@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!
I loved that newspaper article. It's still a pic and makes it seem more realistic. I also love the different artistic takes you use to convey story--sometimes not using words and only pictures. Of course, sometimes people have to extrapolate what is going on but I love the mystery in it sometimes.
I also do this where there aren't any poses for my stories--I'll describe. That's fine, but to have lots of text without pictures...well, that's just plain old lit, imo.
I REALLY want to learn how to pose. Just downloaded Sims 4 Studio and will be doing recolor cc first then onto poses. I'm really stoked about this because gah! There's SOOO much I want to do with my pictures that I can't. My main characters are alternative--a male/male relationship and most poses are for male/female. I get that, of course, but now I'll be able to do some things I couldn't before.
Wow! So much wonderful engagement here! I'm excited. Thanks everyone.
Text-based SimLit
@friendsfan367 I think text-based can sometimes free us up to write things that the game itself might limit. While I've only played TS3, and the sky's the limit, there are certain things I can't capture in screenshots. It is a fun challenge to try and write and stay true to the game but also give myself the freedom to write outside the box or bubble or game. Of course, the only "real" limitations are my own imagination.
One of the reasons I like your stories is the Benders is primarily text-based. I love how you've freed yourself to write this way. Also makes for quicker updates. I enjoy how you utilize line breaks and spaces and gaps. I have to immerse myself in the story and I find my mind often wanders and creates pictures of the characters in my mind. I love that!
I also agree with @CathyTea said about not illustrating for every single event. I try not to get hung up on things I can't display in game.
@RipuAncestor I like what you said about RR Chronicles. I love how @rednenemon does scenes and setup - the dark and the light, the creepy and the hilarious, the cunning and the innocent. RR Chronicles captures constrasts very nicely. I'm totally okay with it being pictureless. It's fun to picture things in my head.
Pictures
I also agree with what CathyTea said about your Chrysanthemum Tango. I love the color and life and vitality and amazing, yet simple (and I mean that in a sweet way) visuals. I love how things like Death and Fate walk among ordinary, beautiful humans and how your story tackles some of the fundamentals of what it means to be human without drawing away from the story and the characters and their worlds. Thank you for what you said about my short story from October.
I am glad we got some of the opposite persepctive here too from @pammiechick and @CitizenErased14. Everyone has their preferences and that's what I love about teh wide variety of Simlit available in the community. Part of why I like the pictures is because it forces me to be creative and work within the constructs of a game. I like the challenge of it. I also like the idea of coauthoring with the game.
I really do enjoy pictures also, don't get me wrong, but I like the freedom of ditching pictures when I need to. I think it's a matter of personal preference. I really didn't intend CFT to have sections of complete text and no pictures. That was unintentional, but I feel like it worked. However, I plan to bring pictures back in the future. SimLi with pictures adds to the color and fun of the world and storylines.
I'll read text-based, few pictures, picture-heavy stories, although my preference is text and pictures in reading and writing, though I'm more text-heavy I think. However, I appreciate you both lending your voices to this discussion and explaining what makes 'SimLit' Simlit for you.
Road Blocks
@Charliimai Your style of planning sounds similar to my own. I have a pretty solid idea of where the plot is going, but I also have game-driven aspects as well, especially in Kass's story and subsequent spinoffs and continuations. I gave up screenshotting in the second half of Part 3 of my CFT but many things still happened in my game world.
My thought is if you're spending more than a day or two looking for cc or mods to get the screenshots just right, then it's too much time. At least for me, spending too much time looking for outside material takes away the joy of the gameplay and the challenge of working within the constructs. I've been writing for over two decades of my life, long before I was gaming. I have to remind myself that my imagination can come up with things without the screenshots/pictures, and should come up with things, and I give it permission to create non-game-generated things. The only way to get good at something is to practice. If you don't feel comfortable writing a pictureless story at first, do it anyway. You can choose to wait to publish it so you can make multiple edits, or you can publish anyway and see what happens. Sometimes it's the chapters I dislike the most that readers love. It can be nice to get constructive feedback, so if you want, you can limited publish and ask a select group of people to read your stuff before the masses do.
I got sidetracked with CFT while writing KFLL and that actually helped me since I had two different stories and two different worlds. I also decided to take a break from KFLL to focus on a side character, Gage in FRWL, and to write I&S, the in-between KCLKF and KFLL, mostly because I wrote so many things in KFLL that I needed to take a step back and reorganize and make sure I didn't open up any more loopholes. Sometimes it helps me to work on different side writing projects, or to scrap pictures, or to reorganize my thoughts in another document or sketch in a notebook or write up a new outline with all possible divergences.
My final piece of advice - trust your gut, but also love your work - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes I edit up the wazoo. Sometimes I publish immediately after finishing. And if you need to make edits later on to fix continuity or clear up something, go ahead and do it. The SimLit community is very forgiving I find, at least the writers/readers I've encountered.
Random Ramblings
@CathyTea holy guacomole! You wrote a boatload. Hooray! I appreciate your thoughts and everything you shared. I would be honored if you discuss FRWL in book club. I've been thinking about popping over and joining you all, but I don't have as much time for reading as I'd like right now. Perhaps in December when I have a month break from school. I did peruse the November Feasts stories and thought that they looked great.
@CathyTea and @RipuAncestor OMG! I read You've Got Me Under Your Skin and I thought the horror would never end, and well, it really didn't. It was fantastically done.
