First Capture! Poliwag!

Tall for his age, standing at 5'6" at age 11, Nick was seldom picked on, simply because of his size. His blond hair, kept brushed straight down, was becoming a golden mix of brown and blond. Dressed in his usual jeans and t-shirt, he looked very ordinary. He had glasses, but despised wearing them, and was willing to sacrifice perfect vision for better looks. Although he was very intelligent, he was often forgetful, which caused problems in his everyday life, like now, on his very first day of Pokétrainer's School.

“Come on Shinx! We’re going to be late for class!” Nick panted heavily as he ran across the lush, vibrant lawn of his school. A fair size, the Pokétrainer's School stood in the center of the small town where Nick lived. While it was well-known across the region for it's professional teachers, it was quickly becoming outdated, and was in serious need of some remodeling.

“Shinx!” His loyal companion of two weeks ran beside him every step of the way, eager to meet new people and Pokémon. As they burst through the classroom door, Shinx accidentally knocked into a Bidoof!

Anrily, the Bidoof’s trainer started yelling at him! “Look what you did!” the trainer cried out.

Nick offered a broken, nervous apology, and scooped up Shinx so he wouldn’t cause any more trouble. Grunting under the weight of surprisingly heavy Pokémon, he walked up to the seating chart and found out he was in the back. Great. Sighing tiredly, he walked to the back of the depressingly dark and lonely room. He looked around, and wondered what to do with Shinx, who NEVER went in his Pokéball. Seeing that the other kids were just as unsure as he was, he shrugged and sat down. Checking out the other trainers' pokémon, he was surprised to see that he had the only Shinx.

Suddenly, the door slammed open, leaving another dent in the already beat-up wall, and an exasperated, tired woman walked through. She seemed surprised to see all the Pokémon out. Directing them towards the door, she said, “If your Pokémon aren’t used to being in Pokéballs, then there’s a playground out back”.

Regretfully, Nick put Shinx in with the other Pokémon. Looking around, he saw that it was suited for all kinds of pokémon, with all kinds terrain, including grass, a sandy area, and even a small pool in the corner. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll come get you after class.” He could tell this was going to be a long day. “Oh man!” Nick muttered to himself. “This is NOT the way I thought this day would start out!”

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Earlier that morning, Nick had woken up early to get ready for his first day at the Pokétrainer’s School. Leaping out of bed, he ran down the stairs of his family's two-story, single family home. Eager and full of energy, Shinx had sat beside Nick while he was eating breakfast, which, as usual, was waffles, and the next thing he knew, Shinx was gone!

“Shinx! Where are you?” Nick called frantically. Quickly, he ran through the house, through the small, cozy kitchen and into the living room, calling for Shinx. As he passed the window, next to the table with mom's treasured bonsai tree sitting on top, he thought he heard a faint cry. Confused, Nick ran to the door and found that it was cracked open.

“Shinx!”, he yelled. This time, his companion answered him. Sighing with relief, he ran into the back yard, only to stop and stare in shock! Facing his Shinx, standing next to the deck that Nick and his dad and built themselves, was an angry-looking Poliwag. Suddenly, it rushed towards Shinx, weaving through various pieces of lawn furniture, and jumped through the air. Too surprised to move, Shinx took the Tackle full-force and skidded across the lawn.

“Shinx! Don’t just stand there! Use Tackle back at it!” Mewing bravely, the Shinx ran across the lawn with surprising speed, smacking into the Poliwag. Wincing, Nick saw it go flying into the air, right into the new birdbath his mom and just gotten. Ouch. As it was struggling to recover, Shinx let out a Growl. Normally, Nick wasn’t a defensive move user, but he figured that it couldn’t hurt since Shinx had already been hit once. The Poliwag let out an angry cry and shot a jet of bubbles towards Shinx.

“Quick, Shinx! Jump out of the way!” Speed not being Shinx’s strong suit, he managed to avoid most of the bubbles, but got clipped by some on the side. Drat! Nick thought to himself. Not only was Shinx hurt, but he was even slower now! They were going to have to take a chance.

“Shinx! Do you think you could use a Spark?” Hesitantly, Shinx looked back at him, but then flared up with blue-white energy. “All right!” Nick exclaimed happily. Shinx had just recently learned to use Spark, but Nick was secretly worried that he didn’t have complete control over it yet.

