Pokémon Fan Fiction

Writing Fiction

The next thing to understand when writing Pokémon fan fiction is knowing how to write fiction. Like I said, many a story founders half way. Many other stories have dull plots, shallow characters and pointless events. Some are populated with characters who take everything in their stride. Other characters are carbon copies of the author with the exception that they achieve effortlessly the author's personal goals. Many plots are "wouldn't it be nice" stories, like wouldn't it be nice if Ash proposed to Misty/May/Melanie, so he does, and she accepts, and that's that.

Between the spark of an idea and the finished work there are things you can do to help you develop the idea into something other people will enjoy reading. One key thing is to plan your story. Starting with your idea, you need to come up with a setting, a background, a combination of characters, a problem for the main character to struggle with, and a plot to glue everything together. The plot culminates in a climax where the struggle reaches its peak and the problem is decided.

Preparation—Planning Your Story

You start off a story with an idea, for example, a scientist genetically engineers a super-powerful Pokémon but it turns against its maker and tries to take over the world. To go from the idea to a finished work is no small task. For starters, you need to decide on quite a few things:

 Setting Where is the story happening? When? Mewtwo vs Mew happens in Kanto over a long period of time that coincides with Ash's travels there. With fan fiction, you can use an existing setting or make up an original one.

 Background What is the history of your characters leading up to your story? Mewtwo is a genetically modified clone of Mew. Its creation was funded by Giovanni to create for himself a powerful weapon.

 Characters Who are the actors in your tale? What are their characteristics and relationships, strengths and weaknesses, aspirations and desires? Mewtwo is powerful but has a huge chip on his shoulder against the race that created him and treated him as but a pawn in their plans. Mew is cute but mischievous, and surprisingly powerful; it is mysterious and its aims are hidden from us.

 Problem What is the problem that your characters have to solve? Mewtwo wants to take over the world, and Ash is trying to stop him. How will Ash overcome the threat, if he will at all?

 Plot What is the sequence of events that make up the story itself? More on this later.

 Climax What is the crisis where the problem is resolved one way or the other? How will it end, and how does it satisfy the reader?

When writing your story, you need to figure out these details and jot them down in point form on papaer before you even write down the first word of chapter one. Once you're experienced enough, you can do some or all of it in your head, but until then, you need written notes to help you. It gives you something you can review and revise and make sure it'll work before you waste time and effort typing up prose.

Plot

The plot is the sequence of events that logically follow each other to make up the story. It's important that this sequence is original and suspenseful. It also has to pique the readers interest and grab the reader's attention very quickly and maintain that interest.

To do this, your story needs to have a problem that needs to be solved: Ash has to get that badge from Surge, the world needs to be saved from Mewtwo, you want May and Drew to fall in love despite the odds against it.

To catch the reader's attention, a short story needs to present the problem early on. Obsidian Blade's Twisted Hierarchy does this in the very first paragraph:

The big day has come—it's time to battle the hardest you've ever battled in your life! You walk into the battle arena, people are cheering for you and you squint from the bright lights. You look up to see your opponent, and it's a Sandslash. The simple sight of its sandy hide, those silvery claws, the mahogany brown spines down its curved back... it makes every sense in your lithe Rattata body scream in terror.

Longer stories can wait a little longer, but not so long that you bore the reader with a story where nothing seems to happen.

Normally the main character is the one who has to solve the problem in spite of the odds against him or her (or them). As the plot moves forward, you want the character eventually to approach the resolution of the problem. To create suspense, there have to be obstacles to the main character finding the solution. An occasional setback also helps. Finally, at the climax to the story, the main character faces the problem head on, and it is resolved in a satisfylng way.

Satisfying doesn't necessarily mean that the hero wins, although that will often be the case. It means that the threads or aspects of the story have tied together and that the final resolution befits the characters' decisions. Maybe May and Drew fall in love—or maybe they're so chalk and cheese that the best resolution is that they realize it just won't work. Maybe Mew defeats Mewtwo and the world is saved—or maybe the hero's self-sacrifice leads Mewtwo to a change or heart and he retreats into the shadows (ready for the sequel). The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

The events making up the plot need to make sense. In the final Harry Potter book, Hermione changes her parents memory to make them believe they have different names. That might seem all right at first, but what doesn't make sense is that all their acquaintances will know them by their real names, not to mention the names on their bank accounts, bills and reams of existing correspondence! Plausibility is important because when you are telling a story, your reader needs to suspend his attention to reality and enter your fictional world. However, if that world contains implausibilities and inconsistencies, you risk losing the reader's "belief".

Characters

Your characters need to be real people, each with their own motivation for making the decisions and responses that they do. You don't have to reveal every detail of every minor character to the reader so long as you, the author, know what's going on.

Vary your characters, make them different, make them original. Some can prefer the classics and the fine arts, while the others can prefer popular culture. Ash is ill-prepared, rash, boastful but ultimately kind-hearted. His rival Gary is well-prepared, intelligent, arrogant and tends to be self-centered. Brock is experienced, strong, reliable and falls for any pretty girl.

One trick is to come up with a good combination of characters that will interact so as to create the plot, the originality and the suspense you need for your story. There are no easy answers—play around with ideas in your mind or on paper until you come up with something that you think will work for you.

