Thread: Adventures of Ray Goodman

Disclaimer: I wrote this ages ago, like after my Caterpie one, but hated it with a passion. I ran across it the other day and thought, meh, I might as well shove it up. So, whoever grades this, keep in mind it is not particularly good.

Target Pokemon: Nincada (Simple)
Target Length: 5-10k
Actual Length: Just over 7k

~~~~~

Ring, ring, ring. I hear this annoying ringing sound. I hit my alarm clock and switch the radio to the Pokémon news station. As I lie in my bed, half asleep, I hear the man on the radio speaking:

''In other news, the new Pokémon book: Adventures of Ray Goodman is due out soon. It is about a man who visits strange places to find rare Pokémon. We all have high expectations for this book considering how thrilling his previous book Adventure to the Ice Castle was. That’s all from me. Now enjoy the number one song on the music charts, The Poke Jam."

I get out of my bed and stare at the calendar. I can’t see properly so I rub my eyes to get rid of the blur that is overlaying my vision. Oh, it’s the 10th of March, I say in my head. Wait. The 10th. My new book is due in a week! I race down the stairs to the kitchen. I see my Pokémon Growlithe still sleeping in his bed. I tiptoe into the kitchen and put on a cup of coffee. While I wait for it to boil, I turn on my computer. Ding! My coffee is ready, I said to myself. I pour my cup of coffee then go to check if Growlithe had woken up.

"Hey Growlithe, how you feeling?" I ask him.

"Grrrr," the Growlithe replied.

I go to the cupboard to get his PokeFood. As I poured it in to his bowl, he started to gobble it up. I pick up my cup of coffee and go to the computer and sit down. Ok, Ray, think, think, think.

"Oh, this is hopeless," I said. My phone rings.

"Y'ello?" I answer.

"Ray, quick, switch over to Channel 7," the caller said.

"What? Who is this?" I ask.

"It's me, Josh."

"Oh, Josh. Ok, I am changing the channel now. The news?" I said, "What’s on the news?" I turn the volume up.

"Breaking news," said the lady on the TV. "There has been another sighting of the rare Red Gyarados. We now go to Tim who is at the Lake of Rage."

"Thanks, Mary. About one hour ago a local fisherman said he had seen the Red Gyarados. We have the local fisherman with us now. Excuse me, can we get a few words?" Tim asked the fisherman.

"Yes, Tim, I saw the Red Gyarados when I was fishing for Magikarp. It just sprung on me and destroyed my boat."

"Thank you. Back to you, Mary."

"Thanks Tim. On other news…" the TV goes silent as I turn it off.

"Josh, you just saved my career. Bye."

I run in to my bedroom and pack my bag. I head downstairs and say to my Growlithe, "Let’s get going to the Lake of Rage."

"Grrrrr," growls Growlithe in agreement.

We leave our home in Goldenrod. I look on my map.

"Ok, we need to go through Route 35 to get to the Lake of Rage," I said to myself. We walk and walked for hours and hours until we are so tired I almost fall asleep. "Ok, Growlithe." I say, "Let's set up camp here."

I unpack all of our food and start to set up the tent. I go out to get firewood before it gets too dark. I say, "Growlithe, use Ember." Growlithe opens his mouth and this small flame that was a red-yellow colour shoots out of his mouth and the logs set on fire. It is a nice warm bright fire. I get the food out and give Growlithe his PokeFood in a bowl, and then I cook myself a hot meal, listening and watching the meat sizzling in the frying pan.

I put the lid on my food container and go to bed. When I get in the tent Growlithe is already asleep. I wake up to Growlithe's barking.

"Growlithe, go back to sleep," I say, but he keeps barking. I go out to see what he was barking at. It was a Nincada stealing all of our food.

"Hey," I yell, "go away. That's my food."

The Nincada just stares at me then goes back to eating my food.

"I'll teach you. Growlithe, use Flamethrower," I say.

Growlithe shoots a red hot stream of fire at the Nincada and hits it on one of its legs. The Nincada runs off in pain.

"Well buddy, we will make a stop in the next town," I say to Growlithe.

We arrive at Ecruteak City and restock our supplies in a local market. As I am getting the supplies I overhear some people talking.

