Positively Poliwag!

It had been only a week since Derian had found Heron, and the little Growlithe was quickly growing attached to him. His master had discarded him, but Derian was lucky enough to stumble upon the puppy wandering in a forest outside of Goldenrod. Derian did not know this, but Heron had come from a family of respected Growlithe, which had for years guarded a rich family as loved and cherished companions. Unfortunately, his mother had one too many offspring, and Heron was not needed. He was released into the wild.
The little dog was scared and lost, and quickly took to Derian. He had had no Pokémon of his own before now, and gladly took the puppy into his team. Now that he had his own Pokémon, Derian decided to leave Goldenrod for good and head out own his own adventure. As I mentioned, it had been a week thus far. Encounters had been scarce, though he was able to faint a top-tier Ratata, and narrowly avoided a rampant Stantler.

Derian was a young trainer, but more so then his age was his lack of experience. He had no captured Pokémon, and had yet to participate in a formal Pokémon battle. His parents were moderately wealthy land owners from Rustboro, an industial city in the Hoenn region. Growing up he hadn't been exposed to Pokémon a whole lot directly, but he immersed himself in TV shows and movies and to a lesser extent books. It was from this that he acquired his second-hand knowledge of Pokémon despite his family always moving him from one place to the other. They had in fact relocated houses nine times in his short sixteen years of existence, ranging from Rustboro to Lavaridge, to even regions of Sinnoh. Their more recent business had them living in Johto, more specifically Goldenrod. He looked young for his age, and this was largely attributed to his lack of exposure to the world. He wore simple yet expensive clothes. His parents insisted he dress in quality, so even though he chose simply jeans and t-shirts, they made sure they were still top of the line designer clothes.
When he decided to head out from home, he had no trouble obtaining the supplies he needed. His belt was well-stocked with Pokéballs, and his backpack stuffed with Pokéfood and other travel supplies. He had blond hair of medium length, which was significantly more unkempt then his mother would have liked. Beyond that he looked pretty average, and seeing him wouldn't suggest his rich background. He carried a very humble demeanor, but his lack of exposure to life rendered him more timid then he let on.

Heading towards Ecruteak, he stumbled upon a very fierce looking tree in his path, blocking the way through. Because of this, he attempted to take a detour. He walked for over an hour around the mass of trees in his path, before stumbling upon a pond. He dare not wade through it, Growlithe would not respond well to the water! But there seemed to be no way around it either. About to give up hope, he spotted a lone Poliwag swimming about in the water.

"Heron, what do you think?"

The Growlithe yapped as if to say "Let me at it!" and it was clear what would happen next.

"Heron, hit it with a Crunch!"

Heron leaped at the Poliwag, leaning into the water and sinking its sharp teeth into it and pulling it out of the water, tossing it onto the bank. The Poliwag retaliated almost instantly, letting loose a wave of bubbles at the poor little fire dog. The situation looked dire! The poor Growlithe was greatly weakened by this attack.

"This isn't good, hit it again!" Derian shouted, and almost as soon as Growlithe had a chance to attack, threw a Pokéball at the weakened Poliwag.

....
....
....
Ding!

"We did it, Heron!" Derian shouted in joy.

The little puppy barked in happiness, before falling over out of exhaustion.

"Poor little guy, I'm sorry..."

Derian tended to his friend, and headed back to Goldenrod to heal his two Pokémon. Now that they were healed, he decided to try going to Ecruteak again. He'd heard of legends of two great towers, that once contained legendary Pokémon of immense power. This interested him greatly, and he wanted to see first-hand. Although one of the towers had since burned down, the second sounded interesting nonetheless. Traveling through the forest for hours, he once again came across the unusual tree. This time however, there was someone else there as well.

A young trainer, who looked as though he could be no older then 10, was there. He was of average height for his age, with short black hair. He wore an unusual headband, and had a backpack. He also had a number of Pokéballs strung to his belt.

"I can't seem to get it to move..." the young boy said.

"Move? What do you mean?" The boy sighed and kicked it in a frustrated manner.

"According to this woman I spoke to at Goldenrod, it's a Pokémon. But I can't get it to wake up!"

Derian looked puzzled

"What sort of Pokémon is that?"

"As far as I know a rock type.. Sudo something..."

Derian looked thoughtful, and then took his new Pokéball off his belt and threw it to the ground. Poliwag emerged!

"Poliwag, use Hydro Pump!"

An immense jet of water, dwarfing the little tadpole Pokémon, erupted from its mouth dousing the tree Pokémon. It appeared to wake up from this, letting out a roar! It looked down at the little Poliwag, and proceeded to head off into the forest, leaving a clear way through.

"Thanks so much!" The young boy said, before heading off through the now-clear path.

"It was lucky we found that Poliwag, huh Heron?" Growlithe barked affectionately.

