logical explanation for what's happening. Think outside of th box and tell the story that you want to tell, not a recap of a story that someone else has already written.

In conclusion: writing takes practice. Don't panic because you didn't get it the first time. I'd recommend testing out your skills on some of the lower-ranks here--Charmander is Hard-ranked, meaning a story at that level requires a higher degree of plot/other things--but there are plenty of strong Pokemon in the lower ranks that you can strive for while you're still learning how things work. Don't panic--imagine! Barring the fact that it has to be about Pokemon, there's really no limitation here to what you can write about.