I'm not that far into Racket-Rotter Chronicles, but I'm loving it so far. I like the ability to picture scenes in my head because I know what the characters look like. I agree with you about the immersiveness of the story. I get sucked in and can only take little bits at a time because it's overwhelmingly deep and fluid.
I have a tendency to read words first and then look at pictures so I often will read a work twice so I can observe what's happening in the pictures after I've read the story. This is probably what takes me so long to read things. LOL.
I struggle with breaking characters up in game too, but I write more story-driven than game-driven, so I sometimes allow myself to make said decisions. However I think what I love about your work @CathyTea is your prime directive and how you let things just happen. It's nice to let go of control and let things be once and awhile in game. So many delightful things happen. I will definitely check out your text-based stories.
I echo you with the gaps part. I haven't resolved everything in every story. I like to leave things out. I like to let the reader imagine what happened instead. Sometimes I purposefully and intentionally leave gaps in the writing portion in addition to the lack of screenshots. It makes for good drama and can amp up the emotion in a scene.
Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts and making for fantastic discussion!
@AdamsEve1231 I totally agree that we must go outside the constructs of the game to write our stories. I hate to be limited on creativity and often will have paragraphs of text without pics, but really do love having more pics than text in most cases.
You know one thing that I've had fun with is that some poses I've found have influenced how I've told my story. For example, there's a scene where one of my main characters gets drunk, and I'd been planning this for a while. I'd also planned for another character to find him and take him home, but how to shoot that? I found this pose by Princess Paranoia: BOYS NIGHT OUT. There is another person in it that I hadn't planned on, so I wrote him in. It turned out better than I'd expected. I wouldn't have written it like that without the pose. Ha!
@AdamsEve1231 Oh, wow, thank you! I'm glad you like my visuals and that you think they're simple in a good way. I deliberately play up the bright-coloured tackiness/cutesiness of people's clothing and the decor of the houses because I wanted a certain visual style and simply because I like it, but sometimes I wonder if I'm going too far and the pics are getting too busy, or if readers will be put off by the colours (especially since I know colours will look more muted on my monitor than on many others). Thank you so much about the nice things you said about my story!
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)
All your words made me feel better (since today was not really a good day for me. Don't know why though)
The no pictures was probably a result of me wanting to write more Sims stuff, but not currently having the game installed (for certain reasons). And in some ways, it was helpful, considering some parts of the story that would be difficult, if not impossible to set up in-game.
One example being The Builder/Malum's true form. (Since I doubt there are any game mechanics/CC that could accurately portray that abomination.)
As for the shifts between two main extremes in the story, that was done to keep the story from getting too dark. Since in my mind, story gets too dark->Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy->Readers declaring the Eight Deadly Words. Therefore, I try to mitigate the heavy stuff with something a little lighter. To give one small example:
When The Builder is working on reanimating a corpse, specifically one that Annette would know rather well. It's meant to be a dramatic events.
However, once they get to the point where the corpse can wake up, said corpse smacks them in the face. But don't worry, The Builder deserves it.
I try to make use of something called Bathos (a serious event is followed up by a silly one, for one definition), although I don't think that's the word I should use here. Basically, though, to quote Joss Whedon:
"Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke."
Anyway. For me, the pics are so important in my Sims work. I take the pics first and edit them all up nice and put them in the draft, and then I write the caption for that pic.
I took some time off a few years ago and participated in LJ Idol for a couple of seasons. I used some short Sims stories, but mostly I wrote text-only for that. When I came back to Sims stories, I noticed that my text was much longer than it had been before.
Still though, I don't feel limited by the pics. I also don't use CC or poses. I don't know. My Sims stories are just so...set in the game. The game as it is, with its animations and its odd behaviors like running around panicking over fire or coming to watch the neighbor's house burn up.
I can't think of anything more fun than being presented with something silly in-game and figuring out a neat way to write it into the story. I feel like the game is my co-author, and we're creating the story together.
When it comes to other people's work, I'll read anything as long as it's good.
I’ve done a few shorts that are like hybrids I guess you could say. @CathyTea you know the little family from my Balderdash series. Some of them were supposed to be just text; I wrote the first and fourth (I think) in the bathtub lol. However, they each have one picture at the end because I just happened to have one that fit.
I actually like writing text stories because my imagination has to do the work. I mean, my imagination does a lot of work with the pictures too, but sometimes seeing the scene messes up what I see in my head and I go with what’s in the pictures instead. I think that’s why often times I use pictures more to convey facial expressions, reactions, etc. instead of showing what I just wrote.
I think the only thing that prevents me from writing a completely text Sim story is the fact that no one will ever see my beautiful Sims LOL. I suppose there are ways around that though (e.g. character pages). Maybe one day I’ll give it a shot.
@CathyTea As you so often do, your comment made me smile silly big when I read your tag, thank you! I am still referring back to your advice and suggestions in your PM before I take pictures. I have also been looking at the blogs that you mentioned to see how other Simlit writers stage their pictures, if at all. I am so very grateful for your help and support. I don't think I can ever express this enough. As you noticed, I did plenty of fussing and freaking out prior to releasing the blog
And that's a great question, @AdamsEve1231 I asked this question the other day myself, because I wasn't sure how to tackle my own story. It's great seeing this discussion and getting different views on the subject.
