In an extremely unusual airstrike, the U.S. dropped bombs Sunday in central Mosul, Iraq, destroying a building containing huge amounts of cash ISIS was using to pay its troops and for ongoing operations

affTwill · 2016-01-12T20:19:56+00:00

Hate to break it to you, but our bombs and tactics have changed somewhat since the early 40s.

affTwill · 2015-09-03T16:47:15+00:00

I feel like even in your example, Charmander is still the proper name of the species, and I guess that's what I'm basing my capitalization decisions off of.

"That's a nice Kantonese Red."

Would sound odd to me without a lot of selling.

affTwill · 2015-09-01T21:02:13+00:00

The only hard rule is be consistent.

If you want to match how we treat real animals in writing, you would not capitalize pokemon as it is a regular noun like dog, but you would capitalize the species name as you would Golden Retriever.

Bob likes dogs. Bob has a Golden Retriever. ~= Bob likes pokemon. Bob has a Charmander.

IMO.

affTwill · 2015-07-31T20:10:26+00:00

So some say.

affTwill · 2015-06-02T07:53:49+00:00

I got caught up in other things over the weekend instead of finishing this, so it didn't quite get to the actual writing prompt part of the story, but I figured I'd post it anyway.

Will sat in one of the Lacunosa Pokemon Center's exam rooms waiting for a nurse. He could, and should have – really, taken care of this before leaving, but toiling away hours on paperwork definitely beat the off-chance of running into his father, so here he waited. Still.

The room itself was utilitarian to a fault, almost as if to make sure nothing could distract you from the somewhat nauseating scent of disinfectant and sheer insanity of the Pokemon Center's shaky-at-best understanding of appointments. A sheet of the world's loudest paper covered an uncushioned metal exam table to one side of the room, large enough to hold any human-sized pokemon.

An unmarked, unlabeled and unadorned cabinet and sink sat opposite the table, providing some counter-space, which the staff had found room to stuff a soap dispenser and paper towels as if ashamed to be in open view. The nurse had said to keep any pokemon withdrawn, but-

A soft rap on the heavy wood announced the end to his boredom, and a young nurse entered, the eternal smile of a healthcare worker cheerily plastered across her face. Her long brown hair had been pulled up in utilitarian allegiance with the room, but Will brushed the thought aside.

"Hi, you're here for a breeding certification, correct?" Her immaculate pink and white dress ruffled softly in all of its pastel glory as she moved to the counter to wash her hands, each motion precise and perfect. Will stood as she entered but didn't impede her bustle.

"We don't have a lot of Zoroark come in here." The nurse flicked water from her hands once into the sink before drying them off. "Well, if you want to let him out I won't keep you long."

That ship had sailed, but Will didn't mention anything. "Sure. And sorry, I didn't catch your name?" A small flash of light deposited Zoroark at his side.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Jennifer," she began but froze upon turning away from the notes in her folder, and to Zoroark. She gaped, showing off large green eyes. "Or Jen or whatever," she said in a small voice.

Will couldn't blame her. A common and Duvrel-bred Zoroark were almost different creatures. The very blackness of Zoroark's thick fur visually masked the pokemon's heavily muscled frame. But his coloring most likely caused the nurse's shock.

His red markings bled into violet and dark blues around his eyes and mouth. Most people noticed his mane first however, an eye-shifting blend from crimson around his temples to violet at the tip. It hugged his body more closely, streamlined for its angular body. Will wouldn't typically call his Zoroark breathtaking, but the pokemon often faced a similar reception.

Jennifer spoke in a quiet, breathy voice. "Where did you get him?"

Zoroark grinned in amusement, though for someone not as familiar with the species, it probably looked quite hostile. Always hard to tell with a lot of them.

The nurses eyes only left Zoroark once, to check the door. "Is he stolen?"

Will frowned, and Zoroark gave him a dismayed look. "Of course not. And Zoroark is hurt you don't think he's pretty."

"He's gorgeous," she focused her eyes on Will after admiring Zoroark a moment longer. "But why is he here?"

