Writing The Adventures of Jirachi

[Joeypals!!]

Before anyone slanders the Jirachi or anyone, I'm basing this off of real life, so the pokemon used fit personalities. Here we go. I'll start the story from Friday. Consider this to be kind of a visualized journal if you will.

Table on Contents
http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=93694&pid=1842584#pid1842584 Chapter 1.5 (School: Part 1)
http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=93694&pid=1843949#pid1843949 Chapter 1.9999 (Rest of Chapter 1)
Prologue: A Jirachi is floating around, seeming to gain popularity more and more. His life is a roller coaster, but he always seems to make it. How will his life take course?

Chapter 1.3 (Morning):
Joey arises from his "bed" at 5:30AM as usual. It's not really a bed, more like a hot, leather ottoman in a living room by the wall. In front of the bed lays all the family electronics, a window and chair also made of leather to the right.

"Yawn... Why must there always be songs in my head?" the Jirachi ponders as The House That Built Me begins to play in his head. Soon, more songs flow through, such as Billionaire and Lasso. Joey goes upstairs, throws on his favorite, thin red and black T-shirt (red body with black sleeves), a orange hoodie, and everything else.

The day is typically quiet in the morning. No sounds, barely anyone awake until about 5:45AM, when Joey finishes his breakfast, normally consisting of a warm Hot Pocket with either bacon or ham in it. At this time, a Vaporeon (the mom) walks down the stairs and turns on the TV to WGN News.

"Good morning mom!"
"Morning."

Usually, the conversations were very short in the morning, mostly out of tiredness. Joey, after putting his dishes away and turning off of the kitchen light, goes to change the ottoman into a couch and put the sheets away. A few minutes later after beginning to watch the news, a little Mime Jr. (Joey's brother) runs down the stairs after being woken up to try to fall back asleep.

"Anthony, time to wake up."
"No."
"Fine then..."

The brother was much younger than Joey, only 6. Anthony did the same routine in the morning: wake up, get dressed, go lay down on the couch, get prompted to eat, then lay right back down. No one knows how he gets the energy the Mime Jr. usually gets by the time I come home.

A bit later, Joey begins to get myself ready, says goodbye to everyone for the day, then leave for the Lapras stop. It was usually pretty quiet at the bus stop in the dead of winter, everyone scared to step outside and stay in their cars. In the warmer weather, there is about 5 people standing there, maybe 6. Joey arrives at the bus stop 5 minutes before the Lapras came, so he sat down and watched the Remoraids and such go by. A Tentacruel (a car if you will) swings by and waits. After a long wait, the Lapras comes and pulls over to the curb. Joey gets on along with 5 other kids hanging around and the Lapras pulls away again without letting Joey sit down, making him almost fall over.

"Yikes! Dude, stop doing that!"

No response. Joey then watches the sea life some more until a large building is approached; Joliet West High School.



I know it was a short chapter part, but this is the intro chapter. I want to make sure everything in my day gets addressed. Please, comment!

 

[47bennyg]

-You shifted from third person to first person in the middle of the 5th paragraph of the chapter, then you shifted back in the 6th paragraph. I'm assuming you want to keep it in third; replace the I's with Joey or Jirachi.
-I did like the part about the Lapras stop, that was creative.
-Also, it was a little confusing at first that Joey was the Jirachi the story was about.

 

[Joeypals!!]

I'll make the fixes and thanks benny, I'll keep that in mind for future chapters! This chapter will be the only one in parts so you know. I found a color error myself I need to address.
EDIT: For everyone's information, the .3 is supposed to be read like a percent. Same with .6 and .9 when it comes.

 

[HypnoticChairman]

Let's see:
1. It's not even half the required words.
2. It should probably be in past tense instead of present.
3. You shouldn't use color tags in stories. It's distracting.
4. Needs more description and pizzas. (Not the food, I think you know what I mean.)

