Water Mart (SWC)

Target Pokémon: Azurill
Target CC: 5k-10k
Actual CC: 4530


Vanessa was an Azurill working at a shop for Water-type Pokémon. At her shop were sold stuff like Mystic Waters (which boost the power of Water-type moves by 20% when held), Water Stones (which help Eevee evolve into Vaporeon, Poliwhirl into Poliwrath, Shellder into Cloyster, Staryu into Starmie, Lombre into Ludicolo, and Panpour into Simipour), Water Gems (which boost the power of Water-type moves by 30% before getting consumed), Sea Incences and Wave Incenses, both of which boost the power of Water-type moves by 20% when held.

The shop is located in Sunnyshore City, a port city located in the east of the Sinnoh region. After battle the Gym Leader Volkner, many Trainers go to this shop to buy items for the Water-type Pokémon before heading to the League, so they need to buy crucial items in order to stand a chance against the Elite 4 and Cynthia, especially the latter, who has an unbroken winning streak since become the Sinnoh Champion.

Vanessa is a new worker in the shop, and while she enjoys her job, it could get stressful sometimes. The number of costumers can be sometimes overwhelming, as there are only two cashiers per shift. She also suffers from PADHD, an ADHD-like disorder that affects Pokémon. So, it’s easy for her to make mistakes while computing. Her friends and colleagues sometimes need to point out her computation mistakes for her.

“Hello, I am Lucas!”

“Hello, I am Vanessa. What may I do for you?”

“I want 3 Water Stones, 2 Sea Incenses, and 5 Wave Incenses.”

`That will be 18000 yen.”

Lucas was searching for the sum when…

“Vanessa, are you sure it’s 18000 yen?”, said her friend Cassandra, a Vaporeon.

“Yes, he did say he wants 3 Water Stones, 2 Sea Incenses, and 5 Wave Incenses… Oops! I calculated that as 4 Sea Incenses”, said an embarrassed Vanenessa.

`No problem! We all make mistakes. So, what’s the correct total?”

“It’s 16000 yens”, said the Azurill.

“Here they are.”

“Thanks, and good luck at the League! I hear Champion Cynthia is very tough.”

“She is. No challenger ever managed to defeat her, but I hope I will be the first to do it.”

A few minutes later…

“Thud!!” said a guy running forward without looking around.

“Are you in a rush or something?”, asked Vanessa.

“Of course, I am! I need to get to the Pokémon League.”

“And what may I do for you?”

“I want 5 Sea Incenses.”

“Here they are, that would be … 6000 yen.”

“5000 yen, Vanessa.”

“Oops! You’re right!”

“Were you trying to trick me? I will fine you!”

“She wasn’t. She’s new here so she still has to get used.”

“Anyways! Next time you see me here, I will be Champion Barry. Not even Cynthia could beat me. Have you looked at the time! I need to go fast!”


“Do you think I should see a Pokémon doctor Cassandra? For my attention deficit.”

“It might be a good idea, depending on how you feel. You won’t lose anything if you consult one.”

“You’re right. I will call my family doctor today after the shift ends and book an appointment.”

“Pathetic!”, said a voice from the outside. It was a boy with purple hair.

“Excuse me!”, said Cassandra.

“Your friend is pathetic”, he said, still outside.

“Who are you and who gives the right to say that?”, added Vanessa.

“I am Paul. Future Champion of Sinnoh. People who have attention problems are pathetic!”, he replied. “Ouch!”, he added, after feeling someone slapped him. “What was that for?”.

“For being a big jerk!”, came a female voice.

“Oh, look who it is! The friend, or the girlfriend of the pathetic Ash Ketchum”, he smirked.

“Whether Ash is my boyfriend is none of your business.”

“Hey Dawn! What’s going on?”, asked Ash.

“It’s none of your business pathetic Trainer!”, replied Paul.

“This guy was telling the Azurill cashier in this store that she must be pathetic to have attention deficit”, said the girl with dark blue hair.

“Really?”, asked Ash.

Brock was readying his fist. “First, you abused your Chimchar and we didn’t inform Officer Jenny, and now, you’re calling a Pokémon with a disorder pathetic? Who do you think you are? I hope the Elite 4 crush you! Now, GET LOST!”

“I haven’t seen someone like him”, said Dawn.

“Someone like him needs to have his Trainer license revoked.”, added Ash.

“You’re right!”, said Brock.

“I need to buy some stuff for Pokémon. Let’s go to the shop”, added Ash.


“Thank you for slapping this rude jerk, Dawn”, said Vanessa.

“You’re welcome!”

“This guy thinks he can beat Cynthia?”, asked Cassandra.

“That will never happen! He once swept his 4 Pokémon with her Garchomp in an official battle”, added Dawn.

“Really?”

“Yes. But he still learned nothing, and never will”, added Ash.






Yes, I know. The story doesn't sound complete, but I had an exam and 4 hours of sleep. I did my best.

 

me again! snagging this!

