Re: The Berry Thief (ready)
Introduction: Short story means short introduction. You want to get that information out there and do it in condensed manner. You did two things right here, you introduced the main character and what he looked like, and you introduced what path the story is going to follow.
The story revolves around a Pokemon stealing berries, so by talking about how the main character’s family owns a berry shop you are conveying your intent to the reader. While it’s not particularly complex or exciting you are going for a low tiered mon and don’t need some hard storyline.
Overall one of the better introduction I’ve seen in short stories. Continue that kind of opening and you shouldn’t have too many problems.
Plot: I usually despise short stories because I love the intracasies of plots, but I found myself liking the simplicity of yours. Instead of just having you character wander through the woods or something and finding the Buizel you actually added a few extra that made the story interesting. You achieved this by having the story take place on a Berry farm where the main character is protecting the family’s crop. You also had the confrontation with the neighbors that showed how the main character was jumping to conclusions. Very simple, but it worked easily enough. The one problem I did have is here:
Quote:
“NO!” she screamed, totally out of character. “GO UP TO YOUR ROOM. NO DINNER, NO POKEMON, NO NOTHING. MARCH!” she commanded, and only out of fear did I obey. After that, with absolute nothing left to do, I went back to bed.
Having this paragraph in itself it perfectly fine, but what makes it weird is that you say it’s out of character with the mother, but you provided no explanation. When you say something is out of the norm you need to explain why or else it seems out of place with the rest of the story.
Finally, the battle between the Buizel and Bulbasaur was done good. You described the attacks readily enough and you had the Pokemon have a back and forth battle without God-modding the thing. It wasn’t long, and I don’t expect to be with these two Pokemon, but remember for higher captures: if you use a stronger Pokemon that battle standards raise in terms of length, combos, and originality.
Grammar: No real grammatical errors that I spotted. You do have one problem that needs to be corrected and I’ve put the problem plus solutions below. Oh, and you had one misspelled word, so run it through a spell check and solve that problem next time.
Quote:
I stepped into the forest, hearing the laughter of two people. Turning to my left, I saw my worst nightmare. The two boys were giggling in the woods, jumping around in some strange state of {ectasy}. Alex and Tom Casey were huge brats; they always invaded our land, cutting through these woods. However, I wasn’t going to let them get away with it.
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“You two!” I shouted, startling them as I approached.
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“Ryan? What are you doing here?” they asked, seeming actually confused.
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“You know why I’m here. We’re solving this with a Pokemon battle.” I retorted, not believing a single word.
You need spaces here to separate the paragraphs because you are having different people talk. It helps the reader know who is talking. You did this multiple times during the story when people were communicating and this is a bad thing. I’ll show one more example just to be clear.
Quote:
“No, I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about…” Alex replied, taking the lead. He was the older of the two, just about 14.
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“Fine. Let’s battle first and settle this later.” I replied, throwing my Pokeball in the air. My Bulbasaur, Vienna, burst out of her ball, looking rather angry. The seed on her back twisted violently as she growled, shaking her paws.
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Alex reached for his pocket when his brother jumped in front of him, releasing his Pokemon instead. {}”Tom! What are you doing!” Alex said, honestly surprised.
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“I wanna show this punk up!” he replied, making me scoff in disgust. However, when I turned around I wasn’t so sure. A brown beaver-like Pokemon emerged, scraping its huge buck teeth against the ground. This was going to be a good fight. However, before we could even do anything Alex stopped us both.
Quote:
Jumping over sprouts, I came to the Wacan Berry field to find an orange weasel {leaped} out of the river to hit our fence, trying to get into the meadow.
~ You need to change this verb because it’s a different tense than the other words in the sentence. Because the paragraph is present you should change it to ‘leaping’ or something along those lines.
Detail: Done. You described all the important things: characters, Pokemon, Pokemon attacks, and the surroundings. I’ll give examples of each so you know what to continue with in your stories:
Quote:
Jumping over sprouts, I came to the Wacan Berry field to find an orange weasel leaped out of the river to hit our fence, trying to get into the meadow. It was covered in water, with cream-colored paws and a very powerful-looking tail.
Quote:
Buizel yelped before he was smacked in the gut, taking serious damage. He was thrown back, but got back up soon after, looking ready for revenge. Buizel leaped in the air, then slashed its tail forward. A wave of sonic energy flew off it, headed straight for Vienna.
Quote:
My short brown hair flopped in the air tickling my nose, making me look taller than usual. I wasn’t the biggest guy around; about 5’6, 140 pounds. However, the ladies in our area say my green eyes and kind heart make up for it. I stopped thinking about myself, looking around my surroundings.
The second paragraph of the story is also quite good because you detailed the farm and the surrounding area.
For your next story, you can work on word choice for description and trying to incorporate the senses in your stories. For word swapping, this means switching out red for something like crimson azure or blue for pthalo blue.
In terms of the senses that included: sight, smell, tough, taste, and hearing. It can be tough to have them all in the story, but it can be done and when done it usually adds an extra dimension to the story.
Length: Buizel
Overall: .
@White Knight
Re: The Berry Thief (ready)
Thanks for the grade, I'll keep this in mind for my next story~
(which I happen to be writing about right now, it's very...err...Dora-esqe?)
