You're all correct! I just read the first two chapters and it is so, so good. So happy I was pointed in this direction. Plus, now I can participate in @AdamsEve1231 s discussion, although Sunday has passed by now, so I am tardy.
@Kittybit Oh no worries. I just post stuff on Sundays. Doesn't mean we can't have discussions all week long.
I second that. (para)normal is one of my favourite stories along with my life as a zombie by @munterbacon even though its been discontinued its still worth reading. Sorry cant provide links as i'm on my phone
@Charliimai Oh yes I have @Munterbacon's My Life as a Zombie on my reading list... my very very long reading list so unfortunately I haven't gotten around to it yet, but it's there.
Although I can't help but be worried, given the chapters you've chosen. If you think those chapters are scary,
wait until you start Arc 3.
@rednenemon Oh yes! I've heard more scary things are coming. That's okay. I'm forever behind and meandering through your story at a crazy slow pace, but I don't mind. I still think it's a great story and worth a mention.
Thanks @Charliimai for the shoutout! I don't read as much as I should but I'm hoping that will change when I get a new, less physical job.
I really wanted to make MLAAZ work with SimLit but my ideas were just too big for what I could pull off in TS4, I spent so much time searching for cc and building sets and still having to compromise on the story when I couldn't find a certain thing. On a more positive MLAAZ note, with complete free-reign, I've written 24 chapters for it as part of a novel. Might spend some time this month going through what I've written and try and get some more inspiration
Thanks @Charliimai for the shoutout! I don't read as much as I should but I'm hoping that will change when I get a new, less physical job.
I really wanted to make MLAAZ work with SimLit but my ideas were just too big for what I could pull off in TS4, I spent so much time searching for cc and building sets and still having to compromise on the story when I couldn't find a certain thing. On a more positive MLAAZ note, with complete free-reign, I've written 24 chapters for it as part of a novel. Might spend some time this month going through what I've written and try and get some more inspiration
@Munterbacon I can totally understand the feeling of compromising the story to get the perfect screenshots and still unable to capture everything you'd like. I've run into that problem multiple times and I get sucked into spending an entire day looking for cc and mods that it's almost not worth it. That's when I've written text-based chapters only. I am glad you found a way to free yourself up to really write the story. Good luck with your endeavors.
@everyone I would love to talk about this idea more - text-based chapters in the SimLit world or when you run into issues conveying your idea/story. Thoughts?
text based is fun for me. i do run in to a few issues because i'm writing about something i have no experience with. but i see that as a fun challenge.
Thanks @Charliimai for the shoutout! I don't read as much as I should but I'm hoping that will change when I get a new, less physical job.
I really wanted to make MLAAZ work with SimLit but my ideas were just too big for what I could pull off in TS4, I spent so much time searching for cc and building sets and still having to compromise on the story when I couldn't find a certain thing. On a more positive MLAAZ note, with complete free-reign, I've written 24 chapters for it as part of a novel. Might spend some time this month going through what I've written and try and get some more inspiration
@Munterbacon I am a big reader when I get some time to myself which I don't often so the odd time I do I binge. My life as a zombie is the only one I've read twice. I do hope you get inspired to write more even as a pictureless novel I would love to read it. *In my best Zombie voice* "I need moooore..."
@everyone I would love to talk about this idea more - text-based chapters in the SimLit world or when you run into issues conveying your idea/story. Thoughts?
I am currently having difficulties where this is concerned. My story The SIMplelife of Una Reign has both plot-driven and game-driven aspects where I have a pretty clear idea of where I want to take the plot driven story. The games limitations and difficulties setting up Screenshots that convey the scene have frustrated me to the point where I've just stopped.
I have spent days searching for cc and/or poses (which I am still getting used to) but it's never quite right. ( Plus I really dislike setting up poses which doesn't help things.) I have considered having a pictureless chapters but as i'm not at all confident in my writing I feel any readers may become lost or confused part way through.
I have lost all motivation to write that includes my other stories.
I would love hear others thoughts are on what they do when hitting a roadblock in their stories.
@everyone I would love to talk about this idea more - text-based chapters in the SimLit world or when you run into issues conveying your idea/story. Thoughts?
I don't suppose I need to clarify on the whole text-based thing?
But in all seriousness, when I was writing R-R C, I worried over how to properly set up everything. This was especially when it came to describing the current area. ("Am I too vague? Too wordy? Am I using certain words too many times? Is the setting not described enough? Is that idea plausible?" etc.)
I agonize over it even now, when I use pictures again for Part Deux.
Thanks @Charliimai for the shoutout! I don't read as much as I should but I'm hoping that will change when I get a new, less physical job.
I really wanted to make MLAAZ work with SimLit but my ideas were just too big for what I could pull off in TS4, I spent so much time searching for cc and building sets and still having to compromise on the story when I couldn't find a certain thing. On a more positive MLAAZ note, with complete free-reign, I've written 24 chapters for it as part of a novel. Might spend some time this month going through what I've written and try and get some more inspiration
@Munterbacon I can totally understand the feeling of compromising the story to get the perfect screenshots and still unable to capture everything you'd like. I've run into that problem multiple times and I get plum into spending an entire day looking for cc and mods that it's almost not worth it. That's when I've written text-based chapters only. I am glad you found a way to free yourself up to really write the story. Good luck with your endeavors.
Thank you! I've thought about wordless chapters, but I decided against it as it would so quickly fall outside the realm of SimLit.
