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How do you Create a Story?
wickichick
Posts: 11,130 Member
I have been watching sims spark'ed and one of the comments made by a viewer is that sims 4 doesn't offer the right climate for good story telling. Where I do understand somewhat how this was meant...it has never been an issue for me..sometimes an event has happened that honestly didn't "really" happen but if my sim can walk into a room...trust me all kinds of things can happen...they might discover a hidden secret or first see something that as quickly vanished into thin air...a sim teen might find a "break up" letter mysteriously tucked into a school book....one of my pets might be telepathic offering a wisdom their poor owner is sadly lacking but richly benefits from. If someone has been a simmer for very long they have many ideas tucked inside their handy dandy brain to draw from. There is now many neighborhoods to use as your story unfolds..so many ways your main sim has ended up where they are...endless mistakes to be made and life rewards to be enjoyed along the way. When you start a fresh game ..what are things you find yourself doing before you begin to actually "play" your family?
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I, personally, find that I enjoy saves the most when I start with a rough story plan. For example, the founder of my Seven Stories legacy:
"This is Ashley. Her family home burned down while she was taking her little brother to the park, so she's had to give up her plans for going to Uni to make enough money to rebuild the house again and provide for her brother to have the chance she didn't."
Yes, it's just a basic Rags to Riches game, but there's a story behind it, and an end goal (rebuild the house, send the brother to Uni). Do I wish that Sims 4 would throw a few more curve balls than it does? Sometimes. But those aren't needed for me to tell a story and enjoy the story I'm telling myself.
Right now I'm raising Ashley's Great Granddaughter and preparing to kill her father off in the temples of Selvadorada over winter break in preparation to run a Quest based story with her when she gets to Young Adult. Angsty backstory incoming!
I spend the most time on this aspect. Then I find that it’s easy to figure out how the characters might relate to one another and where each story might go.
It honestly really depends. If I'm going for some story that's super outrageous & crazy, sometimes it requires some super heavy lifting on my part to setup. For example, I'm a huge occult Simmer. I have one Save dedicated to my occults and the founders of my vampire legacy are the same Sims I've been playing since Vampire GP came out. But now with mermaids, spellcasters, etc. my occult Save has grown and has become a rotational style of play. & I usually am running multiple stories that are interconnected with several Sims/households. I'm currently playing an extension to a storyline that I had originally ended. Part of original story: Jealous half-sister wants her sisters life and plots and schemes to get it and bring drama on her sister, by framing her for murder (long story). Sister finds out, is able to stop her in time, makes potion to turn her human...sister gets arrested, goes to jail. Current: I decided to bring the sister back - so fast forward like 20 years later, and the sister is out of jail, she's had plastic surgery and has reinvented herself...changed her name, her looks etc. & she has befriended her sister....except of course her sister doesn't know she's her sister. & she's planning the ultimate revenge. So this Save, has a little bit of everything in it....quests for power, revenge, love, family play, etc.
So long answer to your question (sorry)....it's a mixture of both for me....of having an idea of where I want to go in a story and doing some setup to tell the story the way i want....& also letting the game drive as well with unexpected events/challenges that maybe I didn't plan for.
I play in rotation and my household's stories get connected. This leads to really deep storylines.
Too Good at Goodbyes forum thread
Too Good at Goodbyes blog
p.s. don't put pressure on yourself to create a good story, it will just come naturally
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I build a backstory first sometimes even before I open the game in my head. It can be my own or inspired by a movie/tv show/other games. Then I make my sims, give them the traits that fit the best. Outfit them character wise. If it's rags to riches I just put them in one of the houses they can afford or create a lot in the game budget. If they have a story of coming from money or at least not starting from scratch then I'll use real estate cheats.
Then it just goes. I don't usually cheat skills so the first few sims days to a sim week or so are usually spent getting their basic skills in for their character. After than I usually go more into a story mode. I'll live out their lives with a certain mindset, sometimes day to day. They could be normal sims just going to work/job.... or I might have some deeper or more often more deviant story to tell with them.
