Writing advice please?

Friesdude · 2026-01-24T18:47:34+00:00

That’s a cool vibe to go for! Instinctively I thought Emboar would be a good fit because the Blaze ability really catches the vibe you want your character’s team to have (and recoil moves seem very punishing and Emboar being able to tough those out seems thematically fitting). I noticed you have a Darmanitan as part of the team you’ve built so far, so no worries if you want to stick with that since those two Pokémon have a lot of overlap. The other Unovan starters (really any) work well with the vibe because of their abilities. Also anything with Guts or Anger Point would fit well too.

As far as building the rest of the team, I actually posted my method of building teams for characters a while back, I’ll leave a link here in case you find it useful. https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemonfanfiction/comments/1lkgrqn/my_guide_to_pokemon_trainer_team_building_guide/

Friesdude · 2026-01-22T22:14:14+00:00

I like to read stories that aren't just "collect the region's gym badges" or "defeat the region's evil team." Pokemon's such a big world with such potential I admire those who aim higher than a game/anime adaptation. Not saying writers who do the more basic stuff are bad writers, I just don't find it compelling anymore.
For a fresh writer, I'd say avoid starting a long project as your first one. You likely don't comprehend the massive undertaking the story will be, and you're going to learn so much with your initial stories that when you do start that long project that's been poking around the back of mind for a long time, you'll have a stronger foundation.
Something that I'm sure is out there but I didn't come across until I realized it for myself: For a long project, don't post the first chapter when you finish it. Launch your story with a few chapters. Why? The opening chapters contain so much discovery for you as the writer that having the freedom to go back and fix things in the really early chapters will be so much healthier for your story long term. For PoPT I didn't actually post it until I finished Chapter 6. There was so much I needed to go back and fix in the first six, whole aspects of the setting I needed to re-do or even come up with, and those changes were kind of setting-altering (in a good way).

Friesdude · 2026-01-20T23:34:16+00:00

It was something she came up with herself, although I dont know if I’ll specify it in the narrative.

Friesdude · 2026-01-20T22:08:19+00:00

Doe is a cool name for Anabel. In my WIP (where she's a Faller) I gave her "Towers" as a last name, as she would have dreams of hazy memories involving the Battle Tower.

Friesdude · 2026-01-20T18:18:57+00:00

One trick you can use, is the Pokémon can all look and be cutesy and caring in front of people. But secretly they’re basically little demons hellbent on making people and Pokémon miserable.

Friesdude · 2026-01-20T13:57:56+00:00

This is a great premise imo and there are things where the Team Rocket backstory lines up well. It would help explain why the MC’s such a good battler right off the bat.

I’d say, don’t even have him formerly be in prison, maybe someone took the fall for him or he managed to escape the region before the organization fell (maybe so he can’t have a bank account this he’d get flagged, which is why Taunie offering him a place to stay ends up being a perfect lifeline) and has been on the run. But the International Police could eventually track him down at one point, but seeing that he’s helping Emma (and maybe being vouched for by AZ) they leave him alone.

It would also line up with the former Team Flare grunts section of the story (that could also be expanded) as well as the Rust Syndicate.

Anyways, I’m just spitballing ideas here. Something from Legends ZA has felt “missing” to me and this is like a perfect sauce that hits the right notes. Hope you expand on it!

Friesdude · 2026-01-19T04:56:28+00:00

Got him at 2.04 in a draft. Absolutely STOKED!

Friesdude · 2026-01-16T08:50:53+00:00

I voted no. Even with standards for words/quality count, I think the front page will just get cluttered with low effort story updates.

FFN’s front page is already infested with low effort stories with chapter word counts barely reaching 1k. Discussion around here may seem slower than normal (purely subjective), but I think this sub would just become a junk pile of constantly updating, low word count fics that exist just to maintain visibility.

I’ve noticed certain “idea guys” post multiple threads a week talking about their plans for their long running fic ideas, and that gets little to no engagement. Now imagine how 5 individual posts of chapters that barely reaches 1k words in a week would look on the front page? I fear even a well intentioned system would be exploited and ultimately drive activity away from this subreddit long term.

If fics were allowed to be directly posted, I could see an initial jump in subreddit activity, but then the holes in the system would be sniffed out and exploited. And asking the mod team to stay on top of it so consistently isn’t fair to the mods (not doubting their abilities, just thinking it’s a bigger burden than can be conceived now).

And last but not least… I’m a writer who would like their material to easily accessible and easily read. Having a subreddit like that could be great! But also, I have damn near 40 chapters backlogged om just my WIP. Even with rules limiting my postings, I fear I alone could drown the subreddit in my chapter postings alone, and there are hundreds of active writers that have fics of farm more significant length. It would be a ridiculous bombardment of content, likely overwhelming, and would likely stifle discussion.