Thanks @Charliimai for the shoutout! I don't read as much as I should but I'm hoping that will change when I get a new, less physical job.
I really wanted to make MLAAZ work with SimLit but my ideas were just too big for what I could pull off in TS4, I spent so much time searching for cc and building sets and still having to compromise on the story when I couldn't find a certain thing. On a more positive MLAAZ note, with complete free-reign, I've written 24 chapters for it as part of a novel. Might spend some time this month going through what I've written and try and get some more inspiration
@Munterbacon I am a big reader when I get some time to myself which I don't often so the odd time I do I binge. My life as a zombie is the only one I've read twice. I do hope you get inspired to write more even as a pictureless novel I would love to read it. *In my best Zombie voice* "I need moooore..."
Wow! That's awesome! I saw you binge Ironbound the other week and meant to say something but it completely slipped my mind, so thank you! I have been considering setting up a new blog to post my MLAAZ chapters but that will have to happen when I get more time
@everyone I would love to talk about this idea more - text-based chapters in the SimLit world or when you run into issues conveying your idea/story. Thoughts?
It can be done really well but I tend to struggle with the idea of it.
One example would be a scene in Ironbound:
Behind a spoiler tag, but it doesn't really spoil anything major.
Where one of the characters is gravely injured, she "wakes up" in this strange realm, it's a fever-dream. All the colour is gone from the world around her, and everything sort of ripples fluidly. She is drawn to this cottage in colour, it reminds her of someone, and almost as if by magic that someone appears, there is colour in their eyes and she is drawn to him.
What I am trying to portray in these images, and the accompanying words in the chapters involved is this characters fight with death. She is tempted by familiar things, and all she has to do is say that she wants to stay and she would pass peacefully, joining her loved one. Colour and the lack of it plays a massive part in these chapters, and having to try and write it as text only, I actually think it would've made the scene weaker?
@Charliimai If you get an answer for your question regarding roadblocks, let me know because I feel it too!
@Charliimai I want to think and ponder your questions before answering, but I'd highly encourage you to take a look at previous conversations in the Art of Sims Storytelling and The Kindness Bench for SimLit Writers and Storytellers and the Writer's Lounge because this subject has come up before. There may be others also that I'm unaware of. If you're overwhelmed by searching through the data, that's okay. Just a thought.
I will definitely answer these after I'm back from class tonight or tomorrow.
Oh, I'm happy to have a little bit of time to chat here tonight!
My Weekly EnthusiaSims..
OHMIGOSH, guyzzzz! Have you checked out Love, Jacob? This new story by @Kittybit is absolutely gorgeous! I'll be talking more about the visuals below in response to @AdamsEve1231 's question on text-based chapters... Four chapters have been posted so far, and this story has great plot, great characters, great writing, and gorgeous screenshots. I really recommend it... and I'm thinking of a Romance Stories theme for Book Club in February with this and maybe Gage's Riverview story, @AdamsEve1231 ! (Plus a few more romances...)
My other two enthusiasms this week are the readings for Book Club this week and next, @Jes2G 's Delicious Dishes and Dreams and @VIRTUALEE 's Dining Drama. These two are cross-over stories, and so that makes it even more fun to read them in close succession. With Jes's, I loved catching up with the family, the gen 9 Pruetts and their kids. It's great to know that there is life after legacy! And I really love watching Julian and Sky's children grow, plus it was so much fun to catch up with Julian's siblings! The restaurant story provides the container, and the Pruetts provide the yummy pasta salad! (Ugh... cannibalistic? Naw! Just digit-eating! Gross! Ok... I will try again...) The restaurant story provides the structure and the Pruetts provide the life!
I read all of VirtuaLEE's story this morning--I couldn't stop! And then I couldn't stop laughing! So wonderful! It's Sims 4 at its best! Even filled with crazy clowns! I can't wait for us to talk about this next week at Coffee Hour, which Jes is hosting! So much fun!
Spooky Scary
Oh, man. Did you guys read @Thymeless 's contribution to Rory's Spooky Collab? So chilling! You've Got Me Under Your Skin If you read it, I'd love to talk with you about it here. It seems really deep and meaningful to me, in addition to the spookiness...
Probably the scariest story I've ever read (and also up there on my short list of all-time favorites of any literature at all) is @rednenemon 's Racket-Rotter Chronicles. Curiously, or not... both of these scary stories have clones in them... hmmmm.....
And talking about Racket-Rotter brings us right into @AdamsEve1231 's question about text-based...
Text-Based Stories/Chapters/Sections...
So! I love this question! This ties in with two of the stories I mentioned above, and it's also something I'm thinking about with some of my current writing...
So, Racket-Rotter, my short-list fav, is all text. It's also very much SimLit, as the characters are TS3 Sims some of us know and love well (some through playing and writing about; with me, it's through reading these others' work). And one of the dominant themes of the work deals with the multiplicity that Sims (especially premades) experience.
Reading Racket-Rotter was an amazing experience for me--you know how you sometimes have a reading experience that both sort of consumes you and also changes you? One that defines an epoch? One summer I read this great translation of War and Peace, and it was the first time I'd read Tolstoy! And really, that summer changed my life. This summer, I read Racket-Rotter, and it brought me through a tough time psychologically and interpersonally. It helped me to learn an important lesson that I needed to learn in order to love others fully and well. Whew!