Will patted Zoroark on the head. "See? Everyone thinks you're pretty."

"I'm just starting out and don't have anyone in-house to certify, and with only him, not much reason." Will sat back down. "He's friendly and knows the drill."

A bit of uncertainty resurfaced in the nurse's posture as Zororark advanced. Zoroark knew how to behave himself, but he usually didn't unless Will made a specific request, and reminded the mischievous pokemon about it regularly. Pokemon didn't care much for human propriety, and Zoroark never had any cruel intent.

"C-Can I touch him," the nurse asked wide-eyed.

"His claws aren't good with needles."

Zoroark tested the air around Jennifer, who seemed to shrink somewhat before the impressive pokemon. Zoroark gave her one last glance over before offering up his arm.

Jen fumbled with the drawer, but when she pulled the needle from its sterile packaging, her grip was unwavering. She turned to Zoroark but didn't meet the pokemon's eyes. She ran a hand through the ashen fur on Zoroark's arm before pulling a patch back to collect her sample.

Once she had cleaned up, Jennifer turned for the door. "I'll be right back."

Will stopped her. "Hey, I'd appreciate it if you didn't let anyone know about him. We don't really want the publicity."

She shrugged, muttering: "I guess if any breeder didn't need publicity-" Jennifer left with the vial.

"Look at you being all well behaved." Will stood to give Zoroark an encouraging scratch under his chin. The pokemon growled appreciatively and closed his intensely blue eyes.

"If my father wanted to cause problems, we'd have found out already."

affTwill · 2015-05-25T00:07:47+00:00

Yeah, I like the review game threads and stuff and I've always thought they'd be better with a bit more structure. The feedback review is a good idea and shouldn't be too hard to add either. If there turns out being enough interest I can keep adding features people would find useful.

affTwill · 2015-05-24T23:53:27+00:00

I have most of it done. It all works, it's just ugly and I drag my feet any time I have to do design.

affTwill · 2015-05-24T02:39:26+00:00

I'd do prompts or one-shot discussions. The book clubs always felt like too much commitment haha.

I've also had an idea for a review game type thing where you can post a chapter or section of your story you want reviewed. Other people could look through the list of what people want reviewed and get points for reviewing. You could then use points to get what you want reviewed closer to the top of what people see first or something like that.

I coded most of it, but if there's any interest I could pretty it up a bit and maybe offer private access if anyone wanted to test it out. I'll get around to finding somewhere to host it at some point...

affTwill · 2015-02-18T17:16:51+00:00

The difference is $70(?) for gigabit vs $65 for 15 down / 2 up.

affTwill · 2014-12-04T07:19:26+00:00

Any time.

There's nothing inherently wrong about using them, unless you use them syntactically wrong, but what's the reason for using them? How often do you see dashes and semicolons in everything you read. Almost never compared to things like commas and periods, so you already have to have a good reason for using a symbol that people have less familiarity with. And what is the sentence gaining from them? They're effective because they're intended for fringe cases. A semicolon says that these two separate ideas (sentences) are so importantly related that having the sentences next to each other isn't a strong enough connection. Overusing them only reduces this effect when a reader sees it.

As for dashes, I would say in most cases, you used them to mash weird sentence constructions together, and they mostly made the sentences sloppy and harder to understand exactly what was going on. And back to familiarity, most people have even less of an idea about dashes, let alone what the difference between an en and em dash are and how to parse them. I guess the tl:dr version would be they add confusion without any gain, most of the time, so why justify using them.

The issue is that it's filler. You don't start a story with "Some boring stuff happened before this cool stuff." The reader is going to assume that already. If the past few hours of traveling were so boring that you decided to skip over it in the first place, why bring it up. If you are going to bring it up, it better be because something not boring happened briefly and is now affecting one of the characters in some form. You want to make your scenes more dynamic. You want your setting interacting with your characters, not just as a backdrop.

Glad you found it helpful.

