The Nova Region

It was three days before William was allowed to start his Pokemon adventure, so he decided to go fishing in his small town's quaint pond one last time before leaving.

Will had been born and raised in the Nova region. In Nova, a child didn't get there first Pokemon until they were 17 years old. The reasoning behind this is that children just aren't responsible. In regions like Kanto and Johto Team Rocket runs a muck trying to recruit the young children to join there gang. Other regions have groups like this too, but Nova didn't. Many think the reason for this is that children are easily swayed and the older someone starts his journey, the less likely they are to be swept up in trouble.

After only eight minutes of walking Will arrived at the pond. He could see Poliwags and Goldeens, though they were too powerful for him to even think about taking on. He kept walking to the smallest part of the pond. It was only twelve feet deep, but it was home to many Magikarp. You wouldn't be able to see the bottom of the pond, but the water was just clear enough to see the red blurs swimming by.

Will sat down and started to bait his hook, but then he heard a noise.

"Poochyena!" exclaimed Will's own Poochyena, which he had named Wolfie. Will had been given this Pokemon to him by his father when he was just three years old, thus explaining the nickname. "Yena!" it cried again.

Will turned to look at the subject of all the commotion, and jumped back in surprise. There was a horde of Seviper! The Seviper was obviously looking for trouble, as it was advancing towards Will, with its Scary Face.

"Umm.. Wolfie... can you uh... use 'Growl'?" Will was almost in tears. He had never encountered any hostile Pokemon before, and he didn't want to lose Wolfie to the wild Seviper's poison.

Wolfie obeyed his trainer's command and a low rumble came from the back of its throat. The wild Seviper was a little taken aback from the growl. It was now advancing more cautiously. When it saw that the other Pokemon wasn't going to do anything, it became even more confident than it had been.

The Seviper reared its head back and bared its fangs. It was about to attack Wolfie when, all of the sudden, there was a loud noise to the immediate right of Will.

"Karp, Karp" was all that was heard, and then a large splash. The Seviper turned and slithered away as fast as it could. It was obviously as startled as Will and Wolfie were. As soon as the threat of danger was gone, Will withdrew his Pokemon and started laughing.

"We were just saved by a Magikarp" he thought out loud. "Of all Pokemon in the world, a Magikarp saved us."

As he was laughing he heard the sound again.

"Karp, Karp. Magikarp."

Will looked at the fish Pokemon on the edge of the pond. Some of its scales were missing.

"It must have hurt them when it jumped out the the water" Will concluded. "And now it can't jump back in."

Will knew this Pokemon was in a lot of pain, and he didn't want to just throw it back in the water. He thought a little more.

"I have a potion at home. That would fix it right up." He looked at the Magikarp again, and then down into his bag. He took out a PokeBall and hit the button in the middle of the metal device. The PokeBall grew to about four times its size. Will tapped the PokeBall to the Magikarp and it started shaking.

Once...

Twice...

Three times...

"I wonder if I caught it" Will thought.

And a fourth shake...



Pokemon Being Captured: Magikarp (Easiest)
Characters Needed: 3k-5k
Characters Used: 3439 characters


Thanks in advance for the grade/feedback!

 

Wow, only two posts and already a URPG story! You certainly did your research though. Thank you for including the character count and everything, I love people who do that <3. Also, don't forget to make a trainer stats page for URPG!

Intro/Plot:

We are introduced to William, a trainer raised in a region called Nova, that is going fishing one last time in his hometown. This is the typical plot used for Magikarp stories, but since it is your first URPG story, that's absolutely fine. You touched on everything the reader needed to know - who the main character is, the setting, and character's goals. You even managed to insert a little world-building in there. Overall, it was fine for this story and level, but as I'm sure you already know, it isn't complicated enough to earn you a capture for Pokemon of higher ranks (though you can get away with this type of story for simple-ranked Pokemon as well).

Description:

You did pretty well with this! I really liked this particular detail:

For this level, you definitely did enough.

Even though it might be a bit beyond your capabilities right now, (and it isn't really necessary to have this mastered until you go for medium-ranked Pokemon and above) I think your writing is being slightly hindered by telling details rather than showing them. What this means is that rather than giving a description outright (ex: Jimmy had blond hair and blue eyes), you should describe things using actions (Jimmy tucked a strand of blond hair behind his ear, and rolled his blue eyes in disgust). Obviously that isn't the best example, but in general if you have to break up the flow of the story to describe something, you should either save that detail for later or tell it while continuing the action of the story. You did this when you described the Magikarp in the pond. Instead of simply stating that there were red fish in the pond, you described them as 'red blurs swimming by', a much more poetic way of saying the same thing.

Hopefully that makes sense. ;; It's definitely not something that will come to you right away, but it's a goal to work towards. Eventually it will be like second nature to describe things using that method, I promise!

As for more generic advice that I like to dish out to everyone at all timesl, try your best to describe the setting around the characters, as well as the characters themselves. This includes Pokemon, as even though people on Pokemon forums generally know what Pokemon look like, there are over 700 of them now, so it's nice to have a little refresher.

Grammar:

There were some errors I noticed, but nothing that can't be easily fixed. Most of your grammar and spelling was really good, so pat yourself on the back.

At the beginning of the story, you misused your "theres". There are three types of "there": "their", "they're", and "there". Wow that sentence is awful to read through. Anyway, "there" is generally reserved for describing places. "Their" is used as a possessive, meaning that when you are describing something that a person owns, such as "their tablecloth", you would use this version of the 3 theres. "They're" is a contracted form of "they are", meaning that you only use this version when you are saying things like "They are (They're) a bunch of fools". I know this seems confusing, but after a bit of practice you'll remember it, I swear. ;; My explanation probably isn't helping with the confusion level though.

Another mistake you made was with quotations. Most of the time your use of quotation marks was correct, it was just this particular case where you need to fix things. When a sentence continues after a set of quotation marks/dialogue, you need to use a comma. That means that in this sentence

you need to add a comma before the final quotation mark, i.e.:

It's a small thing, but don't ever put periods there even though it feels like you need to, since the sentence continues on after that.

Overall:

I think this story is a good example of testing out the metaphorical waters of the URPG story system. It takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there, so I encourage newbies to write stories like this if they want to see where they are at with the grading system and with their writing. I think that for a beginner, you're doing pretty well. You definitely have potential and even though the story is simple, I can tell you put a lot of thought into crafting it and did a lot of research on the URPG before writing it, which is something that a lot of newcomers don't do.

So without further ado... Magikarp captured! Your writing was definitely good enough to warrant this, and I think that you will have no trouble capturing simple and even medium Pokemon in the future. Just put all the things I told you into practice and construct a more complex plot, and you should do fine.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I reread that first(ish) sentence and cringed at my there, their, and they're usage. I can't believe I did that. The showing and not telling is definitely something I need to work towards. Thanks for pointing out the quotation rules also. I didn't know they were that complicated. And do people really not read the rules?

In all seriousness, though, thank you for the feedback. I shall be back soon, but not too soon...

 

Thanks for all the advice! I never knew that quotations were so complex. I definitely need to work on showing and not telling. Also, I'm not even going to mention my there, their, and they're mistake in the beginning. But, all joking aside, thanks for the feedback!