Pokémon Fan Fiction

Writing

When writing Pokémon fan fiction, the first thing to understand is knowing how to write. This means having good vocabulary, grammar, spelling and style. Many fanfic writers make silly mistakes. They have good ideas for stories, but their writing turns out less than it could be because they don't know or follow the basics.

There are many ways of acquiring these skills: paying attention at school, reading good quality stories, and finding books to help you at the library. Many books have been written on good grammar and style, and it would take a lot of work for me to duplicate it all here, even if I was skilled enough to do so. So go and do the work! Believe me, it will pay off.

Grammar

Grammar is the set of rules about how to arrange words into sentences in a way that other people expect. If you make grammatical mistakes, people could have trouble understanding what you are trying to say.

Some people seem to pick up grammar naturally without needing formal instruction. Others struggle and need the help of a few guidelines. If you do have trouble, then go and find a suitable book on the subject at your local or school library. There's no shame in not being a natural at something, but there is shame in not bothering to improve.

Spelling

Spelling is writing words using the combination of letters that other people expect. Using the wrong spelling can result in your writing being difficult or sometimes even impossible to understand. "Bare arms" and "bear arms", for example, mean totally different things. Like grammar, some people are naturally good at it and some people need to put in more effort. If you want to write what your readers will enjoy reading instead of struggling to make sense of it, there's no shortcut: learn to spell.

A good way to pick up spelling is to read lots of different books issued by respected publishers. That way you get used to how words are spelt. Use a dictionary to help you if you're unsure. As well as the dictionary on your bookshelf, there are plenty on the internet these days.

You might wonder why I didn't mention spell checkers as the first tool to use. Spell checkers are useful for picking up mistakes you've missed yourself, but you can't rely on them to find your errors (read the Owed to a Spell Chequer!). I once read a fanfic full of odd words. The only explanation was that the author didn't know how to spell very well and assumed that every suggestion the spell checker made was the right one!

Common spelling mistakes among fanfic authors include:

alot	a lot
could of	could've
prolouge	prologue

Punctuation

Mistakes in punctuation can also lead to ambiguity. The "big-footed mouse" means the mouse with big feet, but the "big footed mouse" would mean the big mouse with feet. "The man whom I love is the one I'll marry" means that I'll marry the man I love as opposed to marrying the man I don't love, but "the man, whom I love, is the one I'll marry" means that I'll marry a particular man we're talking about, and by the way I love him.

To learn good punctuation, you need to examine lots of good quality literature (fiction or non-fiction doesn't matter) and try to pick up the rules. There are also many good books on the subject. There's no shortcut to putting in the effort.

Principles of Composition

Whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction, you don't write sentences randomly. You need to arrange your thoughts in an order that allows the reader to gradually come to know what is in your mind. With fiction, you have to carefully control what your reader finds out so that they undergo an experience, encounter what your characters encounter and feel their surprise and their shock, their grief and their joy.

 A plan. That means you need to write from a plan, an outline of the order in which you present the facts you want the reader to know and the events in which your characters take part. Usually stories proceed chronologically, but sometimes one fact won't make sense unless the reader already knows something else. You have to take these issues into account and find ways to present it, for example, through the occasional flashback, recollection or descriptive text.

 Paragraphs. You don't write one long continuum, sentence after sentence, without a break. You arrange your descriptions into paragraphs. Each paragraph deals with one main thought. This is true for fiction as much as for non-fiction. Have a look at this extract from Matt Morwell's Against All Odds:

Jason was a healthy eleven-year-old boy, almost twelve now, who had lived his entire life alongside Pokémon. He worked for his family, who owned a successful business called the Creight and Ship Corporation. Their business was entirely in Pokémon.

However, according to some critics, this business was not always honest or trustworthy. The reason was that the business was in selling Pokémon off to other people. Sometimes they would be sold to Pokémon trainers passing through, and sometimes they would be sold as labor workers. It was rumored that the Creight and Ship was partially responsible for helping Team Rocket founder Giovanni in building his considerable empire of money, thugs, and Pokémon.

