Run of the Mill (Claimed By Elrond 2.0) (Simple)

(Alright, my first attempt at a story! )

Spoiler

Pokemon Caught: Pineco
Pokemon Rank: Simple
Catcher: Spencer Twis
Characters Counted: 9328
Description: Tried to think of something that wasn't "run of the mill", and a came up with an actual run of the mill. Gobble down this fried Crawdaunt claw, I mean great story!

Spencer Twis was moving down the stone pathway. He was overcome with joy, as now he was an official Pokemon Trainer. Attached to his belt now was a small Pokeball that contained his starter Pokemon. He had a small swagger to his step, which went unnoticed by most people. Spencer inhaled a fresh breath of the dawn air. It smelled like Caterpie, a very common Pokemon in his previous town. But this time, the smell was stronger. In a way, it was a little worse. But most of these things went unnoticed to Spencer. All Spencer was thinking about right now was where he was going.

Suddenly, over the horizon, Spencer saw a roof. Then he saw more roofs, until he saw a whole town. Shadowed figures were moving about on the roads, moving along with their daily businesses. Spencer saw Pokemon among these figures, helping them with their businesses. In the background, Spencer saw Mt. Moon. The sunrise cast a shadow from behind Mt. Moon over the town, installing a feeling a calm into the town, and Spencer.

As Spencer walked into town, he noticed it was larger than he originally thought. He could see shops, apartments, a Pokemon Center, and several houses. The houses were remarkable in a way that it caused Spencer to experience a "rustic" feel. Spencer looked around and found a restaurant. A large pole hosted a neon sign that flashed "The Fried Crawdaunt". Almost immediatley after seeing the sign, Spencer could taste the cripsy fried Crawdaunt. "Mmm, just what I need..." Spencer muttered, before walking inside.

"I want a small fried Corphish claw, some fries and a small milk!" Spencer said to the person at the counter. He nodded, and went into the kitchen. Spencer sat himself down at a table. The tables were made entirely out of wood, as were the chairs. In fact, the entire restaurant was made mostly with wood. It contributed to the "rustic" feel that Spencer was experiencing. In fact, Spencer could smell the freshly cut pine that the room smelled of. A speaker that Spencer could not see was playing music that was popular during Spencer's early childhood. Spencer recieved a breif feeling of nostalgia, but it faded away quickly when the speakers started playing Anaconda by Nicki Minaj.

Spencer looked around the restaurant. It was small, with only about ten tables. Four of the ten tables were occupied. Two of the tables were occupied by two couples on a double date. Spencer hastily looked away when one of the couples started making out. He was never really fond of relationships, and he believed in cooties. The only other occupied table was an old man picking at a large Crawdaunt claw. It was recently served, as it was still steaming. Spencer looked at his own table. It was still stained with the food from the previous person who ate here. After getting bored, Spencer began to wait.

The time Spencer was waiting grew and grew. The two couples left the restaurant, and a family consisting of two parents and two kids walked in, most likely for a late brunch. The old man eventually left with his claw left half-eaten. Spencer looked at the clock. It had been 42 minutes since he sat down.

Now, before we continue, we must note something that is essential to this story. Spencer is not intelligent, and I say that because "dumb" is too strong of a word. He does a lot of things without thinking, and most of those things end up causing a little trouble. Humorous trouble, I find most of the time. One of those "incidents" is about to happen.

Spencer was usually patient, but this time his patience was stretched far too long. He got up and stormed into the kitchen. He was met without protest, because the man at the counter was inside the kitchen due to the order of a pregnant woman. Spencer yelled "Hey, I've waited 42 minutes for my lobster claw! That sign outside said that you can do it in 30 minutes or less!" A chef who accidentally lit his Corphish claw on fire was startled by this and threw his claw up into the air. It hit the ceiling, and made a loud "TWACK" sound. Soon, the ceiling caught on fire, and it spread fast.

The man from the counter ran over to Spencer. "Dude, what is wrong with you!" Spencer immediately ran out of the restaurant from freight. He could see that the kitchen caught on fire, and the fire was spreading all over the telephone wires.

One of the chefs looked at Spencer. "Do you know what you've done?" He asked.

"Well, that sign said that it would be ready in 30 minutes or less!" Spencer replied while pointing at a sign.

The chef looked at that sign. "Danny, that son of a gun..." the chef said "Thinks he's so great, and expects us to live up to his 'standards'".

By this time, due to the spreading of the fire on the telephone poles had spread to the local salt mill. It was a large building with a silo next to it. It had already got half of itself caught on fire.

"No!" one of the chefs said. "All of our salt comes from there! It's too big to put out all of the fire!"

Spencer felt hopelessness for the salt mill, but then he felt the weight of his new Pokeball. "Don't worry, I can grab as many salt bags as I can!" he ran towards the salt mill, ignoring everyone's protests. By the time he got there, he realized it was much bigger than he imagined. The fire also covered about three-fourths of the mill.