"Argh that damn Nincada destroyed my favorite book and ate all of my food," one man says.

"What was the book?" his friend asks.

"Adventure to the Ice Castle," he replies.

I walk up to him and say, "Here you go," handing him a spare copy of my book.

"Thank you," he says. "Wait, you're Ray Goodman. Can I get your autograph?"

"Yeah but on one condition," I say.

"What is it?" he asks.

"You tell me all about that Nincada," I reply.

"Ok let's go to a cafe and I will tell you there."

We walk over to a nearby cafe and he tells me about the Nincada. After thirty minutes of talking he had told me all he knew. "Ok thanks for the info," I say.

Growlithe and I leave the town to search out the Nincada, but I had no luck so I decide to place a trap. I put some PokeFood on the ground and hide behind a tree.

Ten minutes later a Nincada showed up. Then a thought occurs to me: How will I know that this was the same Nincada? Then I remember that Nincada's leg got burned, so I looked at its leg. Yep, there was a mark on its leg.

I whisper to Growlithe, "Use Fire Spin."

The Growlithe jumps into the air and breathed fire in front of him. After that, he did a somersault into the fire and started spinning and charged at the Nincada. It rolled out of the way. My move had missed. I saw the look in Nincada's eyes - he was mad and was going to fight. Nincada continued the fight with a Sand Attack but Growlithe dodged it easily. However, Nincada had disappeared. All of a sudden it came out of the ground.

No, I thought, he used Dig on Growlithe that will hurt him a lot. I yell to Growlithe, "Are you ok?"

"Ruff," he said.

"Ok, that’s enough. Let’s get him into the air. Growlithe use Flamethrower at his feet."

He launched a stream of fire from his mouth at Nincada’s feet, but it jumped and countered with X-Scissor. It was going to hit but I then yell "Growlithe use Agility and go after Nincada." Suddenly Growlithe’s speed increased and it ran at Nincada while it was still in the air.

"Use Bite," I say.

Growlithe jumps into the air and bites Nincada's body. It seems to hurt Nincada but he was about to finish Growlithe off.

"Use Iron Tail," I yell.

Growlithe's tail turned silver and he let go of Nincada and hit him with a powerful strike. Nincada plummeted to the ground. I know that Nincada was not finished so I say to Growlithe, "Use Fire Blast". Growlithe unleashes a huge amount of fire at Nincada. As it hit Nincada I think to myself Nincada was finished. I could feel the heat coming off of Growlithe’s move. After Growlithe's move had finished a pale green x-shaped blast comes out of the crater caused by the Fire Blast.


Damn, it must have used Protect, I thought. Ok this is the last shot.

I saw Nincada charging a Solarbeam. It shot it at Growlithe. Growlithe used Fire Blast again and huge red blast of fire hit Nincada's Solarbeam. The Solarbeam was stronger, and Nincada was about to pump more energy into the move.

"Well it is the end of the battle, so I guess I have no choice," I said Growlithe. "Use Overheat."

Suddenly the pressure of the fire increased and it engulfed Nincada's Solarbeam, travelling all the way back to the Nincada. Nincada collapses onto the ground. I throw a PokeBall at the Nincada and said “it’s now up to fate.”

*laughs and points.* Claimed, in other words. I'll try not to be too long, but you can maybe expect it up this weekend. I HAVE OTHER, MORE IMPORTANT STUFF THAT NEEDS DOING RIGHT NOW.

So, I almost kindasortamaybe did take a long time to get this grade on the road, but shrug. JUST ENJOY READING IT.
Introduction: It's a start -- as is, y'know, every introduction, but, to be honest, it's not extremely attractive to a reader. Of course, the whole symbolism of the start of a new day = the start of a story is pretty neat, but still rather clichéd. I understand that this is an old story of those, so I'll go a little easier on you -- but, really, you could have fixed the story up to your tastes and then put it up, but I guess whatever's there is what I should be grading. Anyway, so the story starts off in the main character's bedroom, presumably, and he's woken up by his 'annoying' alarm. But what's missing here is some kind of conflict -- there's no real trouble going on, or any kind of situation except the character realising that his book is going to be out in a week's time. Although this could be your theme (and work for a Simple), you don't actually build on this, as far as I can see.