Part of why it was so immersive was because it was text-based. I would only read it at night, late, after Jim had gone to bed, when the house was silent, and only the room where I sat was light, and it was dark outside and the geckos on the window chirped and (yes) the cicadas still buzzed. In that special setting, I was able to completely enter into the story. Pictures would've ruined it for me--The Builder was far more frightening in my imagination than any screenshot could accomplish. And my imagination was able to provide fluidity--Senna's writing is fluid. Reality shifts and moves, and the Sims themselves transform in and out of iterations of themselves. At the same time, certain parts were incredibly concrete. I have memories of some parts
like when Dennis, Shark, Blaze, and Sagebear's car broke down and they had to walk along the road
as vividly as if these events had been part of my childhood or youth...
And now, in Part Deux, we're getting screenshots and... my experience is just as good! Something shifts. The Sims (as actors) carry more weight. My visual part of my imagination takes a breather, for I rely on the screenshots to convey the events and interactions, and what becomes engaged is that part of my brain that reads others' faces to see how they're feeling.
My favorite example of this is a recent chapter where Shark was feeling worried about his haunted bathroom, but he pretended for Sinbad that everything was OK--and his face with his little forced smile! It was priceless! I also loved this incredible cut to a picture of Harwoof and Scotchka (two adorable pug-nosed pups) sitting bolt upright with such dignity!
There's a lot of similarity in the writing in both parts--the difference in my experience as a reader lies in which parts of my brain are activated while I read...
Another example: When I read @RipuAncestor 's Chrysanthemum Tango (another short-list fav of mine) I sometimes forget that the pictures don't show up when I'm reading it in Pale Moon for my browser. I'll get half-way through, and then I'll realize I'm missing Tad's cute face. So I'll pop into Chrome to catch the the pictures. It's a similar thing: when I'm reading without screenies, my visual imagination ramps up and I am playing out the movie in my head with my own images. When I see the screenshots, then that part of my brain that interprets visual information--including reading others' faces--ramps up. It's pretty cool!
Another example: You know how I was raving on earlier about how much I love Love, Jacob? Well.... Kitty let me read the first chapter before it had screenshots! OH! That was a treat! The language is so rich, especially in sense detail. So I had all these scents and sights and tactile sensations--even tastes--going on. It was really fun. Kitty and I talked about what kinds of screenshots to add, and I was describing how rich all the sense details were for me as a reader, and then, when I reread the chapter WITH the screenshots, it was so much fun! All the sense details--and more--were there! Now, when I'm reading, I'm relying on the screenshots to fill me up sensually. It's really neat.
In my own writing... I started a text-only story a while back. It was because I wanted the story to be about Geoffrey and Nancy split up--but due to my personal Sim-playing ethics, I won't break up a Sim couple myself. They've got to want to split up. But I really wanted to explore this. So I just wrote it as a fanfic, no pics. I still imagine the characters as their Simselves, only not cartoon--real people. Maybe I'll come back to this in about six or seven months.
I've also recently been thinking about using text-based interludes. In an upcoming chapter of Shift, a conversation needs to happen that didn't happen in game and that I don't have any screenshots for. So, I'll just write it out and not worry about pictures. Sometimes, I do back-story this way, too. Often (and this kind of feels like cheating to me), I'll have a Sim think about a memory, and as I write it, I illustrate it with closeups of that Sim's face, rather than of what happened. It feels cheaty because I'm lazy and don't want to stage what she's thinking about--as a reader, I like it, though, because I love how expressive Sim faces can be and the ways they can reveal what's happening...
So! I think my wild rambles above show that, for me as a reader, I get SO much from text-based portions.
Here's a very important key: Gaps are just as important--if not more so--to readers than what is said or shown.
Here's what I mean: In Racket-Rotter, there were no pictures, so my imagination had to step up to fill in what wasn't shown for me. This engaged me and allowed me to be wholly immersed in the reading process.
Sometimes, if something happens in a story and we don't want to recreate it in game, we can just tell it.
Or we can refer to it.
Here are a few ways to get through these types of things that happen storywise, but not game-wise:
1) write it descriptively and don't worry about not having pictures for it. Have pictures for what you can illustrate (like what happens before the event or after) but don't worry about illustrating every single thing that happens.
2) don't bother writing all the details of what happened, but just refer to it as needed. For example, suppose a character got robbed on the underground. Rather than going to great pains to build a subway, find poses and cc for a robbery, and so on, you could present it in the story in many ways that CAN be easily represented:
a) You can have it as a gap, by writing something like "After Jake got robbed on the subway that afternoon, his love for the city faded."
That one clause lets our imaginations fill in the details.
b) You can present it through dialogue. Jake could tell somebody about it, and you show and write the conversation. The readers can imagine the events...
c) You can use my lazy way of having the character reflect on it or write about it, and show expressive pictures of the Sim's face. Again, the reader will fill in the blanks.
d) You can write bits and pieces.
You shared with me a bit of your prologue for your city story, and I absolutely loved it! In that prologue, you're using gaps brilliantly! You provide just enough for the reader to figure out what's going on and to get to know the characters, but you leave out enough that we become engaged as readers in filling in the gaps.
It's way more important, in my experience as a reader, for the writer to leave these gaps than to fill in every little space. The gaps let me act as co-creator. My mind jumps in and fills in the entire sequence of events, imagining every little detail of the backstory, when I read just this phrase, "After Jake got robbed on the subway..."