Spencer found an entrance, which several workers and Pokemon were running out of. Spencer decided to send out his new Pokemon. Spencer plucked the Pokeball off of his belt. He pressed the button on it, turning it to full size. Spencer threw the Pokeball while saying "Go, Buizel!" The Pokeball hit the ground and projected a red light. The light took the shape of a Buizel, until it became a Buizel. "Buizel, Bui!" the Buizel said.

"Alright Buizel," Spencer said "I need you to put out these fires while I go in and save these bags of salt!" Buizel nodded, and they ran into the salt mill.

The heat was immenent when Spencer walked in, but when Buizel put out the fires, the heat went down. Buizel stepped in front of Spencer and put out more fires. Spencer saw three bags of salt. He picked them up and brought them outside. He continued going into the salt mill with Buizel and taking out bags of salt. By the time the Wartortle team was finished putting out the fire at the Fried Crawdaunt and moved on to the salt mill. By the time the Wartortle Team finished up, only the silo was on fire.

"Why can't you put out the fire at the silo?" Spencer asked the man who was commanding the Wartortle team.

"We're not licensed enough to do it." The man said "We're waiting on the pros, but it's a long way from here to Indigo League. They're not gonna be here in time."

Spencer ran into the silo, yelling "Come on, Buizel!" Buizel hesitated at first, but then ran in and started putting out fires. Spencer found it odd, as there were no bags of salt, just old equipment. Spencer continued to climb the stairs to the top.

At the top, he was surprised; he saw a Pineco trapped behind a wall of firey debris. He was told by the mill workers that they had evacuated all of the workers and Pokemon. He pondered what it would be like to be the mill worker who did a check on his or her Pokemon and noticed one was missing. Spencer would not like to be that person. "Buizel, use Hydro Pump on that debris!" Spence ordered Buizel. Buizel obliged, and blasted the wall with a powerful blast of water. Some of the debris fell away to make a hole for Pineco to escape. Spencer picked up the Pineco and began to run down the stairs of the silo.

The silo was now very unstable from fire damage. Most of the steps fell down as Spencer stepped on them. Once, while Spencer was on a platform where a few old conveyor belts were kept, a pile of debris fell in front of Spencer. Spencer screamed and scooted back. Buizel used Hydro Pump to push the debris off, before Spencer hurried down again.

At last, Spencer emerged from the silo. The Wartortle Team commander ran over to Spencer. "You could've gotten yourself killed!" He exclaimed

"Well, I didn't!" Spencer proudly exclaimed "And I found one of the worker's Pineco!"

"Umm," one of the workers said "We just did role, and we all have all of our Pokemon"

"So, who's Pineco is this?" Spencer asked

"Well, nobody's!" the Wartortle Team commander replied "Feel free to catch it, it's taken a shining to you!"

The Pineco was nuzzling up against Spencer's torso. Spencer said "Awww..." before he took an empty Pokeball out of his backpack and tapped Pineco with it. The Pokeball opened up, revealing the system of mirrors and microchips that kept Pokemon inside and well. The Pokeball emitted a red beam from its epicenter that surrounded Pineco, before shrinking it to nothing and withdrawing into the Pokeball. The Pokeball closed with very little sound and started shaking. Spencer counted one shake. Then a second shake. Then a third shake. Finally, the Pokeball emitted the beeping noise that signified a captured Pokemon.

After Pineco was caught, the silo behind Spencer gave in to fire damage and collapsed into a pile of blazing wood and scorched machinery.

"By the way," the Wartortle Team commander said "The manager at the Fried Crawdaunt gave us the whole story. We're forcing you out of town."

"Eh," Spencer replied "I hear Viridian City has better fried Corphish claw."

(I hope you liked it!)

 

Re: Run of the Mill (Ready for Grading) (A Spencer Twis story by JaydomStudios)(Simpl

@JaydomStudios: I'm claiming this story. I'm assuming the Pokémon you're going after is Pineco, not Roggenrola, right? XD

 

Re: Run of the Mill (Ready for Grading) (A Spencer Twis story by JaydomStudios)(Simpl

Sorry about this! I will change it!

Anyways, I am not familiar with this forum. Does "claim" mean that it's approved?

 

Re: Run of the Mill (Ready for Grading) (A Spencer Twis story by JaydomStudios)(Simpl

Claim means I'm going to grade it. I'll have the grade up within a day or two. In the grade, I'll let you know whether you've caught the Pokémon or not!

 

Re: Run of the Mill (Ready for Grading) (A Spencer Twis story by JaydomStudios)(Simpl

OK Thanks!

 

@JaydomStudios: Run of the Mill grade finished!