To be honest, you need to work on whatever you've brought up in your introduction and make that the plot, because, as I've explained to many other people, it simply confuses the reader if they make predictions based on what they think is going to happen in the story, and then their preconceptions are turned upside-down and throttled as they realise that what they thought the story was about... wasn't really what the story was about. If that makes sense. Other than that, you need some more fundamentals for an introduction -- like where the story is located, for example. That's unless you're going for some emotional, wrenching, powerful introduction, which you pretty much are not in this story, and I couldn't exactly expect you to. The opening paragraphs are cute, though.

Plot: So, Ray is rung up by his friend Josh, and this leads to him hearing on the news about another sighting of the Red Gyarados, which then leads him to the Lake of Rage... again, this entire scene just spells a plot/theme, and yet you again change the expectations of the reader -- I don't know whether to count these down as purposeful twists or just random jumping, but I think the latter's a little more accurate in this case, seeing as these 'twists' don't really have to do with each of the different plot suggestions that you've brought up in the story -- that's three, by the way. Three plots in a story simply doesn't work, and neither, incidentally, does switching around the three from paragraph to paragraph. It's a slight exaggeration, I know, but maybe it'll get your attention -- stick with one idea for simpler stories, otherwise everyone gets discombobulated.

However, going through your story, various things are cleared up -- the location, for instance; something that I mentioned that you should have covered at least briefly in your introduction, unless it really serves no purpose to your plot or your introduction. Well, you don't really reveal the original location, but I'm supposing it's somewhere far away from Mahogany Town. At any rate, your plot is moving along fine until they actually start travelling -- they cover hours of walking in one single sentence, which is pretty fast/miraculous to me. Slow it down a little. If you have a vast action in a single sentence, people are going to think of it as a little bit over-the-top or something, like they're travelling at light-speed. I know that the time-frame mentioned says otherwise, but sentence structure can manipulate how people see a story. The same advice goes for these two sentences: "When I get in the tent Growlithe is already asleep. I wake up to Growlithe's barking." The second sentence should at least be separated into a new paragraph or something, otherwise you're touching on borderline nonsense.

Originally Posted by You, silly.

"I'll teach you. Growlithe, use Flamethrower," I say.

I lol'd. It just seems so... simple, and it's designed to be dramatic. The battle doesn't even last long. Some flames come from Growlithe, and then the Nincada goes away. It's our first meeting of Nincada in the story, but it's not entirely exciting. You need a little more tension, even in these offhand encounters. I know it's only a Simple-rank, but to be honest, that was the least effort I've ever seen put into an encounter. You're a Ranger. ENCOUNTERS ARE YOUR THING. Other than that, I don't think much needs to be mentioned about your plot -- and I think you know what's wrong with your story as well, so I shouldn't belabour things so much. Oh well.

Grammar/spelling: Only a few errors. Corrections are in BOLD where necessary. (< see, person doing wages? I did the prettiful thing again!)

"Josh, you just saved my career. Bye[,]" [b][size=1][I say.]

The reason they're in parenthesis is because they're tentative corrections. In the quote above, it's not entirely clear who's talking -- obviously, since he's talking to Josh, it has to be Ray, but some reader could interpret it as the TV.

Secondly, you're forgetting your commas before and after addressing someone/something, e.g:

"Hey, Growlithe, how you feeling?" I ask him.

Third, don't use "ok". It's either "O.K." or "okay". Okay? Additionally, TENSES. You swap between them occasionally -- you're going mainly for present, but you keep switching into past. I'd say keep your story in the one tense -- and past is a better tense for stories, as there aren't usually as many screw-ups as there would be if you try to write everything in present.

Detail/description: The main problem here is a lack of advanced vocabulary being used, as well as a lack of the senses -- the world is peculiarly bland in your story. There aren't any smells described, there aren't many sights seen -- and nothing feels like anything within the story. Your verbs aren't particularly varied ('say' is used an awful lot in the story), and you don't use very many adverbs, which can help convey a better sense of how an action was carried out.

... I would have said something else here, but I got distracted mid-grade by other issues. ._.

Battle: NOPE.

Length: It's enough.

Outcome: Sure, Nincada is captured. Have fun.