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Advice/Opinions on the shape of my Pancakes blog/story.
NRowe
Posts: 7,898 Member
Homepage for my story/blog on the Pancakes.
It’s my version of the maxis pre-mades, Bob and Eliza Pancakes. It’s a mix of game and plot driven. That is, I have wound my own meanings and interpretations around what happened in my gameplay.
There are one or two more chapters to write before Ainsley moves out of the family home. I desperately need some help transitioning the story to the next generation and to rotational gameplay (I intend to follow both children right now and as much of the family as I can moving forward).
Here are my musings and the questions I want advice/opinions on:
1) How should I transition the blog into the next generation? Should I perhaps keep going on the original blog for Bob, Eliza and Addison while starting a new one for Ainsley? Or, should everything just be kept in one blog, with alternate chapters for households? How else could I handle this?
2) Do I need to put in a chapter index and somehow make navigating the blog easier? At approximately what point does that sort of thing become necessary? Do other parts of the layout need improvement?
Anything else you can think of. Things you’d love to see or are not particularly enjoying; please let me know!
It’s my version of the maxis pre-mades, Bob and Eliza Pancakes. It’s a mix of game and plot driven. That is, I have wound my own meanings and interpretations around what happened in my gameplay.
There are one or two more chapters to write before Ainsley moves out of the family home. I desperately need some help transitioning the story to the next generation and to rotational gameplay (I intend to follow both children right now and as much of the family as I can moving forward).
Here are my musings and the questions I want advice/opinions on:
1) How should I transition the blog into the next generation? Should I perhaps keep going on the original blog for Bob, Eliza and Addison while starting a new one for Ainsley? Or, should everything just be kept in one blog, with alternate chapters for households? How else could I handle this?
2) Do I need to put in a chapter index and somehow make navigating the blog easier? At approximately what point does that sort of thing become necessary? Do other parts of the layout need improvement?
3) Ainsley has been moved in to the haunted apartment in the Culpepper building in San Myshuno. I did this before remembering that this will mean ghosts in my story (which is semi-realistic). I’ve already tried to deal with Eliza’s abductions as an uncertain experience that other characters don’t necessarily believe. Now I’m picturing arguments between Eliza and Ainsley when Ainsley reports the paranormal activity in her new home. Like “Ghosts, really? But the aliens that took me aren’t real?!”
Obviously there is possibility to bring these occult Sims into even greater prominence (I’d love to try ambrosia), but how far do I really what to go with that in my not-quite-real-world family saga?
Obviously there is possibility to bring these occult Sims into even greater prominence (I’d love to try ambrosia), but how far do I really what to go with that in my not-quite-real-world family saga?
Anything else you can think of. Things you’d love to see or are not particularly enjoying; please let me know!
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Also, the Songs for my Chapters are sometimes very tricky to get. Please let me know if you've noticed, what you think of them and if you have any ideas for good ones you think would likely fit future chapters. Thanks!
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
1) How should I transition the blog into the next generation? Should I perhaps keep going on the original blog for Bob, Eliza and Addison while starting a new one for Ainsley? Or, should everything just be kept in one blog, with alternate chapters for households? How else could I handle this?
I suppose it depends on how intertwined and how separate you want the two stories to be. It could also deal with whether the time will split off or not...
For example, suppose you decided to turn aging off for Bob and Eliza, but leaving it on for Ainsley. Then, before long, the chronologies wouldn't sink up. (If you did this, you'd probably have two different saves, so all sorts of different things could happen in the two stories.)
With this approach, it makes sense to me to have a different blog--or at least a different section of the original blog.
But if you left them in the same save, in, basically, the same story, then it would make sense for it to be on the same blog. With this approach, it becomes like a neighborhood rotation.
I personally love this approach! I'd suggest not being too worried about regular patterns with the alternations. Just stay with one household or plotline as long as you want, until it naturally seems like a good time to you to switch.
For a great example of a rotation, you might want to look at @Jes2G 's Keeping up with the Joneses. I've been wanting to suggest this to you, anyway, since one of the families that's followed is Bob and Eliza's!
Her story's a great example of how to move between multiple houses in one story.
2) Do I need to put in a chapter index and somehow make navigating the blog easier? At approximately what point does that sort of thing become necessary? Do other parts of the layout need improvement?
Yes, a chapter index would be awesome! If you kept it all one story, that's all that would be needed--just a Table of Contents. But if you had multiple stories, you'd probably want different pages for each story's table of contents.
I say, keep it in! You can have a lot of fun with it while still staying within the realm of (mostly) realistic!
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
I will check out Jes2G’s story when I get a chance. I feel I’m a bit behind on my reading at the moment.
Just thought I'd stop by and tell you what I've done with my rotation, and hopefully you can find something useful.