No-one in real life is completely good or completely bad. We all have strengths and weaknesses, virtues and faults. The same must be true of your characters. Even the powerful, wise, old wizard Dumbledore had some imperfections that are revealed in the The Deathly Hallows. You'll find the occasional exception, like Richie, who is about as perfect as you can get, but even then the purpose of such a character was to show up by comparison the faults of the main character, Ash.

Narration

The narrator is the person telling the story. For that reason, it is important to choose wisely. Choices for a narrator include:

 First person. One of the characters tells the story, most often the main character. An advantage of this approach is that the reader identifies quickly and easily with the main character.

One limitation is that if the only information you can present to the reader is what your narrator knows. If the narrator character is biased or deceived, so is the reader. Some plots need this limitation to work, but other plots won't work that way. More on this below.

In The Cliff by Fossil Magikarp, note how easily you get to know and care for the main character:

I never liked the Hitmonchan. Since I was young, he pushed me around. If I ever got in his way, he'd clear me out of his way with a quick fist. If he was bored, I'd get pounded for his enjoyment. If he was angry, he'd beat his anger out of himself into my spindly body.

Today he'll beat me for his pride. And today my body will end up at the bottom of that cliff. So be it.

A third person approach could convey the same information, but the first person puts the reader a step closer to the character, inviting him to enter the character's heart and soul.

A less commonly used first person approach is to tell the story from the point of view of a minor character who has little part in the plot, but mainly acts as an observer. This is known as "frame narration".

 Second person. The story says what "you" see and do. This approach has mainly been used for "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories, but there are other rare examples. Among them is Obsidian Blade's Twisted Hierarchy. Notice how the second person, present tense style involves you in the thick of the action, makes you feel like you have to make the decisions:

This is the enemy.

Even with the presence of your trainer behind you, even with four years of training and fun times separating you from the wild, your instinct still sings high pitched and feral, wailing danger, danger, danger!

In the wild, that Sandslash would kill you. There is no changing that.

And so it is with tingling nerves that you take up your place in the battle arena, it is with a mind screaming for you to run that you await your trainer's commands. You lower your head and square your shoulders in preparation, trying so hard to hide your terror as you narrow your angular crimson eyes and bare your sharp fangs. The Sandslash simply moves one clawed foot forward and leans its weight on that leg, the black oblivion of its predatory eyes betraying no emotion but casual confidence as it clicks the claws on its hands together in a bored fashion.

Your heart beats faster.

 Third person. The narrator is a storyteller, distinct from the characters. This is a very common style with two main approaches, third person "limited" and third person "omniscient". A third person limited narrator tells the story from the point of view of the main character; like first person stories, the information passed to the reader is limited to the perceptions and biases of the narrator character. A third person omniscient narrator knows everything, much like in a traditional fairy tale, and is out to spin a yarn, telling the story objectively and with access to all the information.

Imagine hearing Snow White from her point of view. Without already knowing about the mirror on the wall, we as listeners would fail to understand what's going on. The omniscience is essential to the story. On the other hand, a detective story is told from the detective's point of view as he gradually pieces together the evidence. An omniscient point of view means we already know who did the crime, so there's not much point to the story.

There are other approaches lying between the limited and the omniscient. In the Harry Potter series, for instance, Rowling sometimes selectively presents information that can only be known omnisciently. By and large, though, it's only Harry's mind and aspirations we're privy to.

I personally have a philosophical objection to Rowling's approach, although I confess that I used it in my Fairy Tale. With the third person limited style, suspense can be created by the character's and therefore the reader's lack of knowledge: the hero does not know what the villain is up to. With a third person omniscient style, the narrator and therefore the reader knows everything. Suspense is created by not knowing the future: will the hero's plan be enough to deal with the villain? Omniscience can even add to the suspense: the villain has a secret weapon we know about but the hero does not! The trouble with an in-between approach is that information is being withheld from the reader artificially: we know that the villain is up to something but the narrator is refusing to tell us. You can form your own opinion on the matter—I just thought I'd tell you mine.

Writing and Revising Your Story

When you've figured out your characters and you're sure your plot holds water, go ahead and start fleshing it out into a story. A useful piece of advice I've found is to write the first draft quickly, without stopping or going back to check. Then, once you're finished your first draft, go back and work through your story and check it carefully for grammar, spelling, style, inconsistencies, and better ways of expressing what you want to say. This time you should work slowly.

Don't neglect revision. Important things to check for, including what we've already looked at are:

 consistency—one part of the story can't contradict another part;

 plausibility—it has to make sense and be realistic within the assumptions of the story;

 originality—no-one likes a story that they've heard before, unless there's some new spin on it;

 suspense—it needs to grip the reader and keep them wanting to read;

 ending—it needs to finish by tying the threads together with a good climax and satisfying resolution.

Don't be afraid to throw things away. Scenes or aspects of your story that don't fit in need to be axed or replaced with something better.

When writing for the internet, you often wish to publish one chapter at a time so you can get some feedback and gauge the response sooner rather than later. This means you can't write the whole story, revise it, and publish it in one go as you do a novel. In that case, I advise that you do the preparation for the entire story perhaps in a little more detail than usual, and then apply the above process to a chapter or group of chapters at a time.

Conclusion

All this detail may seem daunting, but it's worth the effort in coming to grips with it. The best course of action for you is to have a go. Go ahead and write, and focus on one aspect that you'd like to work on. Don't worry if your attempt has, say, shallow characters. If it has a better plot than you've managed before, then you're ahead! Just keep practicing, and with experience you're sure to improve.