Letting out a loud meow, which contained just a trace of a deeper-throated growl, Shinx lunged at the Poliwag with new-found speed. Taken by surprise, the Poliwag tried desperately to avoid him, but took the full force of the Spark in his whirlpool-patterned belly. Lying sprawled upon the ground, the Poliwag seemed unconscious. Congratulating his Shinx, Nick took out a Pokéball, which the neighbor had given him, and tossed it lightly at it.

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Even now, in the middle of his first day of Pokétrainer’s School, he remembered how nervous he was, how……excited, but……..apprehensive. Was he really ready to do this every day? Fight alongside his friend just for the sake of fighting? Then, thinking about Shinx, who had stood prouldly beside him the entire time, he remembered. He remembered that Trainers didn’t do this for the fights. Not real ones, anyway. No. Not the fight. They did it for the friendship. The happiness, the sheer joy of meeting new people, ones who cared about and loved their Pokémon just as much as he did.

That was what being a Trainer was all about.

“NICK!!!” Startled out of his daydream, he almost fell out of his chair. His teacher looked at him, amused. “Falling asleep in class, huh?” Blushing, he focused back on the teacher, who was going over the importance of using Battle Items, like X Attack and Dire Hit. He snorted. Like he was really going to spend money to buy those just to waste a valuable opportunity to hit an opponent when they least expected it. What a joke. Sighing, he looked out the window, and smiled as a group of Starly flew by. Turning back to the teacher, he sighed and laid his head on his desk. The sooner class was over, the better.

BRIIIING!! Smiling, Nick ran out to the small fenced-in area where they kept the trainers’ Pokémon. Shinx, happy to see him, sidled up and purred loudly. Once again, he caught himself thinking about Poliwag. Where was it?

FEEL FREE TO POST COMMENTS!

 

I AM BY NO MEANS A GRADER. ANYTHING I SAY IS MERELY TO AID A FELLOW WRITER BY PROVIDING MY OWN PERSONAL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS TO COMPARE AND CONTRAST TO THEIR OWN AND THOSE OF THE GRADER. ULTIMATELY IT IS A GRADERS DECISION AS TO WHETHER YOU MAKE THE CATCH OR NOT.

I enjoyed this story. It was a good start to what will most likely be a long trainer history. I liked how you started it out simple and easy to follow. Sure it wasn't the most advanced plot, but it broke the cookie cutter beginning and set up a start for many new plots to come. You had good word usage and great conventions, to the best of my knowledge I didn't see an error. A few things you could work on in the future would be the length. You did reach the target area, but just barely. A suggestion would be to add some more description of the looks of your character and where he is or what the day is like, taking seasons and climate into account. The battle scene could have had a bit to it. It was good for a starting battle, but a little more tug of war style battling with it going back and forth would be nice. If I could say to add anything else it would be a little bit of backstory, you left the space in there for it with how Shinx acted in the morning and how he refused to go into his Pokéball, but it was never put in. For example, you could add in how Shinx and Nick met or how Nick got accepted to the school. Other than that, I would say its a great start.

 

Introduction, Characters, Backstory:While the introduction of who Nick is, along with the fact that he's studying at the Pokétrainer's School, is spread through several parts of the story, it still gets the idea across. What's lacking, perhaps, is a more in-depth description of Nick and what he's like personality-wise. Character development isn't really a huge issue for a Simple-difficulty catch, though; The story is supposed to be short. Mostly, I'd just like it if you included a description of your main character, which I'll go into below.


Plot Content, Plot Flow: Not bad! On this count I agree with Neonsands; The plot wasn't the cookie-cutter 'Trainer gets starter Pokémon, goes searching for Pokémon to catch, catches one.'
Take the compliment with a grain of salt, though. The new mechanism made your plot more interesting, but it also created a problem of its own for you. Innovation is good, but... I think, perhaps, that you may have overstepped yourself here. I could see you struggling a bit with tenses and with trying to get the message across that 'this section of the story is a memory.' See the grammar comments below for concrete examples.


Grammar, Sentence Flow: The main grammatical problem you had was that you jumped around a lot tense-wise. You started out in the simple past tense ('Nick panted heavily as he ran for his life up the steps of the Pokétrainer's School.')
This was good, until you reached the 'memory section.'