Personally, I decided to do a transition with pictures between thoughts/actions made by my characters' POVs. @CathyTea made the suggestion to me, and I thought it really made sense with how I write. It also helps me with storyline direction. Now that I write, I insert (pic) before each transition/paragraph in my word pad to plan ahead where and what to shoot.
As far as reading is concerned, my interests are so broad. I find that I am more interested in the writing itself, but I do prefer it when an author includes pictures into the story.
@CathyTea As you so often do, your comment made me smile silly big when I read your tag, thank you! I am still referring back to your advice and suggestions in your PM before I take pictures. I have also been looking at the blogs that you mentioned to see how other Simlit writers stage their pictures, if at all. I am so very grateful for your help and support. I don't think I can ever express this enough. As you noticed, I did plenty of fussing and freaking out prior to releasing the blog
And that's a great question, @AdamsEve1231 I asked this question the other day myself, because I wasn't sure how to tackle my own story. It's great seeing this discussion and getting different views on the subject.
Personally, I decided to do a transition with pictures between thoughts/actions made by my characters' POVs. @CathyTea made the suggestion to me, and I thought it really made sense with how I write. It also helps me with storyline direction. Now that I write, I insert (pic) before each transition/paragraph in my word pad to plan ahead where and what to shoot.
As far as reading is concerned, my interests are so broad. I find that I am more interested in the writing itself, but I do prefer it when an author includes pictures into the story.
You know, @Kittybit , hearing you describe this process--and reflecting on my own experience of reading the chapter without screenshots first--makes me think that this would be a great approach for those who write first to try... (and maybe they already do!)
The process would be this: write it first, without even thinking about screenshots, just writing it the way you want to, using as much sense detail, description, dialogue, symbol, and action as you want.
Then, read it and note the flow, pacing, mood, and so on. Observe where there are pauses or transitions--think about what moods you want to enhance and which to contrast with, and then develop the shot list from there.
@Charliimai Maybe something like this would work for you!
I’ve done a few shorts that are like hybrids I guess you could say. @CathyTea you know the little family from my Balderdash series. Some of them were supposed to be just text; I wrote the first and fourth (I think) in the bathtub lol. However, they each have one picture at the end because I just happened to have one that fit.
I actually like writing text stories because my imagination has to do the work. I mean, my imagination does a lot of work with the pictures too, but sometimes seeing the scene messes up what I see in my head and I go with what’s in the pictures instead. I think that’s why often times I use pictures more to convey facial expressions, reactions, etc. instead of showing what I just wrote.
I think the only thing that prevents me from writing a completely text Sim story is the fact that no one will ever see my beautiful Sims LOL. I suppose there are ways around that though (e.g. character pages). Maybe one day I’ll give it a shot.
@Jes2G I love those chapters that just have a single picture! When I was reading them, they stood out because the vary the pacing from the chapters with quite a few pictures.
I fell behind on reading the series, so I just read the next single-picture chapter ( http://www.jes2gstories.com/balderdash-contemplation/ ) tonight. It feels like the reliance on texts allows the story to provide a more interior view than we sometimes get in the picture-reliant chapters, and I really enjoyed it!
@Charliimai - you might enjoy looking at Jes's Contemplation chapter since it shows how much can be done with just a single image.
@AdamsEve1231: A late thanks for the shout-out. I'm glad everyone hates Max as much as I do.
Meh, if we're still gonna continue the text-based SimLit discussion...
Others
Disclaimer: I wasn't a full co-writer with @rednenemon on text-only The Racket-Rotter Chronicles, but I had my roles in helping it come to fruition. And I love her. So I'm invested in a certain side of the debate.
That being said...
I read a lot of fanfiction in middle school, especially those based on cartoons (heck yeah cringey Danny Phantom fanfics). Based off visual works in general! So I guess the world of amateur/hobby text-only stories doesn't really turn me off. And you can easily write fanfiction about The Sims, images or not. It is a very open game, but as @MedleyMisty pointed out, it's a game that takes place in a very odd world. It has settings and worlds, established characters, its own logic, and a rather distinctive AI (or sometimes lack thereof!) You can write fanfiction about that. You can write fanfiction for works with a whole lot less to work with. I still think back to Fanfiction.net's collection of 92 Tetris fanfics.
Is there a difference between Sims fanfiction and SimLit? I dunno. I guess SimLit can have nothing to do with the "lore" of The Sims, while fanfiction does. Maybe we just need a venn diagram. I know there's an intersection and a big one. And a part of me doesn't think it has to do with images.
Back to The Racket-Rotter Chronicles, it was text-only thanks to being written in a time when @rednenemon didn't have a computer that could run the game. She played it before and for a while, and a lot of happenings were based on things she actually played through before (at least that's how I understood it). Its cast was largely pre-made sims from TS3. Its locations were largely native TS3 towns and cities. Someone else could write a text-only story about their game that really has nothing to do with how the game functions on its own, and I'd hesitate to call it SimLit. But where else would I put a story about characters, setting, and logic from The Sims that just ignores the visual component?
(The Colt Family Traitacy by @AdamsEve1231 basically falls into that too, for its text-only chapters. But I don't know much of what goes on behind the scenes there )
On the other hand, I do see where a lot of the appeal of SimLit for...most readers comes from the images. It's an easy way to share something we all love about the game. Because not everyone likes the game's quirkiness and can easily write it out and remove it from gameplay. But I think all of us like how the game looks, or how we can make it look.
