Pokémon Book Reviews

Interview with SGmijumaru

SGmijumaru is a long time Wattpad user. His most recent work Pokémon Chronicles: Zero brought home a GRA rating of seven across the board. In addition, the title won fourth place in the 2017 Pokémon Watty Awards, was nominated for several Special Awards, and was dubbed "Best Battle Scenes" and "Best Poké-Centric Fanfic".

So, from my understanding, your current account is a new one. How long have you been writing in general and how long have you been involved in the Wattpad community?

I'm not exactly sure how long I've been writing for, but, apparently, I used to make up a lot of stories as a child! Anyway, that old account included, I'd have been writing Pokémon stuff for 6 years now. I've never been popular, but I'm happy to help things like the GRA.

Your most recent work, Pokémon Chronicles: Zero, scored a seven across the board by all GRA critics. How do you feel about it, personally? Are you happy with the way it turned out?

Just due to the person reasons of wanting to be truly confident in my writing before I go about writing an original book, I'm not too happy with it because I know I need to be better. However, as someone who's still in practice, I suppose I couldn't ask for a better result.

When lots of people can give you roughly the same score, it's a good indication of where you're really at in terms of quality.

Can you explain to me how you came up with the idea behind Project Zero? I have to say, I enjoyed the time I spent wonder what was behind all of strange activities leading up to this revelation.

It was a combination of various games I happened to be playing through at the same time. The main ones were Fire Emblem Fates, which inspired the Perish Song and such, whilst Tales of Vesperia inspired the bestia. I built the story from there, wanting to combine a simple and easy to get into plot with the complexity of the latter game's storyline.

As for the world and most of it else, it was actually borrowed and 'upgraded' from a fanfiction on that old, deleted account X3

I like to think that people write for all different reasons. What motivates you to create stories?

There's a lot of reasons why I write... the main ones are how much I enjoy it, the sense of fulfilment when I see people enjoy my writing, and that I get to tell a tale just like the stories I enjoy playing in games.

What has been the toughest criticism you've received during your time writing? And on the flip side, what has been your best compliment?

The toughest criticism is definitely last year's PWA. My entry didn't make top five even though I was very confident in it, so I had to face the reality that I was further away from my goal than I expected to be.

As for best compliment... that I'm good at battle scenes, when I think about it. I'm always most worried about those when I go about actually writing, so it's nice to know that worry pays off!

Is there anything that you feel confident about when you sit down to write?

My story concepts. I spend so, so, SO much time trying to make my plot and storyboard perfect that when it comes to actually writing, I know exactly what I want in each chapter, and how I want it to be received by readers. My most recent works have never had the concepts be criticized, so I know I don't need to worry about improving there.

Do you have any tips you would like to share with fellow writers on that topic?

One I feel like needs to be said is to really work on a storyboard. Whilst not everyone uses a storyboard, everyone at least has an idea of where they're going with their writing when they're writing a story, right? So, if you can just take an hour or two to write down your story in minimalist detail, chapter by chapter, you can iron out those nasty loop holes and see whether you're really writing something you yourself would read or not.

I like to do this as well! We all know you enjoy writing and games, is there anything else you like to do?

I tend to enjoy drawing, even though I don't consider myself good at it. I really enjoy taking lengthy, scenic walks, too. Outside of that, I'm a video game music enthusiast and enjoy a good movie, too. Oh, and I have a terribly bad habit of collecting.

Is there a particular place that you enjoy the scenery? And what sort of things do you like to collect?

My dream scenery is somewhere high up, overlooking a ton of nature that's covered in snow... or just varied nature, I guess. I actually don't like the city for its manmade environments.

Outside of games, I collect figurines, cards, comics, art books - pretty much any merchandise that's connected to the franchises I like. I even collect consoles - my wallet hates me!

Okay, one last question before we wrap this up. If you woke up to million gagilion dollars in your bank account tm, what would you do with it?

Depending on exactly how much that is and how much it would all cost, I would look into self-publishing and marketing my own books, hoping to kick them off to success.

That, or do the same thing but with my own game company. What games would we make? Games of my stories, of course!

Ah! Well you would definitely have a happy customer! I would for real, rush out and buy it! Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, always a pleasure.