(Wow. This is long. This is what happens when I don't write ten posts during the day and instead practice discipline, telling myself I'll write them all in the evening AFTER work!)
i forgot i have one more challenge with text based. since my screenshots are mostly gone i have no pics of the first generation at all. so i guess i have to rewrite them.
i forgot i have one more challenge with text based. since my screenshots are mostly gone i have no pics of the first generation at all. so i guess i have to rewrite them.
DOH! Seeing you post reminds me that I wanted to talk about your text-based chapters, too...
Sometimes, when I'm reading them, I wonder if I would love them as much if they had pictures.
I do love your chapters with pictures...
Your chapters without pictures are real treats for me. In part, I simply like the way your words look on the page. You always do an interesting job of setting up the length of paragraph and line, so just the way the sentences fit the page engage me right there. And pictures would interrupt that visual impact of the sentences.
And, like with Red's story, when I read yours without pictures, I imagine every little thing...
Like in the PTA meeting, I imagined the room, the table with goodies, the ceiling and flourecsent lights, the crowds of other moms and dads, and all the expressions on Elsa's face
So I'm definitely engaged visually when there are no screenshots.
Also, the pacing of your words is always right on. I think that, for me, pictures interspersed with the story would interrupt that pacing.
Also, like with Red's story, yours really presents psychological portraits of the characters--not having pictures allows me to imagine the expressions of the characters as they experience and feel what you're writing about.
Oh, man. Did you guys read @Thymeless 's contribution to Rory's Spooky Collab? So chilling! You've Got Me Under Your Skin If you read it, I'd love to talk with you about it here. It seems really deep and meaningful to me, in addition to the spookiness...
I loved it too! It was really creepy, and the visuals were awesomely disturbing and beautiful at the same time! And it was a great mix of scifi horror and supernatural horror. And like you said, @CathyTea, it was also deep, and I liked how it explored some very interesting themes, such as identity and some ethical questions about cloning. I can definitely talk about it more!
Probably the scariest story I've ever read (and also up there on my short list of all-time favorites of any literature at all) is @rednenemon 's Racket-Rotter Chronicles. Curiously, or not... both of these scary stories have clones in them... hmmmm.....
Yes! I definitely recommend Racket-Rotter for everyone who likes a dark, creepy, yet also heartwarming and beautiful story! I love how it has humour and more light-hearted moments, but it can shift into really disturbing horror very quickly! The text-based approach works really well for it, in my opinion. Like Cathy said, it's the kind of story where it's better and scarier to imagine what everything looks like than to actually see it. And @rednenemon's writing is really good at invoking very effective mental images, at least to me. There's also the fact that text-only writing gives more freedom, because there are many things in that story that would have been really difficult to stage in the game.
But as Part Deux has proved, these characters and this setting does work very well with pictures too!
Another example: When I read @RipuAncestor 's Chrysanthemum Tango (another short-list fav of mine) I sometimes forget that the pictures don't show up when I'm reading it in Pale Moon for my browser. I'll get half-way through, and then I'll realize I'm missing Tad's cute face. So I'll pop into Chrome to catch the the pictures. It's a similar thing: when I'm reading without screenies, my visual imagination ramps up and I am playing out the movie in my head with my own images. When I see the screenshots, then that part of my brain that interprets visual information--including reading others' faces--ramps up. It's pretty cool!
Thank you!
I do write my chapters so that they could work without pictures - aside from some moments where I deliberately let the pictures do the talking. And then I try to create some kind of dialogue between the pictures and the text. Sometimes I add little details that show up in the pictures but aren't mentioned in the text, but that hopefully enhance the reader's perception of what's happening.Or then the details are there just for fun. Meanwhile, the text is there to convey not just visual information, but also scents and sounds and such.
Text can also change the meaning and the atmosphere of a picture entirely. For example, a beautiful scenery can be made creepy (while still staying beautiful) with the right descriptions, such as in @AdamsEve1231 's awesome spooky story, Supposed to Be, or in @MedleyMisty's amazing Surreal Darkness.
While I enjoy reading text-only SimLit, and I think I would enjoy doing text-only writing in SimLit too, I'm a little too much in love with taking screenshots and staging situations. So my own SimLit stories will probably always have visual elements (unless I want to do a text-only short story or something... you never know). Sometimes staging things is a total pain, but I also love the challenge and thinking up creative ways to depict something that's normally difficult to depict in the game. Of course, CC and mods - especially poses - help with that a lot.
Also @CathyTea had some great advice on how to use text in SimLit! ( I would probably really stage that underground, spend hours on it and then wonder if there had been an easier way to do it).
And I agree that gaps are very important, whether one uses screenshots or not.
My Sims stories: The Fey of Life - fairytales in life are few and far between (Forum thread HERE) The Chrysanthemum Tango - a story about life, death, magic, and how to be a good landlady (Forum thread HERE) Forget-Me-Not - some things just refuse to stay buried; an Ambrosia Challenge story (Forum thread HERE)
Oh! Look at this “fangirl” thread lol. I’ll have to come back and add my own contributions soon. Glad you’re enjoying Pruetts in 3D Delicious Dishes & Dreams, @CathyTea!
@everyone I would love to talk about this idea more - text-based chapters in the SimLit world or when you run into issues conveying your idea/story. Thoughts?
I wanted to chime in on this. I don't see the point of it being simlit if it's text based only. I mean, that would make it just another story--unless you mean the characters come from the sims. And I tend to not read it if there aren't sim pictures. Of course I read regular lit without pictures but the reason I love simlit so much is for the art of the pictures, too. It's such a bonus and there are MANY simlit artists out there that I gasp at how much time they put into their pictures. One is @xJojox --she's incredible! And @Jellysimwich is another amazing simlit artist, imo.
