GCEA Journal [Open]

[[Desolate Divine]]

Hello, one and all, to the GCeA Journal.


This thread is where you can show off your writing skills, and earn points to use in the main GCEA thread. Simple enough, right?

The Premise is simple; you put down a log of your characters journey (from your characters POV), and earn points for how well you did. There are only a few rules and guidelines.

0: ALL PXR RULES APPLY! Seriously.

1: You can only do this weekly. This isn't supposed to be a spam-able source of points.

2: Journal entries are graded on a 3-point scale, maxing at 15. 3 meets basic requirements, 15 is flawless.

3: Journal entries should pertain to events that occurred in the main game. You don't have to list everything that happened, but you should list what your character actually cares about, and more importantly, how they see those events.

4: You can make these any length you want, as long as they don't get too short or too long. This is how your character writes-if they like to summarize and keep their text short, then so be it, but it should still be about 500 words minimum. If they like fairly long and detailed accounts of the day, that's fine too. Please keep in mind the following:

4a: If your journal entry is less than 500 words long, you will automatically get a 3 point deduction from your overall score.
4b: If your journal entry is less than 400 words long, you will automatically get a 6 point deduction from your overall score.
4c: If your journal entry is less than 300 words long, you will automatically get a 10 point deduction from your overall score.
4d: If your journal entry is less than 200 words long, your entry will get an automatic 0/15.

5: Legible writing for the journal is much more important than the actual games. A single 'to' where a 'too' should have been will not disqualify you from a perfect 15. If 'to' is your version of 'too,' and you use it every time it should have been 'too,' then you're probably going to get 3.

6: Staying in Character is also important. You're writing the journal entries from THEIR Point of View (or POV), so breaking character is bad and will get your grade lowered.

7: GCEA's Mods and GMods (roles that are not synonymous with PXR's mods and Gmods) are the only people that can judge your Journal Entries. Any decision during judging made by a mod is independent of other mods and cannot be altered. All decisions are final.

8: Have fun writing up the journal entries, because seriously, we wouldn't post stuff like this if it wasn't fun to do anyways. Seriously, have fun!

9: The journals will be graded in the order they were posted by a mod who will post a respone for you. you may still request feedback from either of the graders for improvement purposes if you so desire.

Current Graders
@Suicune's Fire @Noblejanobii

Grading earns 8 points per journal. If you're interested in becoming a journal grader, head over to this thread to apply.

Form:
[B]GCEA version: [/B]
[B]Trainer Name:[/B]
[B]Link to stats:[/B]
[B]Word Count:[/B]

Typically at the beginning of each entry you would write the entry number and the date, but those are optional.

I don't know what to write about!

Having trouble fulfilling the 500 word criteria for the journal entries? Perhaps your GCEA journey is going a little slower than you'd like. Well, here are some things to make you think:

The day's events
The obvious choice is to go for what's been happening in your GCEA version lately. There may be interesting things that have happened, such as a new addition to your character's team, or a random NPC the group bumped into. Perhaps your character had a great battle with someone, or had to overcome a certain challenge. If you had a gym challenge, that would be a fantastic thing to write about. Don't leave any detail out!

Off-screen occurrences
Maybe your GCEA version is going a little slowly, and you can't write about much that's happened over the past week. Have no fear! The concrete events of the day isn't necessarily all that happened. In fact, time skips happen all the time. During one of those time skips, while the group was travelling through a cave, or on their way to a town, your character could have been doing something. What do they like to do? Do they like to occupy themselves with study about battle strategies, or how to train pokémon faster? Maybe they like to knit or draw, or maybe they even had a nap and dreamed up something worth writing about. You could go into detail about how a training session went if one of your pokémon levelled up or evolved. There's so much you can make up about off-screen events (provided they don't impact your GCEA journey or other players, such as getting a new pokémon that nobody knows about). They could have had to have a quick bathroom break in an awkward situation, for instance, or maybe their hat blew off when they went for a walk in the nighttime while everyone else was sleeping, and they spent an hour looking for it. Be creative!

Your character's thoughts
As well as the normal thoughts your character would inject into their diary entries while simply retelling the day's activities, there could be things that your character cares deeply for, such as a certain pokémon, or even another member of the group. On the contrary, maybe your character really dislikes a certain member of the group, so they need to vent about it. One small detail about what happened in the day could lead to a whole rant about something, or maybe an essay on the positivity. Perhaps their views clash with another character, or an NPC they met. Your character could express their views on the pokémon they have, or which they hope to encounter. Slip into the journal something about your character's dreams and how they want to achieve something. Don't be afraid to voice your character's inner thoughts, whether they're demons, angels, or just ramblings. Go into detail. Get to that 500 word mark. :]

Back at home...
Your character had a life before they started on their GCEA journey, so write about it. There's every chance that something from their past would resurface and affect their current happenings. Maybe someone in the group reminds them of their old childhood friend, or one of the pokémon they came across recently made them think of their mother's famous champion pokémon. Perhaps a meal they had that day (off-screen ;D) made them think back to their childhood, or a nice warm bed in a Pokémon Centre they stayed in made them think back to their bedroom at home. There's every opportunity to include your character's history into your journals, so don't be hesitant to make something up and chuck it in!


More to come!