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Tournaments in Pokemon fanfics

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I was reading a different thread and someone said that writing a League tournament is harder than writing an Elite 4 Challenge akin to the games. Why is that?
 
An Elite Four challenge revolves around four or five characters that already have some sort of default character with already stablished themes and teams, with the simple progression of “beat them, advance.”

A tournament forces the writer to come up with several different trainers and teams (if they haven’f been introduced yet, at least), think of matchups for each major trainer and the progression system, write the protagonist’s battles and give at least passing mentions to the other contestants’ results. If there are multiple major character competing, the writer has to decide who wins should they face off and how that affects either.

It’s certainly a longer process.
 
An Elite Four challenge revolves around four or five characters that already have some sort of default character with already stablished themes and teams, with the simple progression of “beat them, advance.”

A tournament forces the writer to come up with several different trainers and teams (if they haven’f been introduced yet, at least), think of matchups for each major trainer and the progression system, write the protagonist’s battles and give at least passing mentions to the other contestants’ results. If there are multiple major character competing, the writer has to decide who wins should they face off and how that affects either.

It’s certainly a longer process.
Yeah. That makes sense. Would what you said about tournaments hold true for non-league tournaments?
 
Circumstances. A small tournament in some town with low ranking trainers won’t demand as much complexity as a huge one lime the league.
Yeah. Seeing as the League has high stakes and many trainers with powerful teams. Where as a small town tournment might have trainers that don't have as many Pokemon. Also, small town tournaments typically only consist of 3 v 3s or 1 v 1s. The League is going to have full battles near the end.
 
@Beth Pavell can probably give a better firsthand critique about the pros and cons of a tournament arc.

From the outside/having watched a lot collapse, it's risky from a literary perspective because:

1. Characters -- by default you will need to have, at a minimum, enough characters for your main character(s) to fight against. This typically means at least 4 trainers, their teams, their gimmicks, etc, which is a lot. Unless they've already shown up before, each battle chapter will still be a mass of exposition and bloat. Ideally you should have way more than that, and spend a lot of time introducing those characters, because otherwise it will be pretty obvious when Protaconist McGee faces off against noname joe shmoe 4 who's going to win.
2. Battles -- even if it's just 1v1's like you say, getting through a 4 round tournament (16 people) will require 4 back-to-back battles. You will need to have new and exciting ways to keep that fresh. If your fic wasn't heavy on battles before, this will increase the total number of battles significantly. If your fic was heavy on battles before, this means you've probably already used a lot of your strong ideas already.
3. Stakes -- what does it actually mean to win this tournament? Why does your protagonist (and the audience) care? Why does anyone else entering care? Battles are basically fights -- they represent conflict -- but in this case there's no conflicting ideas here, it's usually just that people want a shiny cup, and the lack of any underlying emotional stake beyond getting the shiny cup makes everything feel contrived.
 
If you do need some examples of a tournament done well, watch Yu Yu Hakusho's Dark Tournament arc. Another example from Pokemon would be the Kalos League
I have seen the Kalos League and enjoyed it. It certainly was good. I liked the battles. A Pokemon tournment is certainly harder to write than a tournament in something like Final Fantasy, where the humans are battling each other, not having creatures doing the fighting for them.
 
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@Beth Pavell can probably give a better firsthand critique about the pros and cons of a tournament arc.

As kin hints, I fairly recently finished a tournament arc that ended up taking much, much longer than I expected. Major lesson learned - tournaments are big, and unless they're more of a setting than a plot point they will remain big.

The nature of the tournament means writing more battles, and this is inescapable. You can cut down on the number shown on-screen, by only writing pivotal ones in detail or skipping over some of the details of them, but you're still going to be writing more than usual. And, it has to noted, skipping over the action is not without its cost. The more of the battle(s) you skip, the fewer opportunities to show character development, conflict, drama, etc. More battles means more time spent devising ways to keep them interesting. I found the most difficult part of the writing was finding different ways for the battles to play out, given that the protagonists have an established style.

But it's the stakes that are really at the heart of the tournament. I didn't realise, in my initial planning, how much of that you lose by only really focusing on what the tournament means for the protagonists. There's no substitute for the reader knowing and empathising with what winning or losing means for their opponents - and so setting that up means time in the story, and more wordcount.

None of this is to say that a tournament arc is impossible to pull off in prose (Though I do think it is undoubtedly easier to do on TV). But it is surprisingly complex and certainly intense to write
 
As kin hints, I fairly recently finished a tournament arc that ended up taking much, much longer than I expected. Major lesson learned - tournaments are big, and unless they're more of a setting than a plot point they will remain big.

The nature of the tournament means writing more battles, and this is inescapable. You can cut down on the number shown on-screen, by only writing pivotal ones in detail or skipping over some of the details of them, but you're still going to be writing more than usual. And, it has to noted, skipping over the action is not without its cost. The more of the battle(s) you skip, the fewer opportunities to show character development, conflict, drama, etc. More battles means more time spent devising ways to keep them interesting. I found the most difficult part of the writing was finding different ways for the battles to play out, given that the protagonists have an established style.