For instance I've been playing Don Lothario lately .. the Sims 2 version. In that game he was in the health care field so much of my gameplay has been spent giving him some charm and skills to do okay in his job and getting him stable. Now I've introduced the maid (changed the one that showed up in CAS to the Sims 2 one). He's busy romancing basically any woman that is attractive that he can. I'm pretty sure we are going to have some broken hearts and marriages by the time his story ends (if it ever does). A lot of my stories though do use a lot of actual game play, so I can see him making use of romantic getaway vacations ect to pursue what he wants while not getting caught if he can help it.
I have many other sims in that save from Sims 1 and 2 and their lives are becoming interconnected. Some .. especially my Strangerville sims are up to some bad stuff... test subjects, cloning just lots of stuff. Then other families are just living, working and being their character.
I have taken a break though to introduce knitting to Ginia Kat and that story is just ..sweet. She just moved in her butler. They have 6 cats and the relationship is romantic now. Mostly they do the home skills and it's enjoyable if not dramatic to watch and play out.
Hermitgirl...i am pretty sure that i could not bring a lot of creative genius to "the sims spark'ed " in the short amount of time in which each team is given..but it is fun to watch them do it..lol! I liked your idea using Strangerville for something with a little more depth and intrigue ...i have never used the town, i just loved the cas and build/buy...i mean i always think i will do it sooner or later but as yet never have...I do like having a play where it is basic romantic family ..it is relaxing.
DaWaterRat...i get what you mean by heavy lifting...i just started trying that ..it is ok to do for something different...i think i have to try using Newport and go all out ...encourages some creative building and i do save some in my library for future use. your story-line involving Asley's grand daughter sounds involved and interesting...my sims have always only vacationed in Selvadorada but the temples would be fun...and it sounds like a good way to kill off a sim for sure.
Telmarina..i haven't tried rotational play ..it is a great idea and now that you introduced the idea it is one that i definitely want to try out.
So-Money...i do like to create back stories for characters...it is really fun to do and often times it is running through my head in create a sim...definitely influences the way you might choose to dress that particular sim and then in turn the way you create the home and decide on family funds ...rags to riches is fine but lol sometimes it is fun to do a reverse and have a sim who was born with a silver spoon and then suddenly finds themselves broke and desperate.
several folks mentioned playing off a particular event that happens at random while playing and that definitely influences the direction my stories go in as well...sometimes the romance festival comes up and off you go ...or a random phone call from a particular character...i don't always love it when Vlad shows up ..haha but now that we can just send him home it definitely takes the unwanted event away but sometimes it was ok...we can still allow it but it isn't the same.
sometimes i create my own career ..has anyone else done that? I might use something in game to help with income or pay myself with motherlode...currently my sim is a botanist but is becoming interested in genetics ..not sure where that will go right now.
In general I don't want to plan too much ahead. It's nice to have an idea of what's going to happen, but I don't like playing though a story with prewritten twists and turns. I wish TS4 offered more random/unexpected stuff so I would have more things happening without me planning them, things that could change the lives of my sims. The recent packs have shown some improvement to this direction, for example the phone call where you're asked to get married in a week. This is exactly what I'm looking for in a sims game. There have been similar additions at least since Get Famous which offered the job pop ups with much harsher end results (actually getting your sim fired). Both of these examples are optional and I would still like there to be something more dramatic, but they'll do.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
All the sims err'day
A simple concept like "ex career soldier" is good enough, because my backstory already suggests all the other details, like where that sim will have been stationed. I just have to pick from "Strangerville Counterspionage", "Detroit Android Revolution" and "Sulani Coast Guard" and each choice will come with a handful of existing sims that my new one will most likely already know, whether as comrades or as former enemies.
Or when I want to play an archaeologist, a government sanctioned selvadoradan historian and a young adult from Detroit desperate to pay the bill for the mansion they inherited will actually play different: the latter will get put into the next plane home if he runs into line of sight of a local in the jungle, while the former can expect the occasional cheat for equipment. So basically I think less of who my sims are and more of what role they play.
Getting a save off the ground from scratch can take weeks before I even load up the game for the first time. But in the long run it is worth it, because no sim will ever exist in a vacuum and think "What should I do now".