But definitions aren't based off preferences. It's weird.
For Me
There's been a lot of times when I wanted to give up doing screenshots for...any of my stories, because it always ends up taking forever for me. It takes me anywhere from a couple days to actual weeks to screenshot one chapter, and I try to find shortcuts all the time but it doesn't do as much as I'd like. While I bang out the majority of my writing in...a day? It's been anywhere from hours to a few days for the really difficult chapters.
But I've already spent a lot of time in Eight Cicadas making visuals and visual aesthetic front-and-center, so that I'd probably lose a lot of readers if I stopped that. It's actually why I'm tickled...in the wrong way...about having "Heart Full of Fire" get the special shout-out. I think it shows where my visual style needed to grow hard. I didn't have any CC in for that chapter. I didn't actually CASt Max's suit and assembled it out of preset swatches, which is a sin by my books. My favorite mod for removing the bizarre shine from clothes needed so many more chapters to show up. And I have a point to make with the matte, Maxis-match aesthetic and my glut of patterns and making it so dense...
It just feels overwhelming in a different way to convey that without relying on images. Contrary to popular belief, adjectives and I don't usually meet up.
---
I have my own mixed feelings on "can a story be better if it can be done with images but just isn't?" I might answer it later because the answer I have right now sounds kind of mean and harsh. And I'm not cool with that!
Tetris fanfics makes me think of Bejewelled fanfic... anybody else make up stories and personalities for the little colored jewels?
In my game tonight, the white moon (which is usually my goddess-hero) was the villain, chasing the purples, who were very brave and also, mildly cursed...
Is there a difference between Sims fanfiction and SimLit? I dunno. I guess SimLit can have nothing to do with the "lore" of The Sims, while fanfiction does. Maybe we just need a venn diagram. I know there's an intersection and a big one. And a part of me doesn't think it has to do with images.
Back to The Racket-Rotter Chronicles, it was text-only thanks to being written in a time when @rednenemon didn't have a computer that could run the game. She played it before and for a while, and a lot of happenings were based on things she actually played through before (at least that's how I understood it). Its cast was largely pre-made sims from TS3. Its locations were largely native TS3 towns and cities. Someone else could write a text-only story about their game that really has nothing to do with how the game functions on its own, and I'd hesitate to call it SimLit. But where else would I put a story about characters, setting, and logic from The Sims that just ignores the visual component?
Funny you'd mention this particular Venn diagram... I've been thinking about whether I'd call it SimLit if the story didn't have screenshots or wasn't based on gameplay...
When I first started writing my text-only story about the divorced Landgraabs, I called it FanFic because it truly is! No game-play at all. And while it's set in Willow Creek and Oasis Springs, it's meant to be more realistic, without load screens and such (unless you consider a bus that can magically get from WC to OS in a few hours the equivalent of a load screen...)
It relies heavily on the lore, tropes, and character stereotypes of the game and premades--and for that matter probably would lose a lot for nonSimming readers.
Anyway, when I wrote it I considered it fanfic, but not really a subset of SimLit.
It was reading Racket-Rotter that got me to expand my definition of SimLit to all works of literature related to or set in the world of the Sims.
And, like you say, fanfic doesn't need to be text-only.
For me, if the story largely revolves around premades and strives in some way to further the Sim lore--even if it's turning it inside out or retelling the stories in a new way--it's fanfic; whereas if it's about mostly original Sims (including Townies), it's not fanfic. And both fanfic and original Sims stories are SimLit, and any story that's related to Sims or inspired by Sims, whether the story contains pictures or not, is SimLit.
Well, hi! I don't know very much about the current discussion, so, very sorry, but I will just say about another thingy! So...I like very much both ashes to ashes and dust to dust from
@CitizenErased14 , is just..very nice! They they write, It can kind of pass the emotion that they are trying to give the chapter! And both stories have a good story line! Dust to dust is very interresting, with the idea of death and love, and how things can not go always the way it was meant to be, but everything is still okay. Ashes to ashes is like a drama novel, with lot's of twist that remember a Mexican novel
Tobias! Stefan! Tengo un secreto que decirte chicos! y qué, mamá? No sé quién es su padre! Tan tanran raaaaan!
@Maladi777 heffner legacy is also great! It also has drama on it, There is some romance that oh my....! And it reminds me of that cop /romance movies!
Meatball! Yes? I love you! ....I know, baby. *epic rock music*
@JoieWilder Thoreau legacy, I imagine more like "slice of life" because there is mostly simple things, such as relationship problems and internal stuff, I founded it very realistic It story! And a pleasant read.
@Jes2G Finding Juliana is very also very nice! It catch my attention with it plot and it beginning! With this "disfuncional" family! And
I'm waiting for the day that Juliana will know simlish enought to explain her story to the family!
@pammiechick I love it when I find the perfect poses or CC for a story.
@RipuAncestor You're welcome. I like that you play it up. I think it makes for a wonderful environment and fantastic pictures to accompany your lovely prose.
@rednenemon Hooray! I'm glad we were able to encourage you.
I laughed really hard actually when you wrote how game mechanics/CC can't accurately portray an abomination. I don't know why but it was hilarious for me.
I also really appreciate how you switch between the contrasts because it keeps the story balanced and it feels real to me because all of life has a bit of darkness and a bit of humor. Haha! Love the Joss Whedon quote. He is a fantastic writer! I think that's why I loved the Avengers movie and the Firefly TV series so much.