 

[Porygon-X]

Usually, the conversations were very short in the morning, mostly out of tiredness. Joey, after putting his dishes away and turning off of the kitchen light, goes to change the ottoman into a couch and put the sheets away. A few minutes later after beginning to watch the news, a little Mime Jr. (my brother) runs down the stairs after being woken up to try to fall back asleep.

You shifted from 3rd person to 1st person again, here.

Other than that, I liked it. I do find it odd how a Vaporeon could give birth to a Jirachi and a Mime Jr., though.

 

[Incinermyn]

Yeah, get rid of those color tags for each character's dialogue. Aside from not being allowed here, it looks really unprofessional... I mean, you don't see me going around writing everything in pink or purple like this (which would probably tie in pretty well with the current theme I'm using with my banners and whatnot), so you really shouldn't do that with passages of speech. Besides that, you should work on description and narration too. A lot of this stuff is just quick and not very elaborate from what I see, which really would help alleviate the issue of short chapter length.

 

[Joeypals!!]

@Porygon-X: I'll address that too!
@Apollo: It is actually meant to differentiate between characters in conversations, but I'd get rid of them.

Keep commenting!

 

[HolyMackerel]

Okay, Joey, I'm not going to point out individual mistakes, but I will give some tips.

-You are sort of treating this like an RPG
I can see it. You express the characters that is easy to understand, but the issue with that is that hen it comes to writing, you don't want the reader to have an easy look-through, you want them to be admirable of your story.

As in, you don't want you're reader to say:

It was a real easy quick read! Thanks!

You want them to say:

That was very desriptive! I could almost picture everything that went on!

So, just keep that in mind.

Don't use numb3r5 in stories
It looks unprofessional when you say:

I saw 6 mice

Compared to saying:

I saw six mice

The only exception is names, such as Route 232, or something like that.

Try to stay in one category
Switching from third person to first person, or present tense to past tense looks super unproffessional. You want to look over your stuff over and over again and avoid doing that.



Just keep these things in mind, you're on the right track.

 

[Joeypals!!]

1.5 (School: Part 1)

Joey arrives at his school, groggy after being on his phone. He hops off the Lapras, only to stand in front of a giant castle like building. Joliet West High School was built around 1901, giving the building a castle-like look. One can compare this building to the grand valor of the Elite Four castle in Sinnoh. Joey then proceeds into the building, stepping into the cafeteria. Breakfast was being made, but it was all garbage as usual. This "breakfast" consisted of sugar items such as Pop Tarts. Joey then takes a random seat, which happens to be by not very handsome or beautiful pokemon, ranging from Tauros to Jynx in looks. After saying a few hellos, this one charming Squirtle sits down. Nothing too special though, just a lot better looking than these ugly pokemon. Seven o'five comes around and Joey leaves the cafeteria to go to is locker due to a special pass. This pass allows Joey to leave eight minutes before the rest of the crowd of people. On the way, he waits for his buddies: An athletic Croagunk (Charles) with good looks, a quiet Mr. Mime that was Charles's friend, and a funny, yet smart Alakazam (Gabriel). Joey usually just listens in, as they typically talk about sports. The group walks for quite a while, stretching past the B building (straight in from the entrance of the building) and almost into the E building (Freshman building). Once the group disperses after going up a flight of stairs, Joey walks to his E building locker.

"What do I need... oh yes! French and Geometry!"

Joey grabs a French book, French binder, Geometry notebook, and Geometry book into his backpack before stashing everything not needed into his locker. As Joey begins to walk, he runs across a friend of his, a Glameow named Melanie.

M: "Joseph, want to wait up for me?"
J: "Sure thing!"

Joey then walks about fifteen steps right back to her locker. Melanie is a tad unorganized at times, but is witty and gets everything done. It takes her quite a bit to put everything into her bag, the entire time advantage getting wasted. During this whole time, Joey and Melanie complain about life, usually involving the teachers that are rude.

"Come on, let's go Melanie!"
"OK, OK. Sorry..."
"It's ok!"

