Thread: The Start of Lou's Journey -Graded/Comments Welcome

READY FOR GRADING! GRADED! Thanks to Dragoness!
Target Pokemon: Machop
Range: Simple -- 5 to 10K
Lou is thirteen, but if that's too young, then tell me. Oh, and lame title for the chapter, I know. BTW, this scene begins from where Lou gets her starter Pokemon from the "Starter Requests thread". Time at the beginning of the story is about 10 or 10:30 am.
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The Start of Lou's Journey by MuddyMudkip
In Louise's POV (meaning 1st person style)
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I sighed in happiness as I stepped away from the gleaming silver counter. Today was the day I got my first Pokemon, my starter Pokemon, a Mudkip. Here I was, at a Pokemon Center.. No, not for healing Pokemon, yes-they also do that, but more specifically for claiming starter Pokemon.
The Pokemon available for claiming were not just the starter Pokemon from different regions, say Cyndaquil, Piplup, and Bulbasaur, but they were of each basic form Pokemon-meaning they have not been evolved. Some Pokemon were banned, however, like Larvitar and Kabuto, for some reasons I have yet to find out. Legendaries were not allowed, as well.

Just a few moments ago, my heart had been pounding with excitement as I had gotten into the short line for claiming starters. I did not have to wait long, soon I had asked for Mudkip, and I had gotten it along with three thousand Pokedollars cash. Three thousand Pokedollars might not be a big amount, but I'd say its just what new trainers, like myself, would need to start off a Pokemon adventure.
Also, you may say that why choose a regional starter when you can get something else. Well, I, personally, like Mudkip very much, and I have always loved water types-Mudkip no less.

I had waited for this day since my mother said I could get a Pokemon and start my adventure. She had not wanted me to go at age eleven or twelve, but now as I am a thirteen year-old I was allowed to be "free". Of course, I had to promise to call and keep her up-to-date whenever I can, and I intend to keep that promise. Although, since I started walking and traveling-which was a day or two ago-I had only called home once. That is bad, considering my mother is very, would you say, protective and worrying type. But, then again who is not?

Now, as I walked out of the building, I began to think of a nickname for my Mudkip. My mind filled with thoughts about other Pokemon, other trainers, and about my future team, too. I had not figured everything out yet, I just knew I wanted to catch a fighting type first, preferably a Machop.

"Mudkip, come on out!" I released my starter to get a good look at her... or him. "Hmm, so what name would you like?" I bent down, sat in a crouching position, and began to pet he-- it.

"Kip, mudkip, kip kip," the Pokemon replied, running around my legs and feet playfully. Then, Mudkip began jumping up and down as it repeated the syllables of its name.

"You do like to say "kip" a lot, don't you?" I mused as I picked it up and started to cradle it, an idea forming in my head. "How about Kipper?" I watched with bliss as my Pokemon smiled and spoke its name with glee. That definitely meant "yes".

"Well then Kipper, let us go and start our adventure! To do that, we will need to train and catch a Pokemon." I started running to anywhere with Kipper in my arms, trying to look for a clearing to train in, patches of dust and grass jumping up as I jogged.
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About an hour passed, my training with Kipper had been great, and now I am almost completely confident that I can catch a Pokemon. Plus, I figured out Kipper was a boy.

Dirt, twigs and leaves covered the path I was walking through now. The sun was shining brightly, almost forcing my eyes to slam shut as I walked along an unknown route. I honestly had no idea where we were, and even a Mudkip's sense of direction using its fin would not be of help... Especially when a certain Mudkip was asleep.

Kipper was currently taking a nice long nap on my shoulder. I have to admit, he is a little heavy for his age, or maybe I'm just not used to it. Part of him was standing.. err.. lying on my light red colored backpack for support, and still he feels a little heavy. Anyhow, he deserves and needs his rest for an upcoming Pokemon battle.

Eventually, my hunt came to a stop. Mainly because it was nearly lunch time, and my stomach was growling. Kipper had awoken, and we were now resting against a big oak tree in thicker undergrowth. Grass grew in cluttered groups here, and it looked almost certainly lifeless. Nevertheless, we sat down on one big root, covered with smaller ones - Taproot system, definitely. I gave my Mudkip some Poke food as I helped myself to a hamburger my mother had prepared earlier.

Pretty soon, as we finished our somewhat light lunch, a bluish-gray colored Pokemon, with three brown ridges on its head, caught our sight. It was a lone figure, but that was how most Pokemon were nowadays, and looked a lot like a Machop, but I thought they were uncommon in this here parts. Thus, because I am ever so curious, I went to check it out. Kipper followed quickly and excitedly at the heels of my white sneakers, of course, just etching for a battle. I suspect he has not had one in ages, the last probably was at least a few weeks ago. That was not good for Pokemon - no, not at all.