@MedleyMisty Hooray! I'm so glad you joined our conversation. I've missed you on the forums. I like what you said about letting the Sims do silly in-game stuff. I wish I had the courage to let go a little more sometimes in game, but I have an end goal in mind. Even so, I've been trying to experiment with allowing more in-game events to affect my storytelling.
@Kittybit I'm glad the SimLit community is helping you as a writer. Everyone here has definitely helped me.
@InfraGreen Thanks for sharing the mod because I could really use that at times.
@CathyTea you make me smile... white moons and cursed purples.
@Jes2G I love it! Bathtub writing! Sounds heavenly. I agree with you. I like the imaginative part of text-based or text-heavy stories. Sometimes I'll imagine something and then I look at someone's picture and think "That isn't right," because it looks different than I pictured it. I adore my Sims though and I like being able to show them off and enjoy the CC and the beautiful vanilla worlds too.
Now I just have to ask @everyone - What's the weirdest/most fun/interesting place you've written your Sims stories or other stories?
@InfraGreen You're welcome. I am glad you brought up a good point about Sims fanfiction and SimLit.
I'm curious what others think... are Sims fanfiction and SimLit the same or is there a difference, and if so, what?
I like to play off some in-game stuff that happens and in-game culture that already exists, and then expand times 10 and add my own stuff. Like for example, I set all my stories on a fictional planet, Simterra. I sometimes have to remind myself not everyone lives on Simterra... lol... not everyone's up here on this planet with me. I've got a whole theory going about aliens and supernaturals too. It's like taking a partially finished canvas and making a gazillion more. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but I love world building so this is what I do.
So I think my works fall into SimLit over straight up fanfiction. I think literature is loosely described as written works with artistic merits, and fanfiction is fiction written by a fan featuring characters from a tv series, movie, or game. I think that fits much of what we do here and an argument could be made for both. I haven't read a lot of fanfiction (outside Sims) actually so I don't really know if I could qualify it accurately.
@CathyTea I think I'm beginning to get a picture - fanfiction is largely without pictures but Simlit can be with or without or both. I agree with you though because @rednenemon's Racket/Rotter Chronicles falls into SimLit for me because all the characters are largely original Sims set in a base game world.
@Sourocha Thank you for drawing us back to purpose and goal. I very much enjoyed the rabbit trail discussions of SimLit and pictures vs. no pictures, however, I do want us to talk about the awesome stories we're reading.
So that being said, no worries if you don't know much about the current discussion. That's totally fine. I really like CitizenErased14's D2D and I have to get back to reading it. Thanks for the reminder. I can't wait to read A2A also.
Thank you for all your recommendations and shoutouts. I'll be sure to check the stories out.
Comments
I loved that newspaper article. It's still a pic and makes it seem more realistic. I also love the different artistic takes you use to convey story--sometimes not using words and only pictures. Of course, sometimes people have to extrapolate what is going on but I love the mystery in it sometimes.
I also do this where there aren't any poses for my stories--I'll describe. That's fine, but to have lots of text without pictures...well, that's just plain old lit, imo.
I REALLY want to learn how to pose. Just downloaded Sims 4 Studio and will be doing recolor cc first then onto poses. I'm really stoked about this because gah! There's SOOO much I want to do with my pictures that I can't. My main characters are alternative--a male/male relationship and most poses are for male/female. I get that, of course, but now I'll be able to do some things I couldn't before.
Text-based SimLit
@friendsfan367 I think text-based can sometimes free us up to write things that the game itself might limit. While I've only played TS3, and the sky's the limit, there are certain things I can't capture in screenshots. It is a fun challenge to try and write and stay true to the game but also give myself the freedom to write outside the box or bubble or game. Of course, the only "real" limitations are my own imagination.
One of the reasons I like your stories is the Benders is primarily text-based. I love how you've freed yourself to write this way. Also makes for quicker updates.
I also agree with @CathyTea said about not illustrating for every single event. I try not to get hung up on things I can't display in game.
@RipuAncestor I like what you said about RR Chronicles. I love how @rednenemon does scenes and setup - the dark and the light, the creepy and the hilarious, the cunning and the innocent. RR Chronicles captures constrasts very nicely. I'm totally okay with it being pictureless. It's fun to picture things in my head.
Pictures
I also agree with what CathyTea said about your Chrysanthemum Tango. I love the color and life and vitality and amazing, yet simple (and I mean that in a sweet way) visuals. I love how things like Death and Fate walk among ordinary, beautiful humans and how your story tackles some of the fundamentals of what it means to be human without drawing away from the story and the characters and their worlds. Thank you for what you said about my short story from October.
I am glad we got some of the opposite persepctive here too from @pammiechick and @CitizenErased14. Everyone has their preferences and that's what I love about teh wide variety of Simlit available in the community. Part of why I like the pictures is because it forces me to be creative and work within the constructs of a game. I like the challenge of it. I also like the idea of coauthoring with the game.
I really do enjoy pictures also, don't get me wrong, but I like the freedom of ditching pictures when I need to. I think it's a matter of personal preference. I really didn't intend CFT to have sections of complete text and no pictures. That was unintentional, but I feel like it worked. However, I plan to bring pictures back in the future. SimLi with pictures adds to the color and fun of the world and storylines.
