On the top of development journals.

[bmkbobcat]

//I am getting more and more comfortable with the game world and Gvhe as a whole, but I have yet to figure out how I am going to keep a development journal for her without it sounding like she has a 3rd person watching her all the time (even though I am).  She is a Wimic and quite illiterate.  Either I am WAY too tired and the solution is alluding me, or that is a rock I find opposite my hard place.

[Fatherchaos]

Here are a few examples I've seen that might work out for you.

- Try taking screenshots and making a "comic" book of her adventures.
- You can write in her journal her "thoughts" - and not an actual journal.
- Sometimes just summarizing points as a bullet list, e.g. did x, did y, found z, ran from a, might work out.

I think the key idea here is that the development "journal" is a bit misleading, as you have a number of creative options to express yourself. the whole point is just to have fun and go with what works for your character and your writing style. Like my own character, I write in his particular dialect as though it were a spellbook.

Just thought of these also:
Perhaps you can write down songs of your characters adventures? Things the character might imagine.
Or perhaps some sort of bead or pattern based system that means something only to your character?
Mabey record conversations your character has with a bird or another animal about their adventures?

I hope these ideas helped in some way.

// just realized the thread this was in, hope no GMs mind that I quipped in

[bmkbobcat]

Mmm.  That got the wheels turning again.  Thanks for the oil Fatherchaos!  Of course, any more suggestions are greatly appreciated.  That light bulb above my head should light up just any time now.

[Pen N Popper]

Many treat the char dev threads as IC.  I, for one, see no reason not to make a bulleted list OOCly of what important events your PC has encountered.  If you want to make it IC, do so.  Remember that the CD thread is for both yourself and any GMs that may take an interest in your PC.  Give them something to work with without overwhelming them with verbosity.  (My opinion.)

[Nehetsrev]

I like to mix things up a bit in the CDT's for my characters.  For instance if you read Treana's CDT, I treat it like a diary that she writes most of time.  On the other hand, with Lyle's CDT it can be journal entries similar to the style in Treana's, or it can be third-person storytelling taken directly from my in-game chat logs and re-written to better portray the scenes and reveal as well the thoughts and emotions behind what Lyle's saying and doing.  And then there's Emwonk's CDT which at the very begining I clearly state in each post whether a section is meant IC (In Character) or OOC (Out Of Character), and in some posts for his CDT I even include links to drawings I've made of some of the imagery from his nightmares/dreams.

There's really no limit to how creative you can be in writing CDT entries, and just because you write one entry in third-person, it doesn't mean you have to write all your entries in the same style.  You could even keep two seperate CDT's for one character, one an OOC summarization type and the other a detailed and artful work of fiction from your character's point of view detailing their most influential moments, thoughts and feelings in the world of Layonara.

As Pen'n'Popper stated, the point of the CDT's is mainly to showcase how your character is developing through their interaction with the world and other characters.  However I also see the dual-purpose of using the CDT's as another way to have fun on Layonara.

[Acacea]

I'm with Nehetsrev in that some of my dev posts are literally an in-character journal written by my character, while many important ones are third-person in order to capture things that she goes through but might not write down or give proper attention to. It's an important way to keep track of character-defining events for you and GMs, but as he said, it can be another way to get into character and have fun with it, letting you flesh out your character's thoughts even when you can't or don't want to be in game. You don't need to be an amazing writer to get into your character's head, just a decent imagination and a good grasp on what the character is about (which is a big part of being a decent writer, anyway, right? )

Quick and dirty IC 3rd person example:

The stench of dried ogre blood wafted towards Aziza's flared nostrils as she scoured clean the stone blade of her spear with a handful of withered grass. It had been a good hunt, she thought - no more would this despoiler threaten her cousins' hunting grounds, though it's tree-club had taken down the pale human with the bloodthirsty claws he'd held in his hands. He had taken a blow meant for her flank, leaving her uncertain as to whether these strangers were friends or enemies with their unwieldy weapons and heavy shells like the turtles in the grasslands. Many threatened her with curses in violent tongues she couldn't understand, but this one was only wary, with a hunter's caution she could appreciate.

The many braids in her mane brushed over her tattooed face as she lowered her lithe body near the stream, claws retracting from hands that seemed human at first glance after combing mats and twigs from her fur. She had done well with her spears this day, perfecting many techniques that had been eluding her as the silver scales in the water had eluded her claws when she was a cub. At next dawn they would hunt again, and she would see the measure of this shell-less man, who called himself Jahn - eck, and seemed to feel the feel the call of the hunt as she did...tomorrow...)

OOC Log example:
4/30/07
- Run out of city by locals
- Killed ogres near a pride of lions, seeing them as a sort of lesser kin
- Met first tolerable human, Janek, with whom a tentative acquaintance was formed despite their lack of spoken communication
- Took improved critical: Spear)

Others are like Fatherchaos mentioned, maybe some crude symbols drawn to represent something that occurred, or a new tattoo, or what she dreams when she sleeps. You can even cut and paste some choice log transcriptions for including a defining conversation if you don't want to rewrite all the events.

For those of us that like to write out stories or entries of thing our characters do to the point where it would be difficult for any GM to wade through a CDT to find anything remotely relevant (I've noticed many are like that now), consider having fun with all of them, and adding something like a lot of OOC notes to say, the first entry that stays constantly updated as you progress. So when you go on a quest, add a quick and dirty summary to the first entry and write it up to your heart's content as a new entry when you have the time. This way it still serves a purpose as a reference log and allows you to run with your creativity if you've got it.

Just tossing out some suggestions for CDTs in general, really

[Faldred]

Just to repeat what's already been said... a character development thread (CDT) can be anything at all.  While the vast majority of players do keep them as journals (including yours truly), there's no reason you can't keep one in any format you wish.

Even separate entries (or the same entry!) in the same thread can be in different formats -- mix a journal entry with a chat log, a screenshot, 3rd party perspective, and/or rambling prose.

[bmkbobcat]

Fantastic!

I have found a solution that is not only pertinent, but darn fun too!

As Gvhe is illiterate, tribal, and nomadic, it seems to me that songs, stories, petroglyphs, and pictographs would be the way her kind would pass on knowledge.  So, after seeing Bumblebee the Brownie scribbling with ink and quill in a book, Gvhe mimicked and found that with a claw and the ink, she could draw pictures on the strange leaves of a book that she found.  With her drawings (screenshots and photoshop) and my notes on what they mean, I've got a workable plan!

Thank you to all for your suggestions, they really got the wheels turning in the right direction!