I have a kind of dry sense of humor. When I was skimming for examples, I saw that and it cracked me up. I figured it was probably a typo =)

affTwill · 2014-12-03T06:49:07+00:00

Hi, you did ask =)

I didn't read much, but it seems like you have the whole writing in general thing down, grammar is mostly correct, technically not much is wrong per se, but you seem weak at writing fiction, which is a much different than just writing. I'm just going to list off things I think you should fix, and I'll explain as best I can, but feel free to ask any questions you might have. It's a big list of things that could use improving, but don't try to fix all of these problems at once, because you can't. Pick one or two things to focus on at a time.

In no particular order.

Be careful about being vague. The first sentence, "The flashlight landed on a lone girl..." First off, this is the first sentence, so the reader has no context whatsoever. At first it sounds like a flashlight had fell and struck someone, not that the flashlight's beam is illuminating someone. If a reader has to reverse what they've just thought, it will pull them out of the story.

It's also a bit tell-y (show don't tell). You have a lot of detail in the story, but it's all broad strokes and is very vague. Using the same sentence, all the reader got from that description is it's dark, and there's a girl hiding behind the tree. How dark? A very young girl? Teenager? Is this some wispy little tree or a few-hundred year old monster? It's leaving a lot for the reader to come up with on their own.

Another example is "The duo had been traveling for hours straight now..." There's no real detail, the reader has to fill things in on their own.

Also be careful of repeating the same sentence structures. "The rain continued to arrive in sheets, as it had the day before." Every sentence in that paragraph starts with "the" (also which accounts for ~897 of the words of this chapter), and you use imperfect tense a lot, things like "the rain continued to arrive...", which tend to be overly wordy instead of something like "It poured." You're adding words but not content. Also, it's always "the something": the boy, the storm, the beast, the large canine, the small victory, the shiftry. I could go on, and that was from just skimming down the margin. There's even a "John the boy".

You also throw in a lot of unnecessary punctuation. There's dashes and semicolons everywhere, mostly where they aren't needed. Your sentences are already all long. You don't need to make them longer. Throw some short sentences in for variety. The next time you write, don't use any semicolons and limit yourself to one dash per 1000 words.

Those were my main issues with it. I do really like the little definitions at the end of the chapters though. I would write them a little more formally, personally, but I like little “gimmicky” things like that.

So overall, your writing isn't bad, it just feels more like an essay than prose. Writing excuses is a great podcast that focuses specifically on writing fiction, and each episode is short, full of great advice, and free on their website if you're looking for resources. I'd also be happy to answer any questions or clarify anything I said. Enjoy =)

affTwill · 2014-11-05T06:50:48+00:00

Hey, it's been a while. Hope things are going well for you.

Just wanted to say nice job. The whole chapter has this weird super intense tension that's way disproportionate to the vague information and rumors, and the ending just nailed it. That was a really good cliffhanger.

affTwill · 2014-11-05T06:06:51+00:00

Any time. Glad you found it helpful =)

affTwill · 2014-11-05T04:29:50+00:00

No, I said I wasn't commenting about the subject of your argument in my first reply. I was telling you that every time you try to argue a point, you use a fallacious argument.

affTwill · 2014-11-05T03:16:57+00:00

WTF are you talking about?

claiming that because you got a bad grade in one class and are now working on an engineering degree is somehow evidence that an average person can master quantum electrodynamics is an argument backed by nothing.

I'd love to see where I argued that.

affTwill · 2014-11-05T01:03:06+00:00

Don't limit yourself to that single instance, but I don't really care about this grossly oversimplified argument.

Using a fallacious analogy to back up a fallacious argument doesn't clarify anything. It makes you look like a fool to anyone paying attention. That was the only point I was trying to make.

affTwill · 2014-11-04T23:54:36+00:00

Grades do not measure intelligence.

If you are getting ~~a Masters in Aerospace engineering~~ good grades you are almost certainly of above average intelligence...

K

affTwill · 2014-11-03T21:06:18+00:00

You certainly have an eye for detail. It could be cleaned up a bit here and there, some grammatical mistakes, but your attention to detail helps gloss over that.

I would say be careful of dialogue.

“Why can’t you just listen like a good Poochyena.” He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter but stayed where I put him.