I have a novel online where I put it into simlit where I was very limited in pictures because of the subject matter. It's here, if you want to see it: DISORDER. I stopped it because the pictures couldn't do it justice anymore without a big city. Now that we have that city, I might go back to it. Sure, I could post it as is...without pictures but what's the fun in that?
@AdamsEve1231 If you mean in a story that normally has chapter with pictures, I think if there's one or two that you really can't convey then I don't see a problem with it. Or maybe just one picture of a setting or something. If you have a great idea that can't be done, then it seems a shame to not use it because of practicality.
@AdamsEve1231 I definitely have had moments in my stories where I had something I wanted to convey but no poses to do it with. And in those cases, I just go ahead and describe it but don't have a picture to go with that particular line.
I have also had a few (2-3) chapters with no pictures at all, for impact haha. The most recent of these is a newspaper article revealing a character death. Times like that, I think screenshots would actually take away from it.
But for the most part, I agree with @pammiechick that a super important part of what makes SimLit simlit is the pictures!
Oh, man. Did you guys read @Thymeless 's contribution to Rory's Spooky Collab? So chilling! You've Got Me Under Your Skin If you read it, I'd love to talk with you about it here. It seems really deep and meaningful to me, in addition to the spookiness...
I loved it too! It was really creepy, and the visuals were awesomely disturbing and beautiful at the same time! And it was a great mix of scifi horror and supernatural horror. And like you said, @CathyTea, it was also deep, and I liked how it explored some very interesting themes, such as identity and some ethical questions about cloning. I can definitely talk about it more!
Yes! I loved it, it was a chilling one for sure! I really enjoyed how the information was revealed bit by bit, and how there was still plenty left shrouded in mystery. It really made you ponder about the world those characters live in, and the moral connections to our own world. It made me think of the film Never Let Me Go, actually.
@AdamsEve1231 I definitely have had moments in my stories where I had something I wanted to convey but no poses to do it with. And in those cases, I just go ahead and describe it but don't have a picture to go with that particular line.
I have also had a few (2-3) chapters with no pictures at all, for impact haha. The most recent of these is a newspaper article revealing a character death. Times like that, I think screenshots would actually take away from it.
But for the most part, I agree with @pammiechick that a super important part of what makes SimLit simlit is the pictures!
as adam and eve knows as much as i want pics of certain things it just not possible. because there are no poses to show it. so i try to describe it the best i can.
@ThePlumbob That film/book was actually one of my inspirations! Never Let Me Go, Blade Runner and The Grudge, actually XD I'm so happy that came across!! @RipuAncestor I'm really flattered that you thought the screenshots were good - I'd never done anything that complicated before, but I really enjoyed it @CathyTea Thank you!
i forgot i have one more challenge with text based. since my screenshots are mostly gone i have no pics of the first generation at all. so i guess i have to rewrite them.
DOH! Seeing you post reminds me that I wanted to talk about your text-based chapters, too...
Sometimes, when I'm reading them, I wonder if I would love them as much if they had pictures.
I do love your chapters with pictures...
Your chapters without pictures are real treats for me. In part, I simply like the way your words look on the page. You always do an interesting job of setting up the length of paragraph and line, so just the way the sentences fit the page engage me right there. And pictures would interrupt that visual impact of the sentences.
And, like with Red's story, when I read yours without pictures, I imagine every little thing...
Like in the PTA meeting, I imagined the room, the table with goodies, the ceiling and flourecsent lights, the crowds of other moms and dads, and all the expressions on Elsa's face
So I'm definitely engaged visually when there are no screenshots.
Also, the pacing of your words is always right on. I think that, for me, pictures interspersed with the story would interrupt that pacing.
Also, like with Red's story, yours really presents psychological portraits of the characters--not having pictures allows me to imagine the expressions of the characters as they experience and feel what you're writing about.
i forgot i have one more challenge with text based. since my screenshots are mostly gone i have no pics of the first generation at all. so i guess i have to rewrite them.
DOH! Seeing you post reminds me that I wanted to talk about your text-based chapters, too...
Sometimes, when I'm reading them, I wonder if I would love them as much if they had pictures.
I do love your chapters with pictures...
Your chapters without pictures are real treats for me. In part, I simply like the way your words look on the page. You always do an interesting job of setting up the length of paragraph and line, so just the way the sentences fit the page engage me right there. And pictures would interrupt that visual impact of the sentences.
And, like with Red's story, when I read yours without pictures, I imagine every little thing...
Like in the PTA meeting, I imagined the room, the table with goodies, the ceiling and flourecsent lights, the crowds of other moms and dads, and all the expressions on Elsa's face
So I'm definitely engaged visually when there are no screenshots.
Also, the pacing of your words is always right on. I think that, for me, pictures interspersed with the story would interrupt that pacing.
Also, like with Red's story, yours really presents psychological portraits of the characters--not having pictures allows me to imagine the expressions of the characters as they experience and feel what you're writing about.
What you're doing is really working!
so wait when you were writing for me and there were no pics you beg me for them you know what i mean now that you have them you like words. lol.
Comments
@Kittybit Oh no worries. I just post stuff on Sundays. Doesn't mean we can't have discussions all week long.
@Charliimai Oh yes I have @Munterbacon's My Life as a Zombie on my reading list... my very very long reading list so unfortunately I haven't gotten around to it yet, but it's there.