The two then walk to the G building, nearly on the other side of the building. As Joey walks in, he is greeting by his teacher, Ms. Bratkovich. She is a Jumpluff in every way possible, filling the spirit.

B: "Bonjour Joseph!"
J: "Bonjour madamoiselle!"

Once the class finally starts, the Jumpluff goes over the lesson for today; the verb aller. Aller means "to be". Once all the forms are gone over, and activity is done with all the verbs reviewed, including etre, which means "to make". Joey gets aller and lists it out as such.

Je vais
Tu vas
Il/Elle va
Nous allons
Vous allez
Ils/Elles vont

The section Joey wrote is correct. He then says "Yay!" before the class ends up watching a video corresponding with the book, going over direction terms from before. Jumpluff reminds the class a gauche is left and a droit is right. She then start the video, almost putting Joey to sleep.

"These people... they look so terrible..."

The bell rings as period one ends. Joey says au revior to his favorite teacher, telling her that he will come back during advisory since he did not want to be with the grammar Nazi for advisory. Joey then walks down to his stupid computer apps class, almost falling asleep yet again. After this excruciatingly boring class (need I go into detail about Excel), Joey wanders into Geometry, where he meets up with his main friends. There is Kiristen (a Sneasel on the kindish side in ROTC), Kammi (another Sneasel), Heather (a lovely Gardevoir), and Ebony (a new girl, but fits right in with her Bonsly self).

Kiristen: "Hey Joey, what's up? We beat Lincoln-Way North again in an ROTC drill comp!"
Heather: "Hey Joey!"
"Hey guys! That's good Kiristen! Nothing much, want to get revenge on those kids..."
Ebony: "How come?"
"They beat us at confrences for Scholastic Bowl..."
Ebony: "Oh... that sucks."
"Tell me about it."
Kammi: "I stayed up, like, ALL NIGHT doing my homework!"

As Joey finished patting Kammi on the head, saying "Poor you", the Geometry teacher walked in. The class reviewed the Pythagorean Theorm again. Piece of cake... The lesson ended up being very straightforward. When it came to homework time, Joey chose not to do the work at the time and just talk with friends. He has his French book on his desk when Ebony states...

"Those black people cannot be Canadian."
"What do you mean Ebony?"
Heather: "They look pretty... African to me."
Ebony: "See that girl? She looks TOO happy to be natural. I swear, she's a terrorist."

Everyone chuckles at this with great enthusiasm. The bell rang soon after, meaning it was time for advisory. When Joey began to leave, Heather ran by like a girl with a ton of bags in the mall.

"Wait up Heather!"
"Oh, sorry! Where are you going?"
"Advisory with Fonck... Wait, I get to go to Bratkovich's!"
"How come?"
"Because I wanted to!"
"Oh, thanks cool! Stay away from Mr. Nazi!"
"Will do Heather! See ya!"
"Tata!"

Joey barely makes it to the G building again, having only a minute to spare. Once he sits down, Ms. Bratkovich begins the same lesson he heard earlier. In the meantime, Joey begins to create a Sad Times flag. Ms. Bratkovich always has a saying for a harsh time that goes "Oh, sad times...". Two girls had made a flag, but it was too... cheery. The sad face was almost a smile and the colors where too bright. Joey got to work making his own. He drew a flag with a diagonal pole, leaning to the west. This is mostly because of suggested wind blow. Then, a gigantic purple flag was drawn with orange eyes and turquoise tears. Above says "Sad Times", below "Population: Depends on your mood". The surrounding begins to be surrounded by black with three blank spaces for name tags. Joey, coloring the whole time, was about to go to the other side of the flag when the advisory bell rang. Joey quickly picked up all his stuff quickly, then ran out of the room in a great haste. He says au revoir quickly, almost tripping over a few chairs. Running down into the cafeteria for lunch, he gets over to the reduced lunch lines. After wait five minutes, it's a standard procedure.

"Chicken patty with cheese please."
"Salad and brocolli?"
"Just brocolli please."