"We need a name for you..."

It always bugged Derian how frequently he would hear of Pidgey named Pidge, or Ratata named Ratty, and he always told himself that if he ever had Pokémon he would give them better and more dignified names. So, he stood around for a while trying to come up with one. Heron began to nap, and it was even starting to get late.

"I know.. Torrent!" Poliwag looked down disapprovingly, and it was clear it didn't like this name.

"Dang, and that's the best I could come up with! Hmm..."

He pondered on it for a brief while longer, before finally coming up with something else.

"Froggy!" Poliwag looked genuinely upset about this, but even an angry Poliwag was an adorable sight.

"Relax, I'm only kidding.. your name will be Fuchsia!" Fuchsia hopped up in happiness, and it was clear that it liked this name.

Being that the path was clear, he too could now head towards Ecruteak. It was times like this that made him wish he had picked up a bike in Goldenrod while he had the chance!
Anyway, he could probably still make it to Ecruteak before nightfall.


------


He did in fact, and decided to spend the night at the Pokécenter. The following morning, he decided to go exploring the town. It was a moderately sized town, with a Pokécenter and Mart as usual, and a number of houses. It had a Gym as well! He made a point to come back here at some point to challenge whoever might be inside. One thing caught his eye in particular though, which was the dance theater. He’d never heard of such a place, and it was intriguing. He just had to check it out!
Upon entering, it was very clearly what you would expect. It was a large theater room, with a stage and a number of chairs for people to watch the dancers. Surprisingly, there was no entry fee. It appeared this place was almost more of a practice hall then for performances.

“Hey, you!”

He heard a voice immediately ahead to his right as he entered.

“You have Pokémon, kid?”

There was an older man sitting at a chair, and he was looking at Derian expectantly.

“I er… yes I do!” Derian exclaimed.

“Wonderful! About time, 'bout the only folks that come in here are here for the dancing. But you’ve got Pokémon!”

“Er right..”

The man had peculiar clothes, almost as though they came from a different era, and it seemed likely that he hadn’t bothered to purchase new clothes in at least twenty years.

“Listen up, kid. The dancers here are Pokémon trainers too! Good ones! And I’ve been waiting for someone to come in here and show them a thing or two. People come in and try, but no one can beat them all!”

He sighed.

“I’ve even tried a number of times myself. But anyway! If you can beat them, I’ll give you this here shiny HM!”

The old man brandished a cd case, with the letters ‘SURF’ written on it by what appeared to be a black sharpie.

“How ‘bout it?”

Derian pondered this for a moment. “A-alright.. I’ll do it.”

The old man looked delighted “Then go! Go talk to them!”

Timidly, Derian approached the stage. One of the dancers walked over to him, dressed in traditional kimono clothing.

“Why hello there! Do you need something?”

Derian nodded “Yeah, I’ve come to challenge you all to a Pokémon battle.”

She smiled “Oh well how about that! Alright, I accept!”

She revealed a Pokéball concealed in her garb, and threw it to the ground. A Flareon emerged from the ball. Derian was nervous, he was not expecting such a rare Pokémon!

“Well then, I choose… Fuchsia!” He sent out his Poliwag.

“Aww, it’s so cute!” The kimono girl exclaimed. “But this is serious, Flareon use Flamethrower!”

“Fuchsia, hit it with a Hydro Pump!”

The little tadpole wasn’t tough, but it was fast. Flareon was pummeled by the Hydro Pump, and it collapsed to the ground, seemingly unconscious.

“Wow, the little guy has fight!”

“Great job, Fuchsia!”

The girl looked disappointed, but at the same time impressed.

“Well then… I guess you beat me!” She walked off, but was replaced by another girl in similar clothing.

“My turn! Go Jolteon!”

This wasn’t good. Derian knew that electric was good against water.

“Fuchsia, use Mud Shot! Quick!”

Unfortunately, the Jolteon was too fast. Poliwag was hit with a bolt of lightning, and it collapsed to the ground.

“No…. Fuchsia… “ Derian returned Poliwag to his Pokéball, and sent out Growlithe.

“Heron, avenge Fuchsia! Hit it with a Flare Blitz!” But unfortunately, the Jolteon was still too fast. Heron was hit head on by a second bolt of lightning, and knocked unconscious as well.

“Oh well, nice try kid.” The kimono girl recalled Jolteon and resumed her dancing. It was clear he would need to train more before he would be able to defeat them all.

With his new Poliwag in tow though, he knew he must train his two friends and acquire more so he could be the strongest he could be! He didn't know at this point what his goal would be; be it tackling the gyms and taking on the elite four, or competing in contests and getting national renown, or just plain training them. Regardless, he now felt he had a purpose.

 

Sorry, but this story is too short for a Poliwag. Please refer to this thread for a general list of how long your story needs to be for each Pokemon.