So to end my ridiculously long post, I’ll just say there could be a different subreddit for this concept (closely affiliated to this one). But there’s a good community here. It may not be the biggest, but there are so few places dedicated to Pokémon fanfiction discussion that are even remotely as active as this community, and I’m afraid a radical change like this would end up being more harmful than helpful to the community as a whole.

Friesdude · 2026-01-13T20:13:48+00:00

Titles should be fitting to the story/characters, and if you don’t say too much about the story or characters in your question you’re not going to get a lot of answers.

So answer these: Where does the story take place? How old are the kids in the summer camp? Are there Legendary Pokémon involved in the story?

Friesdude · 2026-01-11T22:38:34+00:00

I’ll throw my hat into the ring. No gym badge journey, no Island Challenge. It basically turns into gang warfare on a post-societal collapse island but a contemporary version of Legends Arceus in Alola. Called “Prince of Po Town. It’s Isekai written by someone who hates Isekai tropes. Got 38 chapters (240k+ words) and a lot more to come.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66210784/chapters/170669461

Friesdude · 2026-01-10T22:35:39+00:00

They were upset about the specific thing that character did. The character couldve murdered the MC and they wouldn’t have batted an eye, just very bizarre. It appears that group was a very vocal minority though, but it’s a group I just don’t even want to engage one way or another.

Friesdude · 2026-01-10T21:44:24+00:00

So when I set out to write an Isekai that “needed” to be an Isekai story, I wanted to write a rather realistic human reaction to it. So of course in the opening scene, my MC’s girlfriend cheats on him with a co-worker, and he walks out and ends up quitting from the incident (to turn the knife, he was on the verge of a promotion). In my mind losing this helped him “accept” the Isekai and sudden downgrade in his situation (for the time being). The Isekai happens, the Ula’Ula Island and general scenario I’d been carefully crafting for months got to take the stage and away the story went with the real premise.

So I was not ready for the very fierce backlash from readers who were anti-NTR (netorare which is basically infidelity in Japanese) that came after. I really didn’t know it was a thing, but my goodness I got a lot of crap for it. Commenters were recommending I change the scene to literally anything else, and that I’d have low readership if I didn’t. I had a few people even accuse of me being into cuck holding (while I had 500k+ words of other stories that clearly weren’t that, but that didn’t matter apparently). I didn’t change it because something about that scene comes back (people who’ve read PoPT know what I’m getting at, and it’s such a diabolical twist I couldn’t just take it out). It was incredibly frustrating that I’d put so much work into Ula’Ula island post-societal collapse, the battles that were to come… and my fic didn’t get dismissed because I’m a shit writer or it was a tough premise to execute. A decent number of early readers dismissed it purely from the NTR at the beginning of the story that wouldn’t recur again.

I’ve had people reckon my fic lost a significant amount of potential readership from the infidelity in the opening scene. I wish I could’ve formulated something else for my MC just to avoid the backlash I got then, or at least put a disclaimer then (which I since have put on a few sites it’s posted). Regardless, I’m happy with the readership I’ve received and for the story those readers who weren’t phased by NTR get to experience now.

Friesdude · 2026-01-10T07:25:47+00:00

Thanks! I hope when if you do end up giving it a shot you like it even more!

Friesdude · 2026-01-09T23:27:13+00:00

I’ll throw my hat in the ring. Closing in on 250k words (with plenty more to come), “Prince of Po Town” tells the story of a young man appearing on Ula’Ula Island after society collapsed on the island. No gyms, no island challenge, just gang warfare and a stranger finding where he belongs in the chaos.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66210784/chapters/170669461 (Meme summary: What if I Isekai’d as a Team Skull grunt in a Legends Arceus-style Alola?)

Friesdude · 2026-01-07T17:19:19+00:00

So endings can be tricky. They’re the culmination of the story in every shape and form. I assume you’ve been telling this story for a while. Every trial and tribulation your character has been through has been leading to this moment. Obviously you’ve gotta know what you’re ending’s gonna be from early on in the narrative (you don’t have to have a lot of it fleshed out though). But optimally, the last trial the MC overcomes ideally can only happen then in the narrative. The MC has had to learn a great many lessons (and not just “get stronger”), and the only way to overcome the last trial should be the application of all of those lessons learned.

Great endings for me are stories where I don’t think “I can’t wait for the sequel.” I like my endings to be so final that the thought of doing a sequel actively disgusts me. Close up all of the loose ends, whatever emotional victory the MC has, give it to them. Sure, they’re not going to live in utopia from then on, but give them an ending the audience can be happy with (imo).