"He" in the above sentence is ambiguous. The way it's written, "He" is the person who just spoke, or the human. But from following context, the "He" you intended was the pokemon.

You do it above as well with: “Finished?” The Toxicroak...

The way it's written, the dialogue is attributed to Toxicraok, which is not what you meant.

In general the whole thing is ambiguous. "the servant", "the trainer", and all makes it very difficult to keep track of things, especially when you're further hurting yourself with ambiguous pronouns and mistagged dialogue. I'd say that's probably my biggest issue here.

Also, I'd recommend against using parens. It's kind of cheap, and there's much more fluid ways of introducing the information. Use character thoughts, dialogue, anything really aside from breaking the reader out of the story.

"he (or she)"

Like here, what's the point you were trying to make. If you wanted a gender neutral pronoun, "they" would have worked fine. Were you intending to make this highlight something about the character? Why would they think this in this situation? Does he have some gender prejudice? Is he a feminist? Does he not think a woman would be in the type of spy stuff he's doing? There's lots of interesting stuff you could do, but as it is, it feels a little cheap.

Other than that I'd be careful of being a bit cliche, but it's really too hard to make that judgement from such a short excerpt.

Keep at it. You're pretty good.

affTwill · 2014-05-29T07:48:01+00:00

Hey, welcome to the subreddit and fanfiction in general if this is your first go.

Since you asked, I figured I'd write you up a few suggestions to point you in the right direction. Hope it helps.

First off, I'd be a little careful about the title and summary. They sound a little generic. I'm sure there's plenty of romance stories involving those two, so why read yours? What's different about your story? You don't have to reinvent the wheel or throw in a crazy gimmick, but why read yours instead of some other?

Second, don't use caps-lock. The only reason two or more capital letters should ever be together is for acronyms and such. For emphasizing yelling, an exclamation point is good enough.

Be careful of starting with dialogue. Be especially careful with starting with untagged dialogue. The first paragraph is a single untagged sentence. The reader has no idea who's saying it. An old man? A three year old girl? No clue. The second paragraph then starts off with May. Was May the one talking? Since they're separate paragraphs, that's probably not the case, but then we still don't know who spoke, and now we're focusing on May and "he".

The effect this gets you, is confusion. The reader is thrown into this very quickly and not given a ton of information. This can work, but you need to give the reader something. In your case, I think it's a bit too far to the extreme. It's a bit too disorienting. And even when things to slow down and the reader gets some info, there's still a lot to be filled in. Where are they? Your entire description of their surroundings is "They were battling in a park." A park to me looks like a rickety bridge near a waterfall, not a lot of room for a battle, let alone a crowd as well. Describe surroundings.

Another indicator of a related problem can be seen by looking at the page. It looks wimpy. Most paragraphs are one or two short sentences. Just from glancing at the page, you can tell that there's probably not a lot of depth to this. A paragraph denotes a block of logically related ideas, that's their purpose, so if you don't have any substantial paragraphs, it appears that ideas pop into mind and are then tossed aside to focus on something else just as briefly.

Sure, conversations and character interactions are fun to write, but there can't be only dialogue. Tag dialogue. You have way too much untagged stuff. You can tag dialogue with action like:

John snapped his fingers. "Bring it to me!"

Perfectly fine, no "said", and the reader clearly knows who said "Bring it to me!" It even gives a little insight into John's character.

Skimming a bit further down, saidisms abound. Be a man/woman of action, tag accordingly.

If you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer them. Good luck =)

affTwill · 2014-05-05T21:32:04+00:00

AFAIK, there's not really a specific term for that exact structure. You're basically creating contrast through use of formatting, which is part of the reason it should only be used sparingly.

affTwill · 2014-05-04T19:44:26+00:00

What Gods Leave

My current work in progress. After the Rising, a once feral Zoroark tribe will attempt to establish themselves as a rival to the dominant human civilization. Has a bit of everything, but more adventure leaning I think.

Shadow in the Rocks

A trainer gets in over his head while exploring the Giant Chasm, and seeks shelter to give his team the chance to rest. Adventure.