After a few stumbles and trips on roots, leaves, and grass, we caught sight of the creature once more. Sure enough, when I found the wild creature, it was the superpower fighting Pokemon. Somehow, I had been able to challenge it to a battle. And, we got into battle position as it let out a battle cry.

Third Person Style
Kipper quickly got in front of his trainer and stood a battle poise. The Machop began to charge swiftly at him with its arm glowing white and its hand opened wide.

"Kipper, Water Gun quickly!" Lou ordered just as the opponent began to near. The Mudkip opened his muzzle wide and let a spray of water burst out. Unfortunately, the water had only damaged Machop partially as it had karate chopped its way around the water blast. And so it continued its assault on Kipper.

"Alright, use Mud-slap when it nears!" Louise quickly decided. Kipper's tail glowed brightly as he charged at the wild Pokemon. Tail and hands collided, leaving both Pokemon quite badly hit. But that did not stop any one of them. Mudkip and Machop stood almost as fast as when they had fallen.

Machop began to kick Mudkip with its powerful legs and feet. Ankle sweep, huh? Lou thought as she commanded her Pokemon to try tackling the Machop. Both Pokemon were getting weaker and weaker. The Mudkip kept on butting his head into Machop while it kicked him at almost every part that its feet could reach.

"Do another Water Gun, Kipper!" she called as the Machop had stopped ankle sweeping her beloved starter Pokemon. As before, Kipper let a blast of cold water emerge from its recently opened mouth. Lou would have ordered for a take down, hydro pump or even a whirlpool, but those attacks might have dome more damage than needed, thus causing a Knock-Out. And she did not want that, obviously.

The enemy Machop grabbed Kipper by the legs, then spun around in a circle. After a bit, the Machop let go, sending the Mudkip flying. Kipper collided with a boulder, then because of the impact, he also bumped against a nearby tree, before falling sub-concious to the ground.

The effect of the attack had left particles of dust, dirt, and sand flying around. Almost completely filling the clearing with a smoke-like atmosphere.

Louise, on the other hand, decided that the Machop had been weakened enough. She fumbled clumsily with her backpack, looking for one of the Pokeballs her mother had given her when she had been packing. Luckily, she found it in a matter of seconds, fifteen seconds at most.

The dust and dirt cleared quickly after that, Lou flung her arm forward, loosening her grip on the red and white ball just as she had enlarged it. The ball bumped the Machop in the arm, then sucked it in with a red light. The Pokeball began to wriggle and shake.....
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Woot! Its done, okay graders?
Length:
Words: 1000+ (just the story, no note from the top or the title)
Characters: 6000+ 7608 (just the story, no note from the top or the title)
So, tell me what you think, and criticism is always welcome from both graders and non-graders.

~MM
Thanks for reading, BTW!

Claimed.

Length: 7600 characters. Click here for a free, non-downloadable character counter. It's a copy+paste character counter. I've used it for maybe two years without a problem and according to Firefox's add-on, Web of Trust, it's a safe website :) So now you won't have to guess at how long the story is, though I give you credit for being fairly close to the true count.

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Grammar 'n Spelling:

Overall, your grammar 'n spelling was alright. I had to hunt for nit's to pick other than a couple of typos O.o

...Mudkip's sense of direction using fin would not be of help...

"sense of direction using fin" isn't quite right. Maybe switching that sentence so it's complete would help. Like having "...Mudkip use his directional fin would not be of help." or something of that variation would be better. It's better, though I'm not sure if it's 100% grammatically correct. It's a tricky sentence to work with.

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Introduction + Plot:

The introduction didn't really grab my interest, though it serve to introduce me to Louise and her soon-to be Pokemon.

Moving onto the plot...eh. It followed the game plot rather close, that whole pick-up-starter Pokemon and then adventure thing. I mean, your writing made it kind of interesting, but it was still a kinda "meh" plot. You added nice little bits, like Mudkip falling asleep and you stopping for lunch, but it was still a bit plain.

For future plots and stories, I suggest you add more to the plot. Think of interesting things that don't have much to do with the Pokemon game or cartoon's plot. You can get ideas from dreams, from your imagination, from old stories, from movies, ect. Don't steal a story, but a lot of stories have been inspired by books or TV series, or whatnot. Like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has inspired some people to start off a story about a young couple in love.

Or for a more personal example, Shakespeare's Macbeth has a scene that involves three witches. That got me off to writing a story that involves three witches with me coming up with ideas as to why the three witches were main characters in the story (and in the end they turned out to be minor characters xD) and how they related to each other and how the townsfolk thought of them and what trouble they accidently brewed up and so on.

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Your Use of Description:

Sometimes you used too much. What I mean is, you stated things that the reader should know to begin with. Such as what a basic Pokemon is. See, while you should do things such as describe Pokemon like your reader only has a very vague idea of what the Pokemon ought to look like; other things, like basic Pokemon terms, you don't really have to explain in detail.

And at other times, you just gave us the facts. Like this:

I helped myself to a hamburger my mother had prepared earlier.