But it's the stakes that are really at the heart of the tournament. I didn't realise, in my initial planning, how much of that you lose by only really focusing on what the tournament means for the protagonists. There's no substitute for the reader knowing and empathising with what winning or losing means for their opponents - and so setting that up means time in the story, and more wordcount.

None of this is to say that a tournament arc is impossible to pull off in prose (Though I do think it is undoubtedly easier to do on TV). But it is surprisingly complex and certainly intense to write
That is true. It's one thing to do something like that for a tv show, it's entirely different for a book.
 
This topic comes up from time to time. Although my general response to tournament arcs hasn't changed much (they're a lot of work and really hard to pull off well so I suggest not writing them at all), I've gained more insight over the years into why exactly I think tournaments are so rough. And possibly how to do them well. Prepare for me to get carried away.

Pav and kintsugi both bring up really good points, but I think they can all be summed up by a relatively simple observation that a lot of people forget:

Tournament arcs became popular almost entirely as a trope of specifically shounen anime/manga.

The problem is that a vast majority of us are not writing stories that fit into that genre at all. The most shounen-esque fanfic I've read is probably @Flaze's Pokemon Academy series. Notably, I would also describe the tournament arcs in those stories as handily my favorite tournament arcs I've read in fanfic. There are a lot of reasons for that, but they mostly come down to the stuff that kin and Pav already mentioned, particularly characters and stakes. There was a large cast of developed characters who each had their own motivations in the tournaments.

The primary trouble arises from the fact that you're basically writing a long series of highly similar action scenes. You need to be able to differentiate them through significantly different strategies, conflicts, and outcomes. That last one is important. Winning and losing cannot be the only stakes. It makes it too predictable. And if the outcome of a battle is predictable then it's going to be boring. For example, say if the protagonist loses the world explodes. Those are pretty heavy stakes, but it makes it way too obvious that the protagonist is going to win. On a more basic level, if the protagonist losing would halt the story entirely, that's going to be obvious to the reader and therefore there won't be any tension as to what the outcome will be. Some examples of non-victory-related stakes:
  • The character is trying to prove themselves to their disapproving father in the stands.
  • The character is just there to beat their rival and prove they're a better trainer.
  • The character is trying to place high enough to keep the sponsorship that allows them to journey.
  • The character is trying to prove that they are worthy of being travel companions with clearly stronger trainers.
(Notice how all of those had to do with proving themselves? Bettering yourself and/or proving yourself to someone or something is a core tenet of shounen storytelling. There's a reason it works best in those stories.)

The best option would be to use all of those examples as motivations for different characters in the tournament. If you've written a large cast of characters that your readers care about, then suddenly every single battle is important and full of tension. Especially when two characters go up against each other, it's unclear who will win. It's unclear if the characters will succeed in their individual motivations. Because regardless of winning or losing, the characters' arcs could continue (or resolve if it's the climax). And that's exciting!

But that's not how most people write tournament arcs. Because large casts of characters are tough to wrangle. You need to write the whole story to build up to this thing, and that's hard. I love stories with small casts of characters with lots of deep introspection and limited POVs, but if you try to jam those into a story-arc pulled from an anime, you're going to have a rough time of it. Even if you write great battles, throw in a couple subplots, and try to make the outcome unclear, it's still going to be a drag to write (and possibly to read as well).
 
The reader's expectations are hard to get past. Readers tend to assume the protagonists will win, which limits your options as an author. If they do win then you need to angle for a way to make it an interesting win - it doesn't matter if, on paper, you think it's not a foregone conclusion, if the reader doesn't really believe you'll allow the protagonist to fail
 
The reader's expectations are hard to get past. Readers tend to assume the protagonists will win, which limits your options as an author. If they do win then you need to angle for a way to make it an interesting win - it doesn't matter if, on paper, you think it's not a foregone conclusion, if the reader doesn't really believe you'll allow the protagonist to fail

Oh this......

Spoilers, but I had long planned for my Indigo League to end in Ash in the finals losing to Koga (as part of his E4 qualifications). That was the plan before the Kalos and Alola Leagues. I am still planning on it, but I must admit I am now a lot more nervous.

On leagues here is my main observation so far.

1: You need to consider a balance between having the character go up against reoccuring or known characters (AKA Ash vs AJ or Otoshi) with newer characters set up for the tournament to balance the interests of expectations and creativity. Said new characters will need something to them that makes them more interesting if possible (for example in my first 1-4 only the third trainer had previously been met, the other three were a trainer who [had to] follow the spearhead model of training, one was a Rookie Crusher, and a third was a Wonderlocker). This in turn becomes more important if you have a larger tournament: I expanded Indigo to about 10 or 11 rounds with over a thousand competitors so if Ash just fought Samurai and other named characters it would be a bit hard to swallow.

2: It is a good means of expanding your chapter and making things more organic to also show what the other trainers your readers know are up to. Could just be quick victory montages or full battles but people will want to see them do things other than lose.

3: It is worth exploring other parts of the league other than the battles. I've had a bit of fun taking the festivals you see in some canon leagues and exploring them out further.
 
Please note: The thread is from 4 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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