 

THE INTRO/PLOT STUFF

Your plot feels a little scattered: there’s a lot going on in a little time, and it’s hard to keep pace. Vanessa is a cashier at the Water Mart, and she’s new to her job so she makes some mistakes, and then a bunch of people from the anime come in and have some shenanigans. It’s hard to keep track of what’s going on because events quickly get dropped: Vanessa being unfamiliar with the Mart prices stops mattering after Paul walks in because people stop buying stuff, and it stops being a Mart and becomes a place where a lot of faceless characters are saying some dialogue.

Breathe. Events of a story tend to have a purpose and a flow. You can write a brilliant story about people sitting in a Mart doing absolutely nothing, but that’s because there’s a series of coherent events beneath the surface. A is important because of B, which causes C—or something along those lines. What you have so far is more of a series of several unrelated events that happen in succession: Vanessa helps one customer (Lucas); Vanessa helps another customer (Barry); Vanessa talks to a third customer (Paul) and some other people (Ash + friends). But there’s no relation between these events, so there’s not really a central plot to this story.

In addition, we have other throwaway lines like this:

Like woah! That seems like a really important piece of backstory that I’ve never seen, and should not have needed to see in order to understand your story. What does it mean? Why did Dawn decide to bring it up? How does Paul feel about this defeat?

A story is more than a bunch of events in series. There’s typically a purpose to them—the author has a reason to write the story, and the reader has a reason to read it. These reasons are typically the same. When you think about the plot/events in your story, ask yourself why you’re writing/whose story you’re trying to tell. Is this a story about how Vanessa learns something through helping people at the Water Mart? Is this a story about how Ash + friends interact with Paul at a Water Mart? Is this a story about Lucas and Barry being really bad at shopping? I DUNNO. IT’S YOUR CALL. But there needs to be some central thread tying all of these events together, or else the story feels aimless and a little confused.

THE CHARACTER STUFF

You don’t need to have deep, fleshed-out characters in a Simple story, and writing them in so few words would be an accomplishment in itself. That being said, I lost track of which character was which. I haven’t watched the Pokémon anime in a long time, so I don’t really know who Paul/Barry/Dawn are (sorry), or why they’re acting the way they are, or why Paul is a horrible person or why Barry is supposed to get an ADHD diagnosis. These all seem like details from a much deeper story, but without that context, your story feels flat and hard to follow.

And somewhere in the middle of this is Vanessa! It looks like she’s supposed to be the main character, but she honestly gets swallowed by the rest of the plot once the anime characters come in. Why is she a cashier and also a Pokémon? How can she operate a cash register if her species doesn’t possess arms? How does she feel about all of these people barging into her shop?

THE PRETTY STUFF

There’s a rule in writing called Chekhov’s Gun: if you describe a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I, it’ll be fired by the end of the play. Or, in other words: things that the author takes time to describe in a story are implied to be more important than the things that the author doesn’t describe. Or, in other other words: the things you take time to describe should be important to the success of the plot/story itself.

Usually, we follow this pretty reflexively when we’re writing stories, since we also focus on the things that we think are important. As a result, when this rule gets broken, it looks pretty out of place:

This is all cool information about your/the Pokémon world! But it also doesn’t really add much to the experience: if we’re die-hard Pokémon fans, we might already know this; and if we aren’t die-hard fans, then things like “helps Lombre evolve into Ludicolo” really doesn’t mean much to us. Furthermore, because there’s so many facts thrown at us at once, we get the feeling that this information is important and we should keep it on hand for later—but it doesn’t get a chance to come back in the story again.

SO. The gist is that you need to describe the things that matter. You spent 500 characters on that paragraph about the items sold at the shop, which is cool, but then things like this will happen:

LIKE WOAH SOMEONE JUST GOT SLAPPED. This is a pretty important piece of action, but I can’t find any other mention of it in the surrounding text. I wouldn’t have even noticed that Paul left the shop, let alone that he was physically coerced into leaving, without this tiny piece of dialogue.

Take a deep breath. Think about what parts of your story people need to know and what parts they can live without. Why are you telling this story? What details, scenes, and emotions do you want them to take with them when they’re done? Those should be the things you focus your details into.


THE GRAMMAR STUFF

Hey. Let’s practice dialogue commas again. In case you can’t tell, they’re super important and you’ll use them in a lot of your work.

Quotation marks basically go around anything that was said, which also includes the punctuation. The comma should go inside as well:

And you don’t actually need the comma and the exclamation mark here; just the comma will do:

We also had a discussion on dialogue punctuation for The World of a Hybrid, so if something I’m saying isn’t getting across to you or you’re having difficulties grasping this, please let me know! Dialogue punctuation is hugely fundamental to writing.



THE OVERALL STUFF

I think you were a little rushed trying to submit this story for SWC, but I’d love to see the full work from you when you’ve got more sleep and haven’t just taken an exam. For now, Azurill not captured. I imagine a lot of the problems were due to the time crunch, but if you want specific areas on where to improve/expand that weren’t mentioned clearly in this grade, please feel free to ask me!