In this instance, a Poliwag is a Simple rank Pokemon, so your story should be somewhere around 5,000 to 10,000 characters in length. But right now, your story is only about 2,000.

You might also find some helpful information in the How to Write Stories thread.

 

Oh, whoops. Can I edit this one and add more to it, or do I have to make a new thread? Or do I have to start from scratch with a new story?

 

You can edit this story to add more to it and then post a reply here to let us know you edited it.

 

It's been extended and is complete!

 

I'd be happy to grade this. You'll see it soon.

 

This took me awhile. I apologize.

Introduction: While this introduction certainly fulfilled the task of “introducing,” it could have been done with a method that is more suited to the story. There is certainly nothing wrong with a full-blown history of a trainer’s interactions with his or her Pokémon. However, I would argue that in a situation such as this, where you’re writing a relatively short story that doesn’t particularly dwell on the trainer’s relationships with others, the space this story took up with the whole “Derian’s history with Growlithe and Poliwag” thing would have been better assumed by character development that lends to the story’s point.

As this is a basic “adventure” plot, something that moves the focus from “relationships on the adventure” to “the adventure itself” would be more useful. Anything from a brief anecdote on why he wants to be a trainer to how long he’d been running about (in specific narrative and explorative terms) would’ve probably been more beneficial.

Plot: Eh. There wasn’t much of one. Derian captures Pokémon, Derian uses them to battle. Ta-da. Not much of anything really happened. While this is certainly a step up from the typical “trainer steps on Pokémon while walking through tall grass in the local woods” plot, it’s still not what I would consider up-to-par for a Simple Mon story. Even with the relatively small amount of space available, an all-around more remarkable idea could have been dealt with. You certainly gave a little spice to the idea that you worked with (in the form of conversations and other characters), but it wasn’t eye-catching to the point that it made me forget that the plot was relatively simple.

As a writer, you can have a… lot of goals when it comes to plots. The first and foremost thing you want to do, though, is write a progression of events so riveting that the reader is swept away. It could be so funny, or so explosion-filled, or so tragic that the reader can’t help but completely forget that the plot isn’t necessarily all that original in and of itself. If you have a strong set of ideas (characters, images, events, emotions) behind your writing, you can do anything with any plot.

At this point in your writing experience, I wouldn’t try to go for an inherently unremarkable plot concept. If you wanna write a simple plot where someone just catches Pokémon and battles with ‘em, you have to give it a firm foundation in all other aspects of writing. Most of the time, this is only something that can be pulled off by incredibly experienced writers.

So all that said, try to make it bigger. Give it a conflict beyond simple Pokémon battling—give your character a problem, or give your character’s Pokémon a problem. What sort of problem depends entirely on what sort of story you want to tell. Comedy? A ridiculous problem—maybe his mother commanded him not to return home without a rubber chicken, so he’s journeying all across the region in search of one; the battles just happen along the way. Hurt’n’Comfort? He’s been left shattered by the death of his previous Pokémon, and Heron is just the first step to recovery. Tragedy? A friend on the journey dies in an unfortunate battling accident. Romance? Derian meets a gurl. Adventure? Work up a hokey motive for him to be beating people up—competition with Anything can happen, but in most mediums of writing something needs to happen.

Point being, everything’s up to you. Do what you want, but keep in mind that the more thought put into something, the more nuances and intricacies contained within a plot, the more impressive, and the more artful, the writing itself will be.

Grammar: You were surprisingly clean in this area, for a first story. Some writers don’t achieve grammar at this level until they’ve been URPGing for awhile; it’s nice to see someone who has a head start. That said, you do have quite a few weaknesses in your grammar—and they’re pretty darn distracting issues. The paragraphing will be your main concern, but you should probably affiliate yourself with more comma rules. I gave you the outlines to fix that up.

Most of your glaring issues came in the form of paragraphing. A new paragraph should occur when…

• A new person begins to speak
• A new action is made
• A new subject is described (in the narration)
• The speaker’s dialogue has moved on to a new subject

Forgive the wall of text quote, but this is vaguely what that second to last “paragraph” should have looked like. (You should note that my paragraph breaks are not actually the only possible arrangements; many alternate “subject/action/dialogue topic change” places could be argued. Beyond the basic rules of “NEW STUFF, NEW PARAGRAPH,” paragraphing is ultimately up to the author’s discretion.)

It’s → it is
Its → possessive form of its

Multiple Growlithe → Growlithe (not Growlithes)

You had repeated issues with both of these, so watch that.

Here lies another set of your repeated comma errors.