The downside is that I often has to declare phone calls or chance cards as "never happened", because they contradict my backstory.
When it comes to my Cantrell family, they were created for the Star Trek mini-series I wrote to help flesh out my original character (O/C). Her favorite brother is the second eldest child in the family who is a musician. I mostly focus on him these days, playing through his rise to fame. He's also a big family Sim and desires to not just be the 'fun' uncle, but to have a family of his own. Being wildly famous and successful has always put a damper on his desire for a family life. He gets burned more often than not. In fact, in the game save that just got lost in my transfer from one computer to my laptop, his new girlfriend was already crushing on his older and next younger brothers! At first I thought it was his brothers doing the crushing, but right before I had to transfer my game save to the new location, I went to her household and checked her friends panel. I was crushed myself to find, the feelings with his brothers were mutual. Their father is a very rich Sim, Erik was already a Global Superstar (achieving this goal in just 16 Sim days). Gold-digger came to my mind. In one way I'm not sorry the save got lost in the ether.
Normally, his hair is shoulder length. He got it cut to please his father, before school starts again in the fall. Bad job, he ended up going for a shorter look to clean up the mess!
His signature hair:
The mess of a hair cut:
The fix:
I'm sure there's a story here, too.
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
Yes, this isn't always true for TS4, but I find that the more your sim interacts with other sims, says yes to things, goes out, the more those chances open up.
To be fair, I do agree with the criticism, though. With 4 it is all my imagination all the time so my backstories are more important than ever. The game itself doesn't help create the story like I have had happen in the past with other entries. I also do not get so enveloped into playing either, for better or worse. It takes a lot more effort on the players' part because the Sims are more doll like than ever.
I can have fun with 4 and some things it does the best in the series, but I do miss the depth of gameplay we had in the past. 3's personalities especially come to mind.
Before beginning to play, I always limit myself with a movie or tv show on which I base my game. I do that to stop my constant urge to write down my silly little sims worlds and turn them into actual novels (because for a writer that stuff can be very dangerous and damaging, trust me
Right now I'm playing with Peter (aka Spiderman), the adopted son of Tony and Steve (Iron Man and Captain America) who has a sister Morgan (Tony's and Pepper's daughter), used to have a pitbull Tessa (because Tom Holland, the current actor playing Spiderman, has one) and is currently in love with Gwen (Gwen Stacy). He also used to do ballet (because Tom Holland did), modelling (again, Tom Holland), wears Tony's glasses (reference to the latest Spiderman movie), keeps an Iron Man action figure in his bedroom, etc, etc, etc. As you can see, references everywhere. I love references
I don't really try to grasp the same looks of the characters because I'm terrible at creating sims based off real people but I still try to keep some features like the hair color, eye color, etc, so that takes a lot of time too. Their personalities usually start off the same as in the movies, but later evolve and change into something completely different. These kind of limitations make the game more challenging, fun and also help me keep my inner writer in tact because otherwise I would be stressing over how to turn everything I came up with in an actual book and the game would become a chore. But this way, it's like I'm writing fanfiction, which is nice and relaxing and doesn't require me being good or original or stressing over plot holes which there are A TON of
The funniest thing is, all of those hard and long preparations are usually just the surroundings for the story. The limits - who gets to marry who, how many kids should they have, what will be their interests. Character and world building, basically. But as for the storyline itself, I usually just come up with something very simple and then let the game throw some curveballs at me to help it evolve. Because the game can come up with the most amazing plot twists ever, trust me! The main storyline of my current sims family happened because of something my game itself decided to do. It's just more fun that way
One of my sims is a food photographer. He has his tripod and camera next to a table, he sets that table with some arrangements like flowers or something else beautiful, he cooks different dishes and then he photographs the food. His kitchen walls are full with his food photos, he sells the remaining photos to magazines and now he lists one of them in plopsy.
I am definitely going to be moving to doing some rotational play it sounds like a lot of fun...simple idea that for some reason I never thought of doing....I also like to involve some sims from the past ..Diane Pleasant ...she was one of my all time favorites and I would agree a bit of nostalgic play is calming and just fun!