@rednenemon Oh yes! I've heard more scary things are coming. That's okay. I'm forever behind and meandering through your story at a crazy slow pace, but I don't mind. I still think it's a great story and worth a mention.
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@xJojox awesome! I hope you're enjoying A2A. It's a rollercoaster
i still love that because of munter its backward.
@CitizenErased14 You're welcome!
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I really wanted to make MLAAZ work with SimLit but my ideas were just too big for what I could pull off in TS4, I spent so much time searching for cc and building sets and still having to compromise on the story when I couldn't find a certain thing. On a more positive MLAAZ note, with complete free-reign, I've written 24 chapters for it as part of a novel. Might spend some time this month going through what I've written and try and get some more inspiration
@Munterbacon I can totally understand the feeling of compromising the story to get the perfect screenshots and still unable to capture everything you'd like. I've run into that problem multiple times and I get sucked into spending an entire day looking for cc and mods that it's almost not worth it. That's when I've written text-based chapters only. I am glad you found a way to free yourself up to really write the story. Good luck with your endeavors.
@everyone I would love to talk about this idea more - text-based chapters in the SimLit world or when you run into issues conveying your idea/story. Thoughts?
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@Munterbacon I am a big reader when I get some time to myself which I don't often so the odd time I do I binge. My life as a zombie is the only one I've read twice. I do hope you get inspired to write more even as a pictureless novel I would love to read it. *In my best Zombie voice* "I need moooore..."
I am currently having difficulties where this is concerned. My story The SIMplelife of Una Reign has both plot-driven and game-driven aspects where I have a pretty clear idea of where I want to take the plot driven story. The games limitations and difficulties setting up Screenshots that convey the scene have frustrated me to the point where I've just stopped.
I have spent days searching for cc and/or poses (which I am still getting used to) but it's never quite right. ( Plus I really dislike setting up poses which doesn't help things.) I have considered having a pictureless chapters but as i'm not at all confident in my writing I feel any readers may become lost or confused part way through.
I have lost all motivation to write that includes my other stories.
I would love hear others thoughts are on what they do when hitting a roadblock in their stories.
Read my Legacy story's or atttempt one of my Sims 4 challenges.
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I don't suppose I need to clarify on the whole text-based thing?
But in all seriousness, when I was writing R-R C, I worried over how to properly set up everything. This was especially when it came to describing the current area. ("Am I too vague? Too wordy? Am I using certain words too many times? Is the setting not described enough? Is that idea plausible?" etc.)
I agonize over it even now, when I use pictures again for Part Deux.
Part One(Complete 9/24/16) /Part Two(on hold)/Short Stories(on hold)/Twinbrook 1996(on hold)/Ten Crystal Hearts (on hold)
I own the TS3 Store as of 12/11/16 (sort of. It's complicated)
Thank you! I've thought about wordless chapters, but I decided against it as it would so quickly fall outside the realm of SimLit.
Wow! That's awesome!
It can be done really well but I tend to struggle with the idea of it.
One example would be a scene in Ironbound:
Behind a spoiler tag, but it doesn't really spoil anything major.
What I am trying to portray in these images, and the accompanying words in the chapters involved is this characters fight with death. She is tempted by familiar things, and all she has to do is say that she wants to stay and she would pass peacefully, joining her loved one. Colour and the lack of it plays a massive part in these chapters, and having to try and write it as text only, I actually think it would've made the scene weaker?
@Charliimai If you get an answer for your question regarding roadblocks, let me know because I feel it too!
I will definitely answer these after I'm back from class tonight or tomorrow.
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OHMIGOSH, guyzzzz! Have you checked out Love, Jacob? This new story by @Kittybit is absolutely gorgeous! I'll be talking more about the visuals below in response to @AdamsEve1231 's question on text-based chapters... Four chapters have been posted so far, and this story has great plot, great characters, great writing, and gorgeous screenshots. I really recommend it... and I'm thinking of a Romance Stories theme for Book Club in February with this and maybe Gage's Riverview story, @AdamsEve1231 ! (Plus a few more romances...)
My other two enthusiasms this week are the readings for Book Club this week and next, @Jes2G 's Delicious Dishes and Dreams and @VIRTUALEE 's Dining Drama. These two are cross-over stories, and so that makes it even more fun to read them in close succession. With Jes's, I loved catching up with the family, the gen 9 Pruetts and their kids. It's great to know that there is life after legacy! And I really love watching Julian and Sky's children grow, plus it was so much fun to catch up with Julian's siblings!
I read all of VirtuaLEE's story this morning--I couldn't stop! And then I couldn't stop laughing! So wonderful! It's Sims 4 at its best! Even filled with crazy clowns! I can't wait for us to talk about this next week at Coffee Hour, which Jes is hosting! So much fun!
Spooky Scary
Oh, man. Did you guys read @Thymeless 's contribution to Rory's Spooky Collab? So chilling! You've Got Me Under Your Skin If you read it, I'd love to talk with you about it here. It seems really deep and meaningful to me, in addition to the spookiness...
Probably the scariest story I've ever read (and also up there on my short list of all-time favorites of any literature at all) is @rednenemon 's Racket-Rotter Chronicles. Curiously, or not... both of these scary stories have clones in them... hmmmm.....
And talking about Racket-Rotter brings us right into @AdamsEve1231 's question about text-based...
Text-Based Stories/Chapters/Sections...