By my calculations, the burger should be around two days old. I've had burgers that are a couple days old and they almost always taste yucky (it's the grease, I'm sure of it). Perhaps that's just because I always end up with substandard burgers to begin with, but whatever. Even if the burger was awesome, it would have been nice to hear you say it was awesome. Or if Louise had to force the burger down, then that would have been good to read too. The reader would like to hear details about things like that.

Now, sometimes it's okay to just list the facts, but that's, well, rare. Usually you want to use a mixture of adjectives (words that describe other things, such as 'pretty', 'rough', 'thin', ect.); and things like verbs. See, if you use just adjectives, things get can get just a little bit boring. If you mix in some verbs (aka, actions) things get a bit more interesting.

I helped myself to a hamburger my mother had prepared earlier. I then quickly spat it out. "Yuck!" I told Mudkip.

That's an example of adding action 'n an adjective to the simple facts. I love adjectives, I don't mind reading stuff that has a lot of adjectives, but they do suck when they are almost always on their own D: A lot of the time you didn't have that problem though. I'm just stating a reminder. Really, I don't know what else to tell you. You already have a decent idea of how to write describe people/places/things. I would have liked a bit more description of the Machop though and perhaps a bit more of the environment.

Generally, as I said, your description was okay. For a simple story, it was fairly good. I liked how you described Kipper taking a nap, btw (: That was cute. I could almost see him sleeping on Louise's shoulder.
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Battle:

As a personal kind of thing, an opinion, I don't really like how you switched PoV's like that. I mean, there didn't seem to be much of a point in switching the PoV. I do like how you stated you were switching PoV ('cause if you don't somehow indicate you're switching PoV, a reader can become confused) but I don't like that you called it "Normal" PoV. What was normal about it? Throughout the story, the normal PoV was 1st person chat from Louise. Just an FYI.

Also, I'm not sure why you bolded the attacks. It's not a problem, just a curiosity.

Well, what I look in battles is evenness. And I can say this battle was fairly two sided. Though it felt a little cut-off, like perhaps Machop and Mudkip had it in them to do some more battling. Also, don't forget that you can use the environment when battling (: Dirt, trees, water, ect. are all useful in a battle.

Oh and you did a fairly decent job describing the attacks. Sometimes though it felt like you could have described the attacks and their effects--wounds, bruises, dizziness, ect.--more. You did a lot better than I did when I wrote my first story though xD I used one attack. In my defense, it was against a Magikarp.
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A note about the URPG story system 'n all:

See, the thing about the URPG is that it's multifaceted. What I mean is that it not only has the story section and the park and the battles under one roof, but it also allows you a lot of freedom to do things your own way. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be under the impression you have to create a character--and just that one character--as your trainer for the URPG. And you have to use that character for the park and for the story section.

You don't. I mean, you can and if you want to, then nobody is gonna mind (: But I just want to make it clear to you that you don't have to. Especially when it comes to the story section. You can do a lot here. You can do stories with no humans in them, you can write about legendaries (even if you can't capture the legendary xD), you can write about something that barely has any Pokemon in it at all. You can write stories that have nothing to do with your URPG character, Louise, or your URPG Pokemon.

I just wanted to make sure you knew that you can spread your wings and do (almost) whatever you want here :)
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Outcome: Da-da-de-dum-de-rum..Congrats! You have captured a Machop! Good work, this was a fairly neat story. I hope to see more stories from you.
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Other:

I have a question about a kind of unrealistic/curosity bit in this story. How come Louise did not check the gender of her Pokemon right then and there? Asking the Pokemon or a quick, polite look under the tail would have told her. It just seems a bit odd that she didn't check right then and there. But that's picking at nits.

Wow! Thanks for the grade! I'll surely remember to use your tips and advice in my next story. I now see what you mean by putting together adjectives and verbs, it does look better. Anyway, hopefully I'll get some idea/inspiration for my next story. Again, thanks for all your help, Dragoness!

EDIT:
Forgot to mention something about the hamburger:
It was actually prepared on the same day, just earlier in the morning.

I gave my Mudkip some Poke food as I helped myself to a hamburger my mother had prepared earlier.

And it was lunch time there, on the same day. It was ten am in the story when it started, so it's still pretty..new.. just not hot XD But, yeah, I'll think about that.

Also, I'm gonna change "Normal POV" to "Third Person Style" if that helps.

Originally Posted by Dragoness

Also, I'm not sure why you bolded the attacks. It's not a problem, just a curiosity.

It's a habit of mine ever since I wrote battles/roleplayed.

Great job on this story! The only thing I would suggest (besides a basic grammar check when you're done :P) is to try to be original with your stories. Make a conflict besides "trainer sees Pokemon and wants to catch it". Besides that, it really is a great story :D

Thanks for the feedback, Paragon! My next story has a really weird, IMO, plot. But, it does have conflicts and stuff. Gonna be finished in at least a month, just because I'm still planning everything.