First of all, welcome to URPG! I’m glad to see you’re jumping right into the Stories section, so here is some feedback that will help you out as you move up in the ranks to harder Pokémon. I’d like to talk about a few aspects of your writing style. I’m going to focus on your narrative voice and the way you use point-of-view because they have big influences on your characterization and description in the story. I’m also going to try and talk separately about the first and second halves of your story because there are some differences in your writing style between the two.

For the first part of my grade, I’m going to focus on the parts of the story that occur before Spencer runs into the salt mill. Your narrator reminded me a little bit of the narrator on Arrested Development. If you haven’t seen that show, my two-cent summary is that the audience is supposed to experience the story the way that a character named Michael experiences it—we as the audience are supposed to feel what he feels and think what he thinks. At various times throughout an episode, however, there’s a snarky narrator who chimes in to fill in details that wouldn’t come from Michael’s head. I found your narrator similar to the Arrested Development narrator primarily because of this passage:

While most of your story is told from Spencer’s point of view (insofar as we’re intended to experience the events of the story as he does), this passage makes it clear that your narrator is a separate entity from Spencer, someone who has a different perspective on the events even though they are not physically part of the action. This is a cool narrative device, but it does have some limitations and things you need to watch out for. The problem is, when your narrator tells the story from a different perspective than the main character’s, you may find yourself “telling” us how Spencer’s feeling rather than “showing” us how he feels based on his actions and reactions. Let me give an example:

You tell us twice in the story that Spencer is experiencing a “rustic” feel. That’s sort of an odd way to construct that type of description. A person can feel mad, or sad, or happy, but they can’t feel “rustic” because that’s not an emotion. I do know what you mean, however. In this situation, you’ll find that it’s easier to create powerful description by simply describing the objects around your main character. You could have used this paragraph to describe the entirety of the restaurant’s interior: things like the wooden chairs and tables, maybe the things hanging on the walls, the look of the menu, the way the doors are painted, etc., etc. The word “rustic” fits best as an adjective for one of these objects. That way, instead of your narrator having to tell the audience that Spencer is experiencing a rustic feel, your audience will experience it along with him.

Now let’s talk about the second half of your story. There’s a lot more action in this part of the story, since Spencer’s impulsive nature has taken over and we’re focusing more on what he’s doing rather than what he’s thinking. This is a pretty big change in style because we’re now seeing things more through his eyes. It feels like, as a reader, I’m being shown what’s happening through his eyes rather than being told by a separate narrator. Again, I don’t mean to suggest that things have to be done this way. Either style has its own advantages and limitations. One advantage of the more action-oriented style of the second half is that it’s often more exciting for your audience. It’s easier to get “lost in the moment.” On the other hand, you still have to be careful with your writing since you as the writer can get lost in the moment too, and neglect to make sure everything sounds right.

One thing I noticed particularly in the second half of the story is your tendency to use many sentences in a row that start the same way. Here is an example:

In this passage, you have five sentences, and four of them start with the word “Spencer.” This is a good place to consider using pronouns (like “he” in the fourth sentence) or, even better, reordering or using transition words to vary things up a little. This passage describes a series of events; Spencer does one thing, then he does another, then another, etc. Chronological words like first, then, and finally would work really well here and break up the redundancy.

I don’t want to be too nitpicky, since this is your first URPG story, so I’m only going to talk about one more aspect of your writing in this grade. You have a tendency to use tense in sort of an odd way. It’s hard to explain without an example, so here’s one:

Your story is written in the past tense, meaning everything in the story happened in the past. Using terms like “right now” breaks that past tense. In this case, you could just take those words out, turning the sentence into “All Spencer was thinking about was where he was going.”

This brings up another thing—you’ve got “was” three times, really close together in that sentence. Again, you don’t wanna repeat yourself too often, because it can become kind of a mouthful for your reader. When you find yourself tempted to do that, take some time to think about ways you can re-word sentences to give the same meaning, but without sounding crunchy. In this case, you could replace “where he was going” with “his destination.” Then, you’d have a sentence that sounds like “All Spencer was thinking about was his destination.” You could even get clever and move things around to get rid of that second “was.” But one step at a time!

Grade

I’m gonna pass this, which means Pineco is captured. To summarize, I’d like to see you bring together the best of both the writing styles you used in your story. In the first half, you used a cheeky narrator—you can really bring this guy to the forefront and add a lot of humor to your story. In the second half, you made use of “showing” description because the action of the story forced you to tell it more from Spencer’s point of view. You can use the descriptive techniques from this part of the story to enhance the action in later stories and make it more exciting for your audience. Then, make sure you read your story to yourself once it’s done. I recommend reading it out loud! That will help you find places that sound weird better than just scanning it with your eyes. Otherwise, this was a good story and I can’t wait to see more!

 

Thank you! I will make sure to integrate your tips into my next story!