latias chan said:
Okay to start things off these are thier pokemon
Brendon's: ;249; ;381; :386-s: ;006; ;248;
May's:;251; ;154; ;380; ;151; ;385;
Yes, I know May is stronger. Well, anyway, here's the story..
As May sent out her first pokemon, Brendon began to shake with fear.
"I can't defeat May, she's to powerful."
"Go, Celebi."
"Bree!"
"GO, Lugia."
"Raaaaaaaa," cried Lugia.
"Celebi, use Ancient Power!"
Ancient Power is super effective against a Flying type like Lugia.
"Lugia, use Aero Blast." (There were no " "s to indicate that this was supposed to be speech, but given the pattern you used of trainers giving commands and pokemon using attacks, and that you said 'use' instead of 'used', I'm guessing this is Brendon's speech.)
As Lugia used Aero Blast, a tornado came right out of its mouth.
"BRRRRRRREEEEEE," cried Celebi.
TO BE CONTINUED
That's the entire thing corrected - save for the smilies at the beginning. You just had about three reviewers tell you it was laziness to do that. Well, that's assuming that you did it because you couldn't be bothered to put that information in the story proper. Mebbe you did it cause you felt it would look good/help with the story. Whatever the case, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that all the reviewers saw it as laziness and counted it as a negative for your story. And that sort of reaction is something you have to make sure doesn't happen. Even if you reckon something looks cool, if your readers don't, lose that something or chances are, you'll lose your readers instead.
Part of the reason WHY people think it's lazy is because it substitutes symbols for words. As a lot of the writers around here know all too well, making section of text that conveys the meanings you want it to while being pleasant to read is extremely difficult. Yet most writers slog through the tiring process of paragraph construction to produce a story that they feel reads well. You, however and for whatever reason, didn't - and they don't like that. Basically, they put in the effort and see no reason for you not to. Same goes for formatting, spelling and punctuation. Most of the readers around here are writers, too, and they generally don't feel that someone should cut the corners they take great efforts to go around.
Another point - writing a story requires a bit more than purely getting your ideas across to your readers. From what you've got so far, it's easy for people to see that there's a battle going on and that May is supposed to be stronger than Brendon - also included is the info about which trainers have what pokemon. Unfortunately, experienced writers know that even in a simple scene like this, there's a lot you haven't said. Things like 'why do both trainers have legendaries and how did they get them?', 'who are May and Brendon and if they're supposed to be the trainers from the canon, what happened to their original teams of pokemon?', 'where is this taking place', 'why are they battling', 'is anyone/thing else around?' and so forth. There's a lot of background detail missing that makes it hard for readers to really 'get into' the story.
Probably a lot of this could be solved through deeper characterisation. At the moment, all your readers can tell is that there's a battle going on and that one of the participants doesn't think he's strong enough to win. Whilst the readers can assume for themselves that the boy is feeling nervous and presumably forced to battle, that there's probably got a lot at stake since they've got such powerful pokemon, that's about the extent of the information you've implied. Even then, you've not confirmed these theories - the reader is making it up as they go along. That doesn't work so well cause readers generally look down upon writers that make them do the work.
Yup, readers like the story to be clearly defined and the details to be provided by the writer. Perhaps it's hypocrisy that they want you to work as hard as you can while they do as little as possible, but yeh have to remember that people have a lot of other stuff to do than read your story. There's a lot of other stories out there that would provide a fully developed read where the reader doesn't need to think about it - so given the choice, why would they read yours? Perhaps you have great ideas - but until you convey them so that the reader isn't dragging them out of your story, there's little incentive for people to make the effort to read what you've written.
Long story short - have a look around at some of the other stories out here. When you look at a five star story with lots of replies, look at the length and stucture and see how you can imitate this. When you look at a lower rated story with few replies, try looking at the reviews to see what people are complaining about so you can avoid making these mistakes yourself.
For your own story, I'd strongly recommend getting someone to beta read this for you (that is, having someone who you KNOW can write well read over your work before you post it and make any corrections needed so your readers don't feel like they're editting your story for you). Technical stuff like paragraphing, spelling and punctuation aren't negotiable if you want readers to take the time and effort to look at your story - readers can be enormously judgemental and lazy about things like that, so make sure you improve your chances as much as possible!
And finally, add as much depth as possible. Spoon feed your readers what the scene is like - is it deserted or very populated and if there's a crowd, what sort of people are in it and what are they doing? What are the characters like as people? Do they have behavioural mannerisms (like nibbling their lips or running hands through their hair or standing in a certain way or fiddling with their clothes or any of the numerous strange habits people have that I haven't listed here)? How do each of them react to the battle as it unfolds? Basically, fill in the details so the readers won't have to. Yeah, it's a lot of work - but that's part of why people are so unimpressed at what you've got so far: all three of these reviewers are writers who put this sort of effort into their work.
Last little warning: length - the rules say that each chapter (apart from the prologue) must be at least a page in MS Word... and that any story that breaks that rule runs the risk of being closed. Stories are also at risk of being closed if they have lots of spelling, punctuation and formatting problems. So unless you wanna run that risk, I really recommend you type your next chapter in Word or OpenOffice or something like that (not Notepad - it does strange things to paragraphing and doesn't offer a spellchecker. You could use Notepad as a rough draft - but it's easier to type straight into Word or the like.) and then send that copy to someone who's agreed to beta for you.
Anyway, this is one WHOPPING read - so I hope it helps explain stuff well. But if you've got any questions or problems or if you want something here explained, let me know! I know I didn't give a lot of explicit strategies for fixing these problems, but if you want some, again, let me know. Okay, well, good luck and fun to you!!
Piney.
;204;;324;