The cost ends up being fourty cents as usual. Joey walks through a sea of people, all waiting to get food within a twenty-five minute time frame. As he takes a seat, he wished Heather, Kiristen, and Ebony would come over to the table he was at, but alas, there was a major issue. This one sort of friend, Taylor (Jigglypuff) had a major issue with Gardevoir. As a result, the original table split and Joey was trying to figure out how to regather his friends. Lunch ends up quiet as both Taylor and one of her outspoken friends is gone for the day.

Please critique!

 

[Porygon-X]

Interesting.

Before I get much further, there were a couple of grammar things I saw:

Once the class finally start,

Joey then walks down to his person computer apps class,

(Unless 'person computer' is an actual class.)

That's all I saw, but I wasn't really looking for them.

As for your writing, I really like your descriptions and everything. You take what most would think to be a very boring subject, and make it more interesting.


I did see a part that didn't read right to me, however:

Joey usually just listens in, as they usually talk about sports.

There isn't anything necessarily wrong with this, it's just usually I think using 'usually' twice in a sentence like that usually doesn't sound as good. Usually.

Can't wait to see more!

 

[Joeypals!!]

Thanks for catching those errors! I'll fix it now! Also, I finished editing in everything, so keep it coming!
EDIT: It was re*tarded, but it altered it to person. I'm not sure why though. Adding a table of contents section!

 

[Incinermyn]

1901 is a year, therefore a proper number. You don't have to write it out (didn't aggiegwyn already lecture you on that?). Also, is it a good idea to openly give your schedule online? Personally I think you should edit that out for possible safety (or at least privacy) reasons. Also, I'm debating on whether or not I should change this to a 'trial' fanfic, since you have the chapters in parts (which really isn't standard and brings to mind that many of them might be very short from here on out like the first installment was)...

 

[Joeypals!!]

I've been posting them in parts so far because this day happened to be very big for me. And I had it as a number, then for some reason took it off. I promise I'll do the rest of this chapter Thursday morning, a few chapters Friday, and maybe a chapter Saturday.

 

[Porygon-X]

Um, just to add one thing, that I'm surprised Apollo didn't mention.

The " " in your dialogue looks very unprofessional.

Other than that, and what Apollo said, looks good!

 

[Joeypals!!]

All right, thanks! Trust me, things will get longer. I'm just using Friday as an intro day.

 

[Incinermyn]

@Porygon-X: I've been speed reading through most of this, since my Internet time's pressed and selecting a few small topics that are of some concern. I can give fuller critiques when I have the time to, but for now I really can't.

@Joeypals: My point still remains. Broken up chapters usually leave less of an impact, and cliff-hangers are generally never fun.

 

[Joeypals!!]

1.99999 (The rest)

As lunch ends, Joey goes over to the door leading out of the cafeteria. Several Claydol are about, trying to keep the kids away to stop traffic out of the room. However, three Claydols could not stop at least two hundred different pokemon from crowding the door. Joey makes his way to the front, with the Bonsly, Gardevoir, and Sneasel follow him, talking about Mr. Fonck'sbunch of homework.

E: "Why is Mr. Fonck giving so much? Bookwork, Punnett Squares, Study Guides all due the same day... ALL TOO MUCH!"
S, G, and J: "Welcome to our world. Get used to this Ebony, he's been like this all year."
E: "You have to be kidding me! Ugh!"
"Sadly, I can't."

Joey says this almost the exact second the bell rings. His yellow head almost gets smashed into the door by this Machoke who could not wait. However, he escapes the bash and almost ends up tripping out of the cafeteria. Joey begins to walk when the Sneasel hit him softly in the back to get his attention. He turns to see all his friends, walking. He then slows down to walk by them. Ebony splits away shortly after this, as she has gym while everyone else had biology. The walk ended up pretty quiet, mostly because the hallways were too loud. Besides that, too many clumps of people! After three minutes, the three friends walk into the Biology room only to be greeted with instruction by the notorious grammar Nazi, a Muk named Mr. Fonck.