I'll read text-based, few pictures, picture-heavy stories, although my preference is text and pictures in reading and writing, though I'm more text-heavy I think. However, I appreciate you both lending your voices to this discussion and explaining what makes 'SimLit' Simlit for you.
Road Blocks
@Charliimai Your style of planning sounds similar to my own. I have a pretty solid idea of where the plot is going, but I also have game-driven aspects as well, especially in Kass's story and subsequent spinoffs and continuations. I gave up screenshotting in the second half of Part 3 of my CFT but many things still happened in my game world.
My thought is if you're spending more than a day or two looking for cc or mods to get the screenshots just right, then it's too much time. At least for me, spending too much time looking for outside material takes away the joy of the gameplay and the challenge of working within the constructs. I've been writing for over two decades of my life, long before I was gaming. I have to remind myself that my imagination can come up with things without the screenshots/pictures, and should come up with things, and I give it permission to create non-game-generated things. The only way to get good at something is to practice. If you don't feel comfortable writing a pictureless story at first, do it anyway. You can choose to wait to publish it so you can make multiple edits, or you can publish anyway and see what happens. Sometimes it's the chapters I dislike the most that readers love. It can be nice to get constructive feedback, so if you want, you can limited publish and ask a select group of people to read your stuff before the masses do.
I got sidetracked with CFT while writing KFLL and that actually helped me since I had two different stories and two different worlds. I also decided to take a break from KFLL to focus on a side character, Gage in FRWL, and to write I&S, the in-between KCLKF and KFLL, mostly because I wrote so many things in KFLL that I needed to take a step back and reorganize and make sure I didn't open up any more loopholes. Sometimes it helps me to work on different side writing projects, or to scrap pictures, or to reorganize my thoughts in another document or sketch in a notebook or write up a new outline with all possible divergences.
My final piece of advice - trust your gut, but also love your work - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes I edit up the wazoo. Sometimes I publish immediately after finishing. And if you need to make edits later on to fix continuity or clear up something, go ahead and do it. The SimLit community is very forgiving I find, at least the writers/readers I've encountered.
Random Ramblings
@CathyTea holy guacomole! You wrote a boatload. Hooray! I appreciate your thoughts and everything you shared. I would be honored if you discuss FRWL in book club. I've been thinking about popping over and joining you all, but I don't have as much time for reading as I'd like right now. Perhaps in December when I have a month break from school. I did peruse the November Feasts stories and thought that they looked great.
@CathyTea and @RipuAncestor OMG! I read You've Got Me Under Your Skin and I thought the horror would never end, and well, it really didn't. It was fantastically done.
I'm not that far into Racket-Rotter Chronicles, but I'm loving it so far. I like the ability to picture scenes in my head because I know what the characters look like. I agree with you about the immersiveness of the story. I get sucked in and can only take little bits at a time because it's overwhelmingly deep and fluid.
I have a tendency to read words first and then look at pictures so I often will read a work twice so I can observe what's happening in the pictures after I've read the story. This is probably what takes me so long to read things. LOL.
I struggle with breaking characters up in game too, but I write more story-driven than game-driven, so I sometimes allow myself to make said decisions. However I think what I love about your work @CathyTea is your prime directive and how you let things just happen. It's nice to let go of control and let things be once and awhile in game. So many delightful things happen. I will definitely check out your text-based stories.
I echo you with the gaps part. I haven't resolved everything in every story. I like to leave things out. I like to let the reader imagine what happened instead. Sometimes I purposefully and intentionally leave gaps in the writing portion in addition to the lack of screenshots. It makes for good drama and can amp up the emotion in a scene.
Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts and making for fantastic discussion!
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You know one thing that I've had fun with is that some poses I've found have influenced how I've told my story. For example, there's a scene where one of my main characters gets drunk, and I'd been planning this for a while. I'd also planned for another character to find him and take him home, but how to shoot that? I found this pose by Princess Paranoia: BOYS NIGHT OUT. There is another person in it that I hadn't planned on, so I wrote him in. It turned out better than I'd expected. I wouldn't have written it like that without the pose. Ha!
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)
All your words made me feel better (since today was not really a good day for me. Don't know why though)
The no pictures was probably a result of me wanting to write more Sims stuff, but not currently having the game installed (for certain reasons). And in some ways, it was helpful, considering some parts of the story that would be difficult, if not impossible to set up in-game.
As for the shifts between two main extremes in the story, that was done to keep the story from getting too dark. Since in my mind, story gets too dark->Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy->Readers declaring the Eight Deadly Words. Therefore, I try to mitigate the heavy stuff with something a little lighter. To give one small example:
However, once they get to the point where the corpse can wake up, said corpse smacks them in the face. But don't worry, The Builder deserves it.
I try to make use of something called Bathos (a serious event is followed up by a silly one, for one definition), although I don't think that's the word I should use here. Basically, though, to quote Joss Whedon:
"Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke."
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)
I also do non-Sims stories. Only one of them was written with the game in mind: Because Death Did Not Stop For Seth.
Also I need to go revive the storytelling thread.
Anyway. For me, the pics are so important in my Sims work. I take the pics first and edit them all up nice and put them in the draft, and then I write the caption for that pic.
I took some time off a few years ago and participated in LJ Idol for a couple of seasons. I used some short Sims stories, but mostly I wrote text-only for that. When I came back to Sims stories, I noticed that my text was much longer than it had been before.
