In Progress (currently unnamed. my first writing fanfic.)

This is the first chapter to my story. tell me if you liked it.
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A tall skyscaper towered over the rest of the city. A small creature sat perched on the edge of the roof. A murkrow. Its black feathers ruffled by the wind. Its eyes closed it leaned forward. The talons released there grip on the wall. It plumeted. after a few seconds it spread its wings and angled its body. Its began to fly. as it came upon a small tree its eyes glowed with hate. it streched its talons. He was going to get his nest back. Even if it would risk his life. He flew above the tree's height then after getting within 100 yards he lowered untill he was only a few feet from the ground. 50 yards, 40, 30. He was closing in. 20, 15, 10. Then He saw it. a large black shadow looming over him. He was in a trap. Murkrow shot up in the air to face his foe. Then he was attacked. The talons grabbed his wings and flung him to the ground.Murkrow looked to see the staravia glaring down at him. Murkrow landed hit a thud. The impact had done some serious damage aswell as the wing damage from staravia's talons. He got up and launched a peck attack at staravia. It evaded and struck with wing attack. murkrow felt great pain. He flew away. He couldnt get back to the skyscaper in his condition. But he still flew onward. Then the world went gray and then black. He fainted.
***

That was actually quite good~! I was wondering what was going to happen to the Murkrow when he went against Staravia! Very nice, I could picture everything in my mind. The only things I would suggest is to use capitals when writing a Pokemon's name or begining a sentence. And also, is that city you were talking about a city in the Pokemon Universe, or a made up city? Besides capitalization, I've spotted afew minor flaws, but that could easily be avoided if you read over your writing about, well, what I do is read it over 3 times to make sure I did everything the way I want it~ Otherwise, I'm anticipating another chapter, and can't wait to find out why Staravia stole the nest.

Hmm... not bad for a first fanfic, but it could be better. Here are a couple tips:

1. Details, details! The more sensual details, the better it is to read. Instead of "Murkrow shot up in the air to face his foe. Then he was attacked.", you could say, for example, "The jet-black Murkrow rocketed into the air to face the enemy, but the enemy got the first blow in."
2. Spellcheck. I noticed a few words misspelled in there, so...
2a. Grammar. I moticed a lot of capitalization errors, and even punctuation. For example, you hardly (if ever at all) used exclamation points. Whenever there's action, use, but not overuse, of exclamation points really help excite the reader.

Other than that, though, I really liked it! There were a few climax points where I could visualize what was going on.

Then He saw it. a large black shadow looming over him.

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Don't capitalize "he.". Capitalize "a."

The talons released there grip on the wall.

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"Their" seems better here.

So other than that, nice job! I really like Murkrow!

Mewtwo said:

you hardly (if ever at all) used exclamation points. Whenever there's action, use, but not overuse, of exclamation points really help excite the reader.

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Actually, I strongly disagree. The excitement should come from what's happening in the story, not from the type of punctuation mark that's used. Outside of dialogue, I find exclamation points to be rather child-like in quality. If you're using an exclamation point to cause excitement, then the excitement is going to be very forced and cheesy.


Your description isn't too bad. But your style is very, very choppy. Try reading this out loud and pausing every time you used a period. Reading your story out loud will help you figure out where sentences should be combined and where you should use transitional words such as "then" and "next," etc.

As a guide to revising, instead of this:

A small creature sat perched on the edge of the roof. A murkrow. Its black feathers ruffled by the wind.

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try something like this:

A small creature perched on the edge of the roof. It was a Murkrow, its black feathers ruffled by the wind.

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Also watch for incomplete sentences.

Sandstone-Shadow said:

Actually, I strongly disagree. The excitement should come from what's happening in the story, not from the type of punctuation mark that's used. Outside of dialogue, I find exclamation points to be rather child-like in quality. If you're using an exclamation point to cause excitement, then the excitement is going to be very forced and cheesy.

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Actually, the point was exclamation points, but not overused as I said, help a little bit. Like the climax points.

Mewtwo said:

Actually, the point was exclamation points, but not overused as I said, help a little bit. Like the climax points.

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Perhaps it's personal preference then. I don't like seeing them outside dialogue.

hahaha are you guys high?

This isn't a fanfic. This isn't a chapter. It's barely a paragraph and it has no substance jesus christ

Well, sorry for trying to help out a beginning writer!

I know what it's like to have my writing shamed, so I was trying to help him get better, just like I worked until mine got better! And maybe he didn't much understand what a "fanfic" was, but it kinda is a fanfic, in a sense. Just don't down on people; it could hurt them worse than you intended it to.