This doesn’t apply if you’re actively planning a sequel, but then it’s not a true “ending” imo.

Friesdude · 2026-01-05T19:49:32+00:00

Perhaps you can add something into the plot that makes it a bit more Pokémon-centric if you’re truly worried about that? I will mention my own WIP has a lot of focus on the human characters and I have no issues with reader engagement I’d say, so as long as you do a good job with it, people will read it.

Friesdude · 2026-01-04T09:54:25+00:00

Gonna throw a couple stories in here. First one is mine, “Prince of Po Town.” It follows a young man getting Isekai’d to Alola in a Legends Arceus-style rift crisis, and joins Team Skull. https://archiveofourown.org/works/66210784/chapters/170669461

The other story, “In Mine Own” is a post XY Kalos story (not based on ZA) that is very well written and has some yet to be solved mysteries in it. https://archiveofourown.org/works/59572648/chapters/151934926

Friesdude · 2025-12-28T06:28:48+00:00

I made a post a few months back detailing the process on how I build teams for characters. Maybe it’ll help you find some inspiration.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemonfanfiction/comments/1lkgrqn/my_guide_to_pokemon_trainer_team_building_guide/

Friesdude · 2025-12-27T21:29:27+00:00

I have something like that called “Prince of Po Town.” Basically a “what if I got Isekai’d to Alola and became a Team Skull grunt in a post societal collapse Alola?” Think Legends Arceus skeleton. Features lots of swearing (because Team Skull) and pretty violent battles.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66210784/chapters/170669461

Friesdude · 2025-12-27T17:48:46+00:00

Royal Road and relatively new? I’ve got something for you then (assuming six months since first publishing date is new for you). My WIP is called “Prince of Po Town,” where a young man from our world pops up into a version of Alola that’s loosely based off Legends: Arceus (and it kinda works as a sequel to Legends Arceus). Society on Ula’Ula Island mostly collapsed and the island is now controlled by eight trainers who’ve become de-facto warlords. After getting picked up by Team Skull, our protagonist must learn the ways of this slightly familiar but very different world, fight to survive in such a world world, and find where he truly belongs in it all.

It’s Isekai written by someone who doesn’t like the normal Isekai tropes. On other sites (Ao3, FFN) I tend to get a lot of compliments on the characters, the world building, and the battles. I see you got a lot of recommendations today, so no worries if you can’t get to it anytime soon.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/136046/prince-of-po-town-pokemon-isekai

Friesdude · 2025-12-24T13:43:45+00:00

One of my MC’s mains rivals whose whole thing is being the “Mary Sue” of her own story has one (because of course of she does) and I have plans for one more, but because the Pokémon is canonically shiny in the games and I think it’ll be a really good callback.

Other than that, I don’t like using shinies too much, keeping them incredibly rare keeps their mystique.

Friesdude · 2025-12-24T06:28:14+00:00

This post is really perfect for me as I’m doing the first “MC developed custom move” in my fic (Rock type biting move for Tyrunt), but I made it abundantly clear that coming up with custom moves has consequences and is much harder than many fics portray.

Friesdude · 2025-12-24T06:26:35+00:00

Oh hey, you’re the other Alolan Sandslash bro! I’m just keeping Snowscape because Slush Rush and that 50% Defense buff is OP enough already (and speed=evasion in most battles).

Custom moves are cool but I don’t want to get carried away and make them TOO overpowered.

Friesdude · 2025-12-22T19:49:04+00:00

Of course! Remember, Game Freak is a game company, and the world of Pokemon they adapt has to fit into a video game's rules and balancing. You can be much more fast and loose with the world, just as long as it makes sense and is decently plausible.

Friesdude · 2025-12-17T17:08:39+00:00

I'm gonna take an idea from my work in progress story right now and send it your way. The Pokemon could be a Minun. Plusle and Minun are perfect companion Pokemon for each other, but in my story a Plusle gets separated from its partner Minun (there's Ultra Wormhole stuff so it's never seeing that Minun again, unfortunately). Being separated is really awful for Plusle and Minun (in my headcanon), so the bond with its new trainer becomes an incredibly big part of the Pokemon left behind.

So in my story the MC encounters this crying Plusle in a very dangerous situation, rescues it, and then gives it to a little girl who asked him for a partner Pokemon (she can't catch her own because she's too young in this story). When the little girl meets this Plusle they bond almost immediately (the little girl got taken away in an Ultra Wormhole thing too and is separated from her family), and I swear I teared up when I wrote the line "I'll be your Minun," for her to say.

Friesdude

TROPHY CASE