That's where you did one of two things. Either:
-You started using the past perfected participle as your base tense, in which case the following would have been correct:
Earlier that morning, Nick had woken up early to get ready for his first day at the Pokétrainer's School. Eager and full of energy, Shinx had been sitting beside Nick while he was eating breakfast, but the next thing he had known, Shinx was gone!
-The other possibility is that you tried to use the past participle to communicate something that was already going on when Nick realized Shinx was gone, but in this case it's not the correct use of that tense. If this is the case, then all you needed was to use tenses as follows:
Earlier that morning, Nick woke up early to get ready for his first day at the Pokétrainer's School. Eager and full of energy, Shinx had sat beside Nick while he was eating breakfast, but the next thing he knew, Shinx was gone!
I'm pretty sure you were trying to do the latter, because the entire rest of the memory is in the simple past tense.

The next example was jarring both plot-wise and tense-wise because you suddenly jumped from the 'memory' section back to the Trainers' School with the following paragraph:

This is jarring because it's before the line of ----- that you used to separate the memory from 'current time,' as well as due to the fact that you use the present tense for the first time in the entire story, despite the fact that the events in the Trainers' School were using the simple past before. You fixed it by the next sentence, but that part was along the same lines as the other tense slip-ups I mentioned.
It's still fairly clear what you meant to say, but I find myself having to work to figure out what happens when, especially with that last bit.

Grammatical Quibbles: This is stuff that's too small to harm the story itself, I'm just putting it here as a heads-up.

I think the 'be being' was just a typo. Also, the period after 'back' needs to be before the quotation marks. You did this correctly immediately afterwards, so it may have also been a typo.

The comma is unnecessary. Also, there needs to be a paragraph break immediately after this sentence, because the subject of the paragraph (the person taking the actions) changes from the trainer to Nick.

There needs to be a new paragraph after a quotation every time the person taking the action isn't the one who said it. In this case, the teacher says, "...then there's a playground out back."
Following this, Nick does something, so there needs to be a new paragraph since the speaker (the teacher) isn't the one who acts.


Detail, Description: This was a problem, over and above the tense issues (which were just a symptom of trying a complex shift to 'memory' and back.)
The reader has no idea what Nick looks like. Sure, everyone knows what a Shinx is, but Nick remains a giant question mark in the reader's mind for the whole story. No one else is described, either, from the trainer whose Bidoof Shinx bumps into, to the teacher. The only objects that are even mentioned are things that Nick interacts directly with-- such as the chair he almost falls out of when he's woken up by the teacher's shout-- but there was no description of the classroom until then.
This is a very common mistake for any writer. What you have to keep in mind is that, although you have a picture in your head of what everything looks like, the reader doesn't have that same picture-- you have to paint it for them. If you don't, they have to use their imagination to fill in the huge blankness that is the world around your character, and every time you introduce something they didn't know about, they have to revise that picture to accommodate it.
For example, Nick 'finds the door cracked open,' but until you say, "Sighing with relief, he ran into the back yard..." we don't know that it's a back yard he's entering. Also, said yard is-- you guessed it-- not described. Again, this is a very common area that writers need to work on, so here's an example of how you could add to the following section:

I didn't change any of the actual occurrences-- Nick's actions and the Poliwag's remained completely the same, except for the Trainer running his hand through his hair (for flavor and to describe his hair.) What I added, though, was descriptions of anything and everything relevant.
Basically, this is what impacted your story's readability the most. Not a huge amount of detail/description is required for a Simple-rated catch, but this story had near to nothing.


Battle: Not bad, if a bit short. I like how you incorporated things like how Nick was worried because Shinx's Spark attack was perhaps not quite under control-- it added realism. This is about what I'd expect for a story intended to catch a Simple-rated Pokémon.


Overall: An interesting attempt at a different format-- switching to 'memory mode' partway through-- went a bit sour because you weren't always sure whether to speak in the past, present, or 'even more distant past.' Despite this, your introduction of your characters is fine, and it's possible to understand what the plot is. The battle partway through the story, as I said, is what I'd expect. However...
What damaged your story the most is the complete lack of descriptions. I want to know what Nick looks like, what his classroom looks like, what his house and back yard look like... Try to work in as much detail as you can, even if you end up at the other extreme (which is known as 'purple prose,' where every noun has an attached adjective.)

EDIT: After your edit of the story, there is a LOT more detail, and each location is described well. There's no shame in making a mistake unless you then refuse to correct it-- you've shown me that you're perfectly capable of painting a vibrant and descriptive picture of your character's surroundings, so there's no shame in forgetting. Catching results updated:
Result:
Poliwag: Not Caught CAUGHT.
Congratulations! ^_^

 

Thanks for your honest opinion, I need to get some more experience under my belt.

 

Grade result updated. Enjoy making friends with your new Poliwag! ^_^