Still though, I don't feel limited by the pics. I also don't use CC or poses. I don't know. My Sims stories are just so...set in the game. The game as it is, with its animations and its odd behaviors like running around panicking over fire or coming to watch the neighbor's house burn up.
I can't think of anything more fun than being presented with something silly in-game and figuring out a neat way to write it into the story. I feel like the game is my co-author, and we're creating the story together.
When it comes to other people's work, I'll read anything as long as it's good.
I actually like writing text stories because my imagination has to do the work. I mean, my imagination does a lot of work with the pictures too, but sometimes seeing the scene messes up what I see in my head and I go with what’s in the pictures instead. I think that’s why often times I use pictures more to convey facial expressions, reactions, etc. instead of showing what I just wrote.
I think the only thing that prevents me from writing a completely text Sim story is the fact that no one will ever see my beautiful Sims LOL. I suppose there are ways around that though (e.g. character pages). Maybe one day I’ll give it a shot.
And that's a great question, @AdamsEve1231 I asked this question the other day myself, because I wasn't sure how to tackle my own story. It's great seeing this discussion and getting different views on the subject.
Personally, I decided to do a transition with pictures between thoughts/actions made by my characters' POVs. @CathyTea made the suggestion to me, and I thought it really made sense with how I write. It also helps me with storyline direction. Now that I write, I insert (pic) before each transition/paragraph in my word pad to plan ahead where and what to shoot.
As far as reading is concerned, my interests are so broad. I find that I am more interested in the writing itself, but I do prefer it when an author includes pictures into the story.
You know, @Kittybit , hearing you describe this process--and reflecting on my own experience of reading the chapter without screenshots first--makes me think that this would be a great approach for those who write first to try... (and maybe they already do!)
The process would be this: write it first, without even thinking about screenshots, just writing it the way you want to, using as much sense detail, description, dialogue, symbol, and action as you want.
Then, read it and note the flow, pacing, mood, and so on. Observe where there are pauses or transitions--think about what moods you want to enhance and which to contrast with, and then develop the shot list from there.
@Charliimai Maybe something like this would work for you!
@Jes2G I love those chapters that just have a single picture! When I was reading them, they stood out because the vary the pacing from the chapters with quite a few pictures.
http://www.jes2gstories.com/balderdash-about-face/
And what was really neat was the way the pacing shifted in the following chapter...
http://www.jes2gstories.com/balderdash-disencumber/
I fell behind on reading the series, so I just read the next single-picture chapter ( http://www.jes2gstories.com/balderdash-contemplation/ ) tonight. It feels like the reliance on texts allows the story to provide a more interior view than we sometimes get in the picture-reliant chapters, and I really enjoyed it!
@Charliimai - you might enjoy looking at Jes's Contemplation chapter since it shows how much can be done with just a single image.
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
Meh, if we're still gonna continue the text-based SimLit discussion...
Others
Disclaimer: I wasn't a full co-writer with @rednenemon on text-only The Racket-Rotter Chronicles, but I had my roles in helping it come to fruition. And I love her. So I'm invested in a certain side of the debate.
That being said...
I read a lot of fanfiction in middle school, especially those based on cartoons (heck yeah cringey Danny Phantom fanfics). Based off visual works in general! So I guess the world of amateur/hobby text-only stories doesn't really turn me off. And you can easily write fanfiction about The Sims, images or not. It is a very open game, but as @MedleyMisty pointed out, it's a game that takes place in a very odd world. It has settings and worlds, established characters, its own logic, and a rather distinctive AI (or sometimes lack thereof!) You can write fanfiction about that. You can write fanfiction for works with a whole lot less to work with. I still think back to Fanfiction.net's collection of 92 Tetris fanfics.
Is there a difference between Sims fanfiction and SimLit? I dunno. I guess SimLit can have nothing to do with the "lore" of The Sims, while fanfiction does. Maybe we just need a venn diagram. I know there's an intersection and a big one. And a part of me doesn't think it has to do with images.
Back to The Racket-Rotter Chronicles, it was text-only thanks to being written in a time when @rednenemon didn't have a computer that could run the game. She played it before and for a while, and a lot of happenings were based on things she actually played through before (at least that's how I understood it). Its cast was largely pre-made sims from TS3. Its locations were largely native TS3 towns and cities. Someone else could write a text-only story about their game that really has nothing to do with how the game functions on its own, and I'd hesitate to call it SimLit. But where else would I put a story about characters, setting, and logic from The Sims that just ignores the visual component?
(The Colt Family Traitacy by @AdamsEve1231 basically falls into that too, for its text-only chapters. But I don't know much of what goes on behind the scenes there
On the other hand, I do see where a lot of the appeal of SimLit for...most readers comes from the images. It's an easy way to share something we all love about the game. Because not everyone likes the game's quirkiness and can easily write it out and remove it from gameplay. But I think all of us like how the game looks, or how we can make it look.
But definitions aren't based off preferences. It's weird.
For Me
There's been a lot of times when I wanted to give up doing screenshots for...any of my stories, because it always ends up taking forever for me. It takes me anywhere from a couple days to actual weeks to screenshot one chapter, and I try to find shortcuts all the time but it doesn't do as much as I'd like. While I bang out the majority of my writing in...a day? It's been anywhere from hours to a few days for the really difficult chapters.