Note that there is now a comma after “awww.” Anything like this phrase, which interjects the flow of a complete clause (a sentence such as “It’s so cute,” which can stand on its own as a complete sentence without addition), needs to be offset by commas. If Derian is talking to the Growlithe, he needs to say, “Hey there, Growlithe, how are you doing?” or “Growlithe, please use Flamethrower,” or “Use Flamethrower, Growlithe!” These last three are direct addresses, which you wrote correctly most of the time—so I assume you know the rules. Remember that these abide by the same rules as phrases such as “hum,” “aww,” “ack,” et cetera.

Additionally in this phrase, you messed up the dialogue tags a bit. Remember that if you’re modifying dialogue with a tag, you shouldn’t capitalize any non-proper nouns after the dialogue.

“Don’t eat me!” the fish cried.
“Don’t eat me…” the fish cried.
“Don’t eat me,” the fish cried.
“Why would you eat me?” the fish cried.

Et cetera.

One more note… When there are words such as if, wish, and though (any words that indicate possibility) in a phrase like “if I were” or “I wish he were,” make sure that you do in fact use the plural form of whatever be verb you employ. (i.e., when describing the old man’s clothes, you say “as though he was.” This should be “as though he were.”)

Detail: Your narrative style didn’t lend itself very well to strong imagery. This wouldn’t be a problem if it had been a deliberate stylistic nuance, as specific imagery would have been compensated for in other forms of detail (thought processes, impacts, overall impressions as opposed to direct “pictures”). As-is, you need to pack on a lot more… information in general. Yeah, we know a bit of what’s happening with Derian—but we can’t see it. As a writer, you want to show details and images in a way that moves the reader to imagine them. You have a thorough basis for what images to include; your methods for including them, however, lacked strength.

Ignoring the redundancy (“almost as though he was from twenty years ago, and it seemed likely that he hadn’t bothered to purchase new clothes in twenty years”), you actually give me a really cool concept here. It’s this creepy old guy lounging outside, wearing slightly ridiculous clothing. At the same time, you give me no idea of what “peculiar clothes” entail. Peculiar is a very good, well-used descriptive verb—but without some concrete “demonstration details” to back it up, I don’t know what it means. Are they neon, covered in flashing lights? Do they have shoulder pads on the stomach, or laces ribbing from left shoulder to right hip across the front? Are they just plain old and shabby?

Information like this is necessary to create a truly powerful picture of anything. Not only does the old man need this level of detailing—the Pokémon, the battle moves, the main character, the scenery… they should all get some degree of mention in terms of “what does it look like?” Look at color, shape, size, age, intriguing features, then pick which aspects of this portray the idea you want to get across. I can see that this is exactly what you did with the old man—you wanted him to seem odd, so you honed in on his clothing and gave it an air of singularity. At the same time, though, that “air” should be honed in on—frozen down, as it were, from gas form to ice form (TO USE A BAD METAPHOR) so that it is more easily apprehended by the reader.

All that said, you obviously don’t describe everything. Pick the important things that tell the story you want to tell. Just make sure you follow through all the way.

Battle: Decently proportioned, for a story this size. You actually might have done better to have less battling and more reason for the battling. The main thing you want to be concerned with is the detail, in this situation. Take a situation where Flareon uses a Flamethrower. What body motions does Flareon make? (Mouth open, ears back, feet parted…? Does her tail lash? Does she rear up on her hind paws?) What does the flame look like? (Is it thin as a barbed wire? Thicker than a beech tree? The length of a flag pole? Is it orange flame, red flame, yellow flame—is it all three, flickering in and out, biting at the air? Give me something to see.)

Length: Good to go.

Outcome: Poliwag not captured. This was a hard choice, primarily because it was a first story. The detail was decent at a rudimentary level (when you included it), and the plot is usually ignored for the purposes of a first attempt Simple Mon. In situations where the grader can’t make a firm decision based on straight up quality, we default to the secondary aspects—mainly, grammar and length. While your length was good, there were a lot of easily-fixed floopsies in the grammar (namely, paragraphing, but also minor simple errors.) You’ll pass this easily if you a) fix the paragraphing, b) alter some of your basic errors that I mentioned, and c) FLESH OUT YOUR DETAILS. As indicated by the caps, the last is the most important aspect here. The plot can stay as-is (although feel free to tinker a bit), but I would warn you to try new, more complicated plot ideas—especially for higher level captures, but even, really, for lower levels.

PM, IM, or VM me for a regrade.

 

Alright. Well. You fixed most of the grammar. Paragraphing was nicely rectified, and you got most of the dialogue tags. There were still a few instances where you capitalized dialogue tags that shouldn't have been capitalized--so keep in mind the grade section on 'em. You certainly added more details, too. Remember that "more details" does not necessarily mean "every detail"--a large part of refining your writing in the future will be picking and choosing the best details. As-is, though, nice job with the improvements.

Poliwag captured. Have fun.

 

Yayyy! Thank you