I play with aging on with long life. There are pros and cons, of course. The pros of doing it this way is that you can go through several rotations in one life stage which is great to develop a rich story. The cons, however, are you'll miss birthdays, births, etc. in the houses you're not playing with unless you're not doing a strict order. I play my houses in a strict order, so I can't (or I won't let myself rather lol) go back to a house for a birthday. Personally, even though it sucks to miss aging up or naming a newborn, I think it works for the story and shows that time has moved on while we were away. I think a lot of times readers tend to think the next time you get back to a house you pick up where you left off last time. Some people do that, but I don't. I like how time keeps moving.
One rotation is 7 days long, Sunday to Saturday at midnight. I don't necessarily play until midnight, but that is the cut off for anything that needs to be recorded in the story. Usually, however, I stop once everyone goes to bed no matter what time it is in the case of a late night party or something.
In the beginning, I made a point to make sure I took the household to a public lot at least once a week and let them be autonomous to make sure we get continuous game-driven material in the story, but I actually found that hard to maintain with multiple children in each household and adults with varying work schedules. Besides, with the storylines that have developed over time, I find myself more concerned with continuing them than anything. I let the game drive some of those plots. That brings me to my next point...
Many rotation stories don't have much of a plot or even a central theme to tie it together. I guess, you technically don't need to. You could just have a bunch of households and tell what they do each time. I personally don't care for that because I need something to latch onto while I'm reading. Like, why should I care (or not care) about these characters? So, for my story, I have a central theme that ties the story together, but each of the households has their own story that sometimes intertwines with the other stories. Because I spend an equal amount of time with all the houses, I don't really have a main house, but I consider the Joneses to be my main family. I named the story after them after all lol. So, the basic idea is everything was fine in the neighborhood until the Joneses moved in and the drama that ensues because of them. Well, maybe not because of them, but...you know. The Joneses are the least game driven because their story is completely made up by me and I have certain things I'm going to do with them. The story ends when I've accomplished what I want with them. The Pancakes family is in the middle. I'd say they are half game driven and half plot driven. Most of their story comes from how I see them the same way that you're doing it. The other household is a Pruett family I saved from my legacy, so they come with their own backstory. They're probably more game driven than the rest because I really don't have much of a plan with them. That's not really good for me, but I'll figure it out lol. They're kind of like my free, fun house because there's so much drama in the others. Well, except right now there's a lot of teen drama in the Pruett house, but that's kinda what I meant before about how the households intertwine. Much of the other two houses' drama ends up affecting the Pruetts eventually.
That's my take on rotations! Good luck with your story!
You’ve obviously been doing this a long time and putting a lot of effort into it, and it shows.
There is some stuff I can take out of this for my own play/story. I am going to think hard about it before I take action though.
One is extending the aging a bit. Right now I am playing something like one-to-two days is almost the equivalent of a year. Normal age span, but using MCCC to make adulthood 51 days. The formula I used was 1.5 days/year and I do feel like Sims accomplish a lot in a very short space of time. Obviously there are things like pregnancy (3 days) and now seasons (plus holidays) which kinda mess with this. That’s why I’ve tried/had to leave my Pancakes timing fluid/vague.
The hard part would be keeping going with the Pancakes if I make lifespans longer. I kinda get stuck and I’m a bit of a perfectionist and it could bother me to change it now; I’d be more inclined to start a new story.
Two More plot driven story. I have no idea what will become of my Pancakes. No theme, no goal. Just raising the born-in-games as best I can and then taking their personalities into account when I choose careers etc.
Don’t know if this is another reason why I have never gotten past a second generation. But how do you come up with that idea? What is your one for the Joneses?
You don't have to make your story plot driven. I've always been a storyteller at heart, so everything I do will always have some plot to it. Personally, I find it hard to just play the game casually with no goal in mind, so if you're like me, you may be onto something about not being able to get past gen 2. But, if you intend to do a legacy, I suppose your goal is to make it to 10 generations. At least that's how I was able to complete mine.
I got the idea for this story randomly. I got the title first because I thought it would be cool to have a story called Keeping Up With the Joneses. Then, of course, I had to figure out what the thing was about lol. The characters gave me the idea for the story; that happens to me a lot. So, I wanted a Jones family who, on the outside, seemed perfect but were a hot mess behind closed doors. I wanted people in the neighborhood to admire them and try to compete with their status, and Eliza Pancakes was the perfect person for that so I decided to keep the Pancakes family; I usually delete premades. I wanted another family that was respectable and well to do in their own right, so I went with the Pruett family. The fourth house was some townies MCCC moved in; they were neutral. So, to get the story started, I wanted Eliza to notice something was off about the Joneses and obsess about finding out what's up with them so she could call her out. This would, of course, ensue gossip and all kinds of shenanigans in the neighborhood.
I totally agree with Eliza Pancakes being your girl for that role
I noticed though that a lot of established blogs have pictures as the clickable links to the different chapters (including yours Jes2G).
I want my blog to be easy. For me and for any readers. I don't know if I have time, patience and/or know how to create something like that.
What do I do?
I'm not so sure how to do it with blogger, but I imagine the concept would be the same. Just hyperlink some text at the end of each chapter for the next and previous chapters. I host my own site, so I'm using a plugin that does it for me. The free version of WordPress also has a built-in system. Maybe check and see if Blogger does.