"Spirals, Study Guides, and scratch paper out."

Fonck states this over and over again, even when just one person walks into the room. Why Fonck is so tedious, no one knows. Once everyone finally takes his seat, Fonck begins to go over his plans for today, which is basically checking the study guides while turning in the spirals. He then instructs the students to put the scratch paper away, as it was an accident. The checking process takes a while, because everyone in the class ends up reading a few questions, answering them, and then Mr. Fonck goes into massive, unneeded detail. One time, there was something with five thousand Chinese men if no one in his classes has children or something like that when we were discussing human population and resources. It's very odd what he goes into sometimes. Once all the study guides are finally checked, everyone passes them over to the isle person- one of which happens to be Joey- before everyone leaves once the bell rings. The rest of the day then goes by very quickly. English is a simple peer checking of an Anthem project the class did a while back. World Affairs was a day for working on a random poster project for the current topic: The Middle East and Muslims. Gym was nothing but basketball, which is quite boring when only two people get the ball. Soon, Joey gets on the bus and goes home. It takes quite a bit for the bus to load up and all that, but it is usually worth it when Joey gets home. Once the long bus ride followed by a walk is done, Joey sprawls out on the couch, relaxing before he does his homework. In the meantime, Guitar Hero is played by Joey's sister, Jenny. Jenny is a Snubbull, mean, yet kind for some in certain situations. Lasso, Bohemian Rhapsody, Pour Some Sugar On Me, and others are played. Joey then quickly does his homework on the laptop as his mom comes home, only with commands and questions.

"Joey, did you ask to go on?"
"No, I just wanted to play on it after I finished."
"Can you do the dishes?"
"Why can't anyone else do it?" Joey says as he takes the laptop into the kitchen.
"Get that out of there!"
"Fine... Sheesh."
"What did you say?!?! How dare you give me attitude! I don't want to hear from you for a long time!" The mom screamed as she ripped the laptop out of Joey's hands.

Nearly crying, Joey went upstairs with his phone and DS upstairs, where he stayed until 8PM. The mom tried "apologizing", but it was basically yelling. After this, Joey did not say one word for the rest of the night. Saddened, Joey stays on his phone, complaining as much as he can.

That wraps up Friday. I typed this for about 50 minutes, so please enjoy and critique. Before I forget, I was also in a slight writer's block. Please don't be too harsh. Also, I forgot to mention this is the first story I made.

 

[Porygon-X]

Ok, first, grammar:

S, G, and me:

You shifted out of third person here.

Joey says this almost the dot as the bell rings.

This doesn't make sense. I'm not sure what you did wrong here, and I apologize for that, but I don't understand this.

After three minutes, the three friends walked into the Biology room only to be greeted with instruction by the notorious grammar Nazi, a Muk named Mr. Fonck.

I think you shifted into past tense here. However, I'm not the one to say, for I've never written in preset tense before, and therefore have no idea how to write in it.

He then instructs us to put the scratch paper away, as it was an accident.

You shifted into first person here.

one of which happens to be me

Again, you shifted into first person.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY? <loads of censored yelling> I DON'T WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!" Mom screamed as she ripped the laptop out of Joey's hands.

I dunno... This just looks unprofessional. On top of that, you called your mom "Mom", when you call her "the mom" everywhere else. So you may want to change that.

One time, there was something with five thousand Chinese men if no one in his classes has children or something like that.

Ok, I'm sure this isn't supposed to make sense, but, I really don't like it. I have no idea what this means.


Ok, so, you have some work to do. I like it, but it all looks unprofessional. And as Aggie mentioned a ways up, it looks like you are playing an RPG.

So, you may want to work on making look more like a Fan-fic, and less like an RPG, you know what I mean?

Other than that, very interesting! Can't wait to see more!

 

[Joeypals!!]

Trust me, I saw a bit of my own errors. I'll fix it ASAP.

 

[Inconceivable]

Anyway, on Chapter Two, you said that 'être' was 'to make'. It is in fact to be.