None of which mattered to Jason. He had a job, and he was going to do it. At least he was getting paid for it.

Each paragraph deals with one topic. The first paragraph describes Jason and his family's business, the second deals with the business's dubious ethics, and the third presents Jason's attitude. The order of the topics has been thought through carefully: we need to know of Jason's family before we know what's wrong with it, and we have to know what's wrong with it before we can understand his attitude to it.

When writing direct speech, is customary to start each new speaker with a new paragraph.

Style

Style is how you choose words and phrases that make up your writing, and how you choose to arrange them in sentences and paragraphs. My high school English teachers used to say that each person has their own style, but that style needs to be worked on and refined. There are some rules that will help you improve and there are many books on the subject that I encourage you to find and read. Here are some rules that I've read or figured out that I hope will be of help.

 Be concise rather than verbose. William Strunk used to say "omit needless words". It's tedious reading something verbose.

He is a man who writes in a hasty manner owing to the fact that he is eager to see what the result is like at the end.	He writes hastily because he is eager to see the finished result.

On the other hand, don't take shortcuts at the expense of clarity.

 Make sure what you say is what you mean. That is, the words you've written down should express what you intended to say. If you read your draft and there's a niggling feeling or nagging doubt in the back of your mind, explore it, see if there's a flaw somewhere and try to fix it.

 Use specific words. You can say "the boy went to the park" if that is all you wish to say. However, you can sometimes use more specific words to help bring your prose to life. Maybe the boy "ran" to the park to show that he was in a hurry to get there, or "sped" to show how eager he was, or perhaps he "trudged" there because this was the fourth time he had to go and call his kid sister home. Sometimes the use of too many adjectives and adverbs can indicate that you're not using specific words.

 Don't overwrite. On the other hand, don't overuse colourful language when plain words will do. That's called overwriting and it is as annoying as a gaudy colour scheme. It's perfectly fine to write "he said" or "she said"; you don't have to say "he explained... intimated... suggested... remarked... mentioned..." unless you intend to use the specific meanings of those words.

 Keep it standard. E. B. White advises, "prefer the standard to the offbeat". Don't use unusual phrases, unconventional spelling or fancy words just because you think it's cool. Stick to plain English, use normal spelling, and don't try to show off. Breaking the rules for artistic sake is called "poetic licence", but you should only break a rule when you first know how to keep it.

Understanding Your Reader

Knowing how to write also means understanding your reader and writing for them. No, you don't write for yourself! Your purpose is to communicate your exciting ideas, your insights into life, your fun characters and interesting settings to others that they may enjoy and benefit from them.

Read what you've written from your prospective reader's point of view. See if it would make sense to them without the knowledge you already have in your own mind. If what you writes doesn't make sense to someone else, they'll either not bother reading it, or if they do persist they won't get as much out of it.

As an example, read the following extract from one of my stories:

The Venusaur's petals were slowly flattening, lightening, glowing with energy. "Ready..." They began to curl forward. Too late? "Now! Pikachu go!"

"Chuuuu!!"

The crack of lightning was deafening and blinding. The Venusaur roared as every muscle in its giant body contracted... except for its petals [...] Nothing could stop the burst of radiant energy that they shot forth.

The solar beam struck, sending up clouds of dust and debris. When it settled, Ash opened his eyes. He saw a large round scorch mark on the ground in front of him. Next to it stood Pikachu, facing him with its paw raised in a victory sign and a huge grin on its face [...]

I laboured hard on one point. How could I explain to the reader why the Solar Beam missed Pikachu? It was because the muscular contractions shifted its position enough to affect its aim, but how would the reader figure it out? The problem was that this was a major championship, so attributing the miss to pure luck would be unrealistic.

In the end, I decided to add the next line:

The Venusaur lay on the other side of the arena, unconscious but still twitching.

This emphasized that its muscles were affected, so that if someone bothered to think about it, the clues were there. I'm still not happy about it though.