But I've already spent a lot of time in Eight Cicadas making visuals and visual aesthetic front-and-center, so that I'd probably lose a lot of readers if I stopped that. It's actually why I'm tickled...in the wrong way...about having "Heart Full of Fire" get the special shout-out. I think it shows where my visual style needed to grow hard. I didn't have any CC in for that chapter. I didn't actually CASt Max's suit and assembled it out of preset swatches, which is a sin by my books.
It just feels overwhelming in a different way to convey that without relying on images. Contrary to popular belief, adjectives and I don't usually meet up.
---
I have my own mixed feelings on "can a story be better if it can be done with images but just isn't?" I might answer it later because the answer I have right now sounds kind of mean and harsh. And I'm not cool with that!
outrun / blog / tunglr
In my game tonight, the white moon (which is usually my goddess-hero) was the villain, chasing the purples, who were very brave and also, mildly cursed...
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
Funny you'd mention this particular Venn diagram... I've been thinking about whether I'd call it SimLit if the story didn't have screenshots or wasn't based on gameplay...
When I first started writing my text-only story about the divorced Landgraabs, I called it FanFic because it truly is! No game-play at all. And while it's set in Willow Creek and Oasis Springs, it's meant to be more realistic, without load screens and such (unless you consider a bus that can magically get from WC to OS in a few hours the equivalent of a load screen...)
It relies heavily on the lore, tropes, and character stereotypes of the game and premades--and for that matter probably would lose a lot for nonSimming readers.
Anyway, when I wrote it I considered it fanfic, but not really a subset of SimLit.
It was reading Racket-Rotter that got me to expand my definition of SimLit to all works of literature related to or set in the world of the Sims.
And, like you say, fanfic doesn't need to be text-only.
For me, if the story largely revolves around premades and strives in some way to further the Sim lore--even if it's turning it inside out or retelling the stories in a new way--it's fanfic; whereas if it's about mostly original Sims (including Townies), it's not fanfic. And both fanfic and original Sims stories are SimLit, and any story that's related to Sims or inspired by Sims, whether the story contains pictures or not, is SimLit.
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
@CitizenErased14 , is just..very nice! They they write, It can kind of pass the emotion that they are trying to give the chapter! And both stories have a good story line! Dust to dust is very interresting, with the idea of death and love, and how things can not go always the way it was meant to be, but everything is still okay. Ashes to ashes is like a drama novel, with lot's of twist that remember a Mexican novel
@Maladi777 heffner legacy is also great! It also has drama on it, There is some romance that oh my....! And it reminds me of that cop /romance movies!
@JoieWilder Thoreau legacy, I imagine more like "slice of life" because there is mostly simple things, such as relationship problems and internal stuff, I founded it very realistic It story! And a pleasant read.
@Jes2G Finding Juliana is very also very nice! It catch my attention with it plot and it beginning! With this "disfuncional" family! And
Eeeek! I’m glad! Man, this story is a huge labor of lots’o love
Oh no. They're talking about me behind my back again!
HEFFNER LEGACY│Simblr│Heffner Legacy Discussion │ Origin ID: Maladi
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
english . lol. its okay i like that i can be confused in two languages.
i was teasing. i once told Amanda if i was young enough i wouldn't mind being in her class.
@pammiechick I love it when I find the perfect poses or CC for a story.
@RipuAncestor You're welcome. I like that you play it up. I think it makes for a wonderful environment and fantastic pictures to accompany your lovely prose.
@rednenemon Hooray! I'm glad we were able to encourage you.
@MedleyMisty Hooray! I'm so glad you joined our conversation. I've missed you on the forums. I like what you said about letting the Sims do silly in-game stuff. I wish I had the courage to let go a little more sometimes in game, but I have an end goal in mind. Even so, I've been trying to experiment with allowing more in-game events to affect my storytelling.
@Kittybit I'm glad the SimLit community is helping you as a writer. Everyone here has definitely helped me.
@InfraGreen Thanks for sharing the mod because I could really use that at times.
@CathyTea you make me smile...
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Now I just have to ask @everyone - What's the weirdest/most fun/interesting place you've written your Sims stories or other stories?
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I'm curious what others think... are Sims fanfiction and SimLit the same or is there a difference, and if so, what?
I like to play off some in-game stuff that happens and in-game culture that already exists, and then expand times 10 and add my own stuff. Like for example, I set all my stories on a fictional planet, Simterra. I sometimes have to remind myself not everyone lives on Simterra... lol... not everyone's up here on this planet with me. I've got a whole theory going about aliens and supernaturals too. It's like taking a partially finished canvas and making a gazillion more. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but I love world building so this is what I do.
So I think my works fall into SimLit over straight up fanfiction. I think literature is loosely described as written works with artistic merits, and fanfiction is fiction written by a fan featuring characters from a tv series, movie, or game. I think that fits much of what we do here and an argument could be made for both. I haven't read a lot of fanfiction (outside Sims) actually so I don't really know if I could qualify it accurately.
@CathyTea I think I'm beginning to get a picture - fanfiction is largely without pictures but Simlit can be with or without or both. I agree with you though because @rednenemon's Racket/Rotter Chronicles falls into SimLit for me because all the characters are largely original Sims set in a base game world.
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So that being said, no worries if you don't know much about the current discussion. That's totally fine. I really like CitizenErased14's D2D and I have to get back to reading it. Thanks for the reminder. I can't wait to read A2A also.
Thank you for all your recommendations and shoutouts. I'll be sure to check the stories out.
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