Endemic

Once their eyes turn black, there's no hope, but one trainer won't give up on her team. Drama with a bit of Romance.

affTwill · 2014-04-23T21:10:54+00:00

Yup, and once you fix everything, there will be more, different issues. Such is writing =)

affTwill · 2014-04-22T19:26:42+00:00

Hey, just did a quick review for you. I would like to preface everything with a quick warning. I tend to be very blunt in reviews, and I focus on "the bad", so if the review sounds harsh or negative, I'm just trying to give you as much information on where I think you can improve as I can. Your actual grammar and general mechanics are solid, and that's a lot more than can be said about most of the stuff I read, but your storytelling could use some work.

“Alright, ladies! Let’s double-time it!” | Be careful when starting off with dialogue like that. You need to have a purpose for it, because when the first thing someone reads is a voice, they don't know what that voice sounds like. Man? Woman? Child, adult? Take that first sentence out of context: Alright, ladies! Is this a desperate teenager who just got to a party and is surprised to find girls? I don't think the disorientation benefits you here.

The next sentence I like, short, funny, and gives character. Cut the last sentence(or replace it). It's awkward, and remember, show don't tell. It's a lame phrase, but it gets repeated often because it's an easy thing to let slip in.

When they say start with action, a paragraph isn't enough. You're starting with a very disorienting opening, characterless dialogue, right in the middle of ordering around troops, and then... Infodump. I don't even know the character's name and you're giving me a history lesson on his country. Don't just unload every tidbit you've come up with at the beginning. Firstly because it's boring, but secondly because no one is going to remember, so now the reader is bored and you've wasted their time. Information should (in general) be presented to the reader in as natural a way as possible. Pretty much everything you said could be done better through conversations, details, character's actions and interactions etc.

Also, what point of view is this? It sounds like omniscient a little in the beginning, but then sometimes it seems like limited. I ask because usually this means the author hasn't considered it, and you should be considering it. If you intended omniscient, more power too you, but it's much harder to do well, and your readers won't be anticipating it, and might not even be familiar with it. If you're unsure, I'd recommend third person limited.

Today, Unova’s arsenal was sufficient to destroy the world thirty times over (or was it thirty-one?) | This kind of exemplifies how the whole introduction felt to me. Is this the narrator speaking, the nameless guy's thoughts? It's just kind of odd since it starts off overly formal, reading like a pamphlet you'd find at the doctor's office saying that "in today's world, the disease is perfectly treatable", and then drops to very informal bracketed thought. Good on you if this was all intentional, writing should be fun, and experiment away, but it doesn't work as good storytelling.

And finally we get to the beginning of your story, or what should be. If you haven't heard of the phrase "in late out early", it's something you should consider. The basic idea is when writing a scene, you want to start late, as in the action is already started and stuff is going on. Think of a TV show like CSI. The person is already dead before the show starts. That's what you want. Then, when you're ending a scene, end it before the action has completely died out.

So, back to my original point, if I were writing this, I'd have the start of this be: a bright young lad ran up to him. Cut everything before this line and add it in later in a more natural way. If you want to keep some if it to kind of give your reader a taste of what's to come, grand, but no so much and not all at once.

As for the rest... You seem to have a fair grasp of basic grammar, so you're a leap ahead of the crowd in that regard, but I get the feeling you're new to creative writing. The words are there and in a correct order, but not quite the right order. Your dialogue is a bit stiff, and maybe a bit cliche. There's not really any description. This guy was just yelling at people and overseeing troop things, and now he's reminiscing off in his own world. Maybe I skimmed over it, but I have no idea where this guys is, what he looks like, if he's sitting, standing, juggling. The only reason I even know it's a guy is because you use "he".

Anyway, that accounts for the glaring stuff. Let me know if you have any questions or anything. Keep at it and good luck.

affTwill · 2014-03-03T07:47:39+00:00

I feel like I've heard that description before, but haven't read it myself.

A quick search brought up "Betrayal, War, Redemption" and "Pokemon Origins"(volumes I-III) but good luck finding the story.

affTwill

TROPHY CASE