Pokemon Battles

[Publications]

Pokemon battles have tons of potential with all the variety of moves and different mons to be used. However, I find pokemon battles to be one of the hardest parts of writing. I think it really takes quite some skill to put down what you see in your mind on to paper in a way that makes sense to other people.

What are some tips you guys may have or example of really well done fights that you have read? Do you find fights challenging to write? Let's just take a break to chat about one of the things that defines the pokemon series.

 

[はるひ]

I love writing Pokemon battles because you can be so creative with them. You can make “bad” Pokemon rather awesome depending on the skill level.

 

[matt0044]

I often write out their moves and abilities for me to refer to. I often gulp going into a battle scene but the ideas often come to me naturally more often than not. It's like a river that's flowing only you're the one creating it. So... a canal really.

Granted, you often have to make sure that they hit upon the plot beats you hope to get to but the unpredictable tends to happen and sometimes for the best.

 

[Crystal]

Out of all the scenes within Pokemon fiction, I just love the most in writing out Pokemon Battles. Actions are wordless, hence it is a challenge in writing out such intensive actional scenes. And because of that, battles is the best place to examine a writer's skill in the application of "Show Don't Tell" rule.

And of because for the same reason, that is the difficult part. Partially due to the fact that canon's portrayal of Pokemon Battle is just defying this guideline of "Show Don't Tell" which is essential for a well-written fiction. Look at the Pokemon Battle we saw in Anime or in Game or in Manga, most of the time we had trainers called out the attack and pokemons performed the said attack, it is "telling" being the first and "showing" comes second. Therefore if we adapt the canon's Pokemon Battle faithfully, the battles will unfortunately never be good for reading. One can't help, because how a battle (or any actional actions) works within a electronic systematic turn-based style game platform is never the same as how a battle works in realistic real-time fictional writing.

That's why, in my opinion, in order to write a good battle scene, one rather need to be unfaithful to the canon, especially the game canon. Turn-based battle? Nah I'll go with real-time battle. Type effectiveness? Shall the elemental weakness of a pokemon is making some sense due to its physiology, I tend not to screw it, but when it is not, I don't care what type of attack hurt that pokemon more severely. 4-move limit? Screw it because I don't think pokemons are that stupid having the brain size of a goldfish where they can't even remember more than four things at a time. You can catch Arceus in a pokeball? Theoretically speaking it is possible, but not practically speaking where it is the Almighty Alpha One having extraordinary power million times stronger than any common earthly mons you can find in the nearby forest, and if it even ever wanted to befriend an ordinary kid which can be killed easily in a single attack.