So! I love this question! This ties in with two of the stories I mentioned above, and it's also something I'm thinking about with some of my current writing...
So, Racket-Rotter, my short-list fav, is all text. It's also very much SimLit, as the characters are TS3 Sims some of us know and love well (some through playing and writing about; with me, it's through reading these others' work). And one of the dominant themes of the work deals with the multiplicity that Sims (especially premades) experience.
Reading Racket-Rotter was an amazing experience for me--you know how you sometimes have a reading experience that both sort of consumes you and also changes you? One that defines an epoch? One summer I read this great translation of War and Peace, and it was the first time I'd read Tolstoy! And really, that summer changed my life. This summer, I read Racket-Rotter, and it brought me through a tough time psychologically and interpersonally. It helped me to learn an important lesson that I needed to learn in order to love others fully and well. Whew!
Part of why it was so immersive was because it was text-based. I would only read it at night, late, after Jim had gone to bed, when the house was silent, and only the room where I sat was light, and it was dark outside and the geckos on the window chirped and (yes) the cicadas still buzzed. In that special setting, I was able to completely enter into the story. Pictures would've ruined it for me--The Builder was far more frightening in my imagination than any screenshot could accomplish. And my imagination was able to provide fluidity--Senna's writing is fluid. Reality shifts and moves, and the Sims themselves transform in and out of iterations of themselves. At the same time, certain parts were incredibly concrete. I have memories of some parts
as vividly as if these events had been part of my childhood or youth...
And now, in Part Deux, we're getting screenshots and... my experience is just as good! Something shifts. The Sims (as actors) carry more weight. My visual part of my imagination takes a breather, for I rely on the screenshots to convey the events and interactions, and what becomes engaged is that part of my brain that reads others' faces to see how they're feeling.
There's a lot of similarity in the writing in both parts--the difference in my experience as a reader lies in which parts of my brain are activated while I read...
Another example: When I read @RipuAncestor 's Chrysanthemum Tango (another short-list fav of mine) I sometimes forget that the pictures don't show up when I'm reading it in Pale Moon for my browser. I'll get half-way through, and then I'll realize I'm missing Tad's cute face. So I'll pop into Chrome to catch the the pictures. It's a similar thing: when I'm reading without screenies, my visual imagination ramps up and I am playing out the movie in my head with my own images. When I see the screenshots, then that part of my brain that interprets visual information--including reading others' faces--ramps up. It's pretty cool!
Another example: You know how I was raving on earlier about how much I love Love, Jacob? Well.... Kitty let me read the first chapter before it had screenshots! OH! That was a treat! The language is so rich, especially in sense detail. So I had all these scents and sights and tactile sensations--even tastes--going on. It was really fun. Kitty and I talked about what kinds of screenshots to add, and I was describing how rich all the sense details were for me as a reader, and then, when I reread the chapter WITH the screenshots, it was so much fun! All the sense details--and more--were there! Now, when I'm reading, I'm relying on the screenshots to fill me up sensually. It's really neat.
In my own writing... I started a text-only story a while back. It was because I wanted the story to be about Geoffrey and Nancy split up--but due to my personal Sim-playing ethics, I won't break up a Sim couple myself. They've got to want to split up. But I really wanted to explore this. So I just wrote it as a fanfic, no pics. I still imagine the characters as their Simselves, only not cartoon--real people. Maybe I'll come back to this in about six or seven months.
I've also recently been thinking about using text-based interludes. In an upcoming chapter of Shift, a conversation needs to happen that didn't happen in game and that I don't have any screenshots for. So, I'll just write it out and not worry about pictures. Sometimes, I do back-story this way, too. Often (and this kind of feels like cheating to me), I'll have a Sim think about a memory, and as I write it, I illustrate it with closeups of that Sim's face, rather than of what happened. It feels cheaty because I'm lazy and don't want to stage what she's thinking about--as a reader, I like it, though, because I love how expressive Sim faces can be and the ways they can reveal what's happening...
@Charliimai 's Question...
So! I think my wild rambles above show that, for me as a reader, I get SO much from text-based portions.
Here's a very important key: Gaps are just as important--if not more so--to readers than what is said or shown.
Here's what I mean: In Racket-Rotter, there were no pictures, so my imagination had to step up to fill in what wasn't shown for me. This engaged me and allowed me to be wholly immersed in the reading process.
Sometimes, if something happens in a story and we don't want to recreate it in game, we can just tell it.
Or we can refer to it.
Here are a few ways to get through these types of things that happen storywise, but not game-wise:
1) write it descriptively and don't worry about not having pictures for it. Have pictures for what you can illustrate (like what happens before the event or after) but don't worry about illustrating every single thing that happens.
2) don't bother writing all the details of what happened, but just refer to it as needed. For example, suppose a character got robbed on the underground. Rather than going to great pains to build a subway, find poses and cc for a robbery, and so on, you could present it in the story in many ways that CAN be easily represented:
a) You can have it as a gap, by writing something like "After Jake got robbed on the subway that afternoon, his love for the city faded."
That one clause lets our imaginations fill in the details.
b) You can present it through dialogue. Jake could tell somebody about it, and you show and write the conversation. The readers can imagine the events...
c) You can use my lazy way of having the character reflect on it or write about it, and show expressive pictures of the Sim's face. Again, the reader will fill in the blanks.
d) You can write bits and pieces.
You shared with me a bit of your prologue for your city story, and I absolutely loved it! In that prologue, you're using gaps brilliantly! You provide just enough for the reader to figure out what's going on and to get to know the characters, but you leave out enough that we become engaged as readers in filling in the gaps.