...wow i think i just got overdefensive about someone i barely know

You don't have to sugarcoat it, you know. Sure, he's a novice writer and we don't want to discourage him, but he's never going to improve if you tell him he's "quite good" when he writes things like this. This isn't "quite good" writing; if you think it is, then you're not much of a writer yourself, are you?

Anyway, savol456 - read more. You need to develop a better understanding of how fiction works before you start making serious attempts, not to mention that you need to actually master the language. Compare your writing to what you'd find in a published book and you'll see what I mean.

I wasn't trying to sugarcaot it; I was suggesting tips for him to get better :/

because having people say "your writing sucks" is one of the worst things you can hear

but saying "your writing's good" makes them unwilling to improve.

Yes, but saying neither isn't lying.

Verne was warned for not being helpful, and no, that kind of review is not encouraged here because it didn't actually say what was wrong with it or how to fix it. On the other hand, you don't need to dishonestly tell people their work is good if it isn't, and that is most certainly not helpful either. Constructive advice can be given without any kind of sugarcoating or shaming being involved by simply neutrally commenting on what could be improved, how and why.

Here, I'm kind of puzzled by the fact nobody has yet mentioned the lack of paragraph breaks in this story. In writing, you should start a new paragraph (for the purposes of posting on forums, press Enter twice) when the topic changes or somebody new starts to speak. When everything is stuck together in one huge paragraph, it's really hard to read. To get a sense of where paragraph breaks go, it's best to just read plenty of books.

Another common mistake here is writing out numbers with digits. When you're dealing with numbers under a hundred in writing, you should generally write them with letters, as in forty, thirty, twenty instead of 40, 30, 20; when your brain is parsing letters, suddenly switching to digits is ever so slightly disorienting, and the reading flows better if the numbers are written with letters, provided they're of a reasonable length.

In addition to the spelling and grammar issues, you also have a lot of sentence fragments. That's when you have something between periods that's not a complete sentence, in that it does not contain a subject and a verb the subject acts on, such as "Even if it would risk his life". These can be done for effect on occasion, but only sparingly; having too many of them all over the place makes the writing feel extremely choppy.

In general your sentences are really short, which works for some things but just doesn't here, again because of that choppiness. You're splitting everything up into these little supposedly discrete entities, which makes it feel disjointed, when using fewer, somewhat longer sentences would connect related things together better. For example:

A tall skyscaper towered over the rest of the city, and a small creature sat perched on the edge of the roof - a murkrow.

Its black feathers were ruffled by the wind. Its eyes closed, it leaned forward. The talons released their grip on the wall, and it plummeted. After a few seconds it spread its wings, angled its body and began to fly.

As it came upon a small tree, its eyes glowed with hate. It streched its talons: he was going to get his nest back, even if it would risk his life.

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Here I changed nothing but the split into sentences and inserted a couple of paragraph breaks, and it's already somewhat better.

Now, another issue I note here is that you start off referring to the Murkrow as "it", but then suddenly call it "he". This is confusing; pick one and stick with it, unless there's a logical transition from not knowing to knowing its gender.

Something I notice about your style is that you're clearly going for something quite visual and cinematic, but that sort of style is extremely sensitive to how you handle time. In particular, if you're imagining a grand opening shot of the city and the Murkrow standing on the roof of the skyscraper and want that to come across in the reader's mind, you'd need to spend a little more time on it (but not too much, or it will start to drag). If not, leave the "opening shot" of the city out of it altogether and start with the Murkrow right away: "A Murkrow was perched on the top of the tallest building in the city, its feathers ruffling in the wind." Randomly starting with the city only to almost immediately proceed to the Murkrow just sounds odd. You then a bit later have the Murkrow suddenly arrive at its destination with no indication of the time that must have passed while it was flying, which is rather jarring.

Finally, you're using some quite ineffective sentences to describe dramatic events. "Then he was attacked" isn't a very powerful sentence; it's simple, neutral and broad-strokes-ish, like a news report. Instead, it would be better to describe the Staravia lunging towards him before it digs its talons into his wings. On a similar note, a bit later you have "Murkrow felt great pain", again a very underwhelming sentence that sounds like it came out of a medical report. It would be better replaced with a more intense description of how he experiences that pain: "His wounds seared with agony, sticky blood gluing his feathers together and making it hard to fly." Or something in that general direction.

Well, that's something to start with, at least. It sounds like you may have a nice idea going here, but the prose needs to be worked on to get it to have the effect you want on the reader.

Only capitalize he when talking about God.