It's way more important, in my experience as a reader, for the writer to leave these gaps than to fill in every little space. The gaps let me act as co-creator. My mind jumps in and fills in the entire sequence of events, imagining every little detail of the backstory, when I read just this phrase, "After Jake got robbed on the subway..."
(Wow. This is long. This is what happens when I don't write ten posts during the day and instead practice discipline, telling myself I'll write them all in the evening AFTER work!)
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
DOH! Seeing you post reminds me that I wanted to talk about your text-based chapters, too...
Sometimes, when I'm reading them, I wonder if I would love them as much if they had pictures.
I do love your chapters with pictures...
Your chapters without pictures are real treats for me. In part, I simply like the way your words look on the page. You always do an interesting job of setting up the length of paragraph and line, so just the way the sentences fit the page engage me right there. And pictures would interrupt that visual impact of the sentences.
And, like with Red's story, when I read yours without pictures, I imagine every little thing...
So I'm definitely engaged visually when there are no screenshots.
Also, the pacing of your words is always right on. I think that, for me, pictures interspersed with the story would interrupt that pacing.
Also, like with Red's story, yours really presents psychological portraits of the characters--not having pictures allows me to imagine the expressions of the characters as they experience and feel what you're writing about.
What you're doing is really working!
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
Yes! I definitely recommend Racket-Rotter for everyone who likes a dark, creepy, yet also heartwarming and beautiful story! I love how it has humour and more light-hearted moments, but it can shift into really disturbing horror very quickly! The text-based approach works really well for it, in my opinion. Like Cathy said, it's the kind of story where it's better and scarier to imagine what everything looks like than to actually see it. And @rednenemon's writing is really good at invoking very effective mental images, at least to me. There's also the fact that text-only writing gives more freedom, because there are many things in that story that would have been really difficult to stage in the game.
But as Part Deux has proved, these characters and this setting does work very well with pictures too!
I do write my chapters so that they could work without pictures - aside from some moments where I deliberately let the pictures do the talking. And then I try to create some kind of dialogue between the pictures and the text. Sometimes I add little details that show up in the pictures but aren't mentioned in the text, but that hopefully enhance the reader's perception of what's happening.Or then the details are there just for fun. Meanwhile, the text is there to convey not just visual information, but also scents and sounds and such.
Text can also change the meaning and the atmosphere of a picture entirely. For example, a beautiful scenery can be made creepy (while still staying beautiful) with the right descriptions, such as in @AdamsEve1231 's awesome spooky story, Supposed to Be, or in @MedleyMisty's amazing Surreal Darkness.
While I enjoy reading text-only SimLit, and I think I would enjoy doing text-only writing in SimLit too, I'm a little too much in love with taking screenshots and staging situations. So my own SimLit stories will probably always have visual elements (unless I want to do a text-only short story or something... you never know). Sometimes staging things is a total pain, but I also love the challenge and thinking up creative ways to depict something that's normally difficult to depict in the game. Of course, CC and mods - especially poses - help with that a lot.
Also @CathyTea had some great advice on how to use text in SimLit! (
And I agree that gaps are very important, whether one uses screenshots or not.
The Fey of Life - fairytales in life are few and far between (Forum thread HERE)
The Chrysanthemum Tango - a story about life, death, magic, and how to be a good landlady (Forum thread HERE)
Forget-Me-Not - some things just refuse to stay buried; an Ambrosia Challenge story (Forum thread HERE)
I wanted to chime in on this. I don't see the point of it being simlit if it's text based only. I mean, that would make it just another story--unless you mean the characters come from the sims. And I tend to not read it if there aren't sim pictures. Of course I read regular lit without pictures but the reason I love simlit so much is for the art of the pictures, too. It's such a bonus and there are MANY simlit artists out there that I gasp at how much time they put into their pictures. One is @xJojox --she's incredible! And @Jellysimwich is another amazing simlit artist, imo.
I have a novel online where I put it into simlit where I was very limited in pictures because of the subject matter. It's here, if you want to see it: DISORDER. I stopped it because the pictures couldn't do it justice anymore without a big city. Now that we have that city, I might go back to it. Sure, I could post it as is...without pictures but what's the fun in that?
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I have also had a few (2-3) chapters with no pictures at all, for impact haha. The most recent of these is a newspaper article revealing a character death. Times like that, I think screenshots would actually take away from it.
But for the most part, I agree with @pammiechick that a super important part of what makes SimLit simlit is the pictures!
Yes! I loved it, it was a chilling one for sure! I really enjoyed how the information was revealed bit by bit, and how there was still plenty left shrouded in mystery. It really made you ponder about the world those characters live in, and the moral connections to our own world. It made me think of the film Never Let Me Go, actually.
Story Blog | Forum Discussion
as adam and eve knows as much as i want pics of certain things it just not possible. because there are no poses to show it. so i try to describe it the best i can.
@RipuAncestor I'm really flattered that you thought the screenshots were good - I'd never done anything that complicated before, but I really enjoyed it
@CathyTea Thank you!
You're all making me blush, how dare =p
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The Centauri Legacy | Can You Hear the Violins? | Drifting with Nifflers
Reading Circles: Reader's Nook
so wait when you were writing for me and there were no pics you beg me for them you know what i mean now that you have them you like words. lol.
Yes! That about sums it up!
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
ilove yoyou too. goofball. lol.