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The Art of Sims Storytelling

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  • Lucy_HenleyLucy_Henley Posts: 2,943 Member
    I’ve long enjoyed writing stories, even before I got into The Sims. I didn’t think to combine the two until 2020 I think, when I started using the forums more. I mostly just posted screenshots on the “What happened in your game today?” thread, before discovering the Creative Corner later on. I also posted in the Sims 3 area for a while, although I haven’t played Sims 3 in about a year since it doesn’t work on my PC, as Sims 3 is an old game and my computer doesn’t really support it.
  • MonaSolstraaleMonaSolstraale Posts: 1,372 Member
    _sims_Yimi wrote: »
    What caused you to dive into storytelling as a hobby? Alternatively (if you can't remember), what part of storytelling do you like the most?
    I always created stories in my head. I was very fond of books when I was a child and I had a father who was really good at reading stories in a very lively way. He always read bedtime stories to us and I think he looked forward to reading as much as we looked forward to listening. I have since enjoyed reading very much, both my own pleasure, my own kids and for children during all the years I was a kindergarten teacher.

    As @hellohannah2 describes, I also made up stories in my head when I played with my Barbie dolls, farm animals or built Lego figures. Over the years the toys disappeared but I kept creating stories in my head.
    When I started playing sims2 it really took off. At that time I had quite a lot of adversity in my life and it seemed almost therapeutic that I could create a more positive reality. It is during that period that I chose my player name. Solstraale means sunbeam in English.
    Until now, my fantasy stories were quite private. I created the stories for my own pleasure.

    I started writing stories in the Danish Forum when I started playing sims4 in 2017. At first I just wrote purely game-driven content.
    When I read Dust to Dust by @CitizenErased14 , I was really taken by the possibilities in Simlit's narrative. I became inspired to tell stories from a plot-driven perspective.
    The Danish Sims4 Forum was closed in 2018 and that put me on hiatus until we created a private Danish Forum.
    I wrote my very first story in English in the summer of 2020. At that time, the world was in lockdown due to covid-19, which gave me plenty of time. I was very inspired by so many amazing Simlit's I read during that period. I found a fantastic community that was a comfort during a period when I was cut off from meeting friends and family. It also gave me the courage to create my own blog.

    It has gradually dawned on me that most simlit writers flourish for a period and then lose the spark. After all, Simlit is a rather small genre for a limited group and it often requires a lot of work with images in addition to the language. For now, however, I still have the desire to create new stories, so I hope I can maintain the spark for a while longer.

    Thank you for a very inspiring question <3
  • haneulhaneul Posts: 1,952 Member
    What caused you to dive into storytelling as a hobby? Alternatively (if you can't remember), what part of storytelling do you like the most?

    I like trying different things. In this case, I don't see myself as a storyteller, but as someone who plays the Sims 4. My legacy blog is something I work on for fun and that naturally grew out of my gameplay and forum posts. I enjoy turning the game into a narrative. That's all. :)
  • SnowBnuuySnowBnuuy Posts: 1,767 Member
    edited March 2023
    @MonaSolstraale Yesss! I used to do exactly the same and I had names and storylines for all of my toys, from my dolls (which I didn't really play with) to my Littlest Pet Shop figures and my enormous amount of Pokemon stuff (which I loved!) Simpler times, I miss the days of coming up with little plots for all of my toys. I guess SimLit is the adult version. XD
    they/them or she/her
  • Lucy_HenleyLucy_Henley Posts: 2,943 Member
    So I’ve been planning the re-do of my old story. I’ve been thinking about character flaws and storylines and so on… but trying to come up with a title is hard! It was originally called “The Parker Saga”, but I’ve been trying to come up with a new title since not all the characters will retain the Parker surname in the future. The working title is “The Importance of Family”, since the main theme is (funnily enough) family, and how upbringing affects your life and the way you raise your own children and so on. But I feel like the title is kinda lame. I can’t really think of anything better though, so I guess I’ll just keep that title until I think of anything better (if I can think of anything better!)
  • HermioneSimsHermioneSims Posts: 774 Member
    edited March 2023
    @Lucy_Henley , titles are always so difficult! I very often keep a provisional one for quite a long time, before I get an idea at the most random moments in the following days (if not weeks). I would really like to make some suggestions, but I'm really fried tonight :s


    What caused you to dive into storytelling as a hobby? Alternatively (if you can't remember), what part of storytelling do you like the most?

    I don't remember exactly why I started, uhm... I mostly remember that I posted my first simlit more or less when I was at my second year of university. I waited for so long mostly because I had a very horrible internet connection until a year earlier than that and so I wasn't used to spend time online at all (*I know it sounds like prehistory, but it was less than 10 years ago*). Having a computer but not a good internet meant that I played The Sims a lot for most of my high school years though, and so one of the first forums I approached was focusing on the game in general, Simlit included. I had quite a lot of fun reading the stories posted by the other users, and after a while I started to post my own stuff as well. Then, so that in my country the community is smaller and the number of users still posting in forums is dropping this decade, I changed something like 5 italian forums before deciding to give the "international scene" a go.

    I've already written a quite long answer, but I think I haven't actually answered the question yet. Actually, I'm not totally sure about when I started to consider writing as a hobby. For sure I love reading, when I was a teen I also had a lot of time to do so and I miss that a lot (also, I was very lucky that my mum was willing to buy me so many book :P ). As a kid I was always inventing stories for all my dolls (and also "non-humanoid" toys like glass marbles), and growing up I just translated that kind of gameplay on The Sims instead. So that I was quite used to have a story in mind, the extra step of writing it down to share my stories with others wasn't that big.

    I also see that some of you also did creative writing classes at school. Now I would probably enjoy something like that, but I'm not totally sure I would have enjoyed it as much when I was younger. Here we have to decide quite soon the group of subjects we want to focus on in school (humanities, sciences, arts, technical stuff...) and I chose completely different stuff. Back then, I was mostly asked to write down essays.
    On this forum my writing style is particularly weird and my vocabulary quite narrow because I'm not familiar enough with the language to avoid it, but also in my own language my style can be better described as "straight to the point" instead of "artistic".
    Post edited by HermioneSims on
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    You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.12 posted on the 25th of March 2024*
  • haneulhaneul Posts: 1,952 Member
    edited March 2023
    I enjoyed reading everyone's responses, so I suppose I should give more background and answer properly.

    Like most interested in SimLit, I've liked reading since I was a kid. I started reading a little early, when I was 2 or 3, and a few years after that, I started writing stories. I was lucky to be in special courses for the entirety of my education and had lots of nurturing educators, but I mostly hated creative writing classes and assignments. Starting from when I was really little, I think I disliked story times and being read to. It's hard for me to pinpoint why, but my preschool teachers read simple books with hardly any words, which were boring. They also encouraged everyone to "read" (so if a kid couldn't read and just made stuff up, they would praise them and say they did a good job... I was not a fan of any of that when I was little, and I guess I became bitter and jaded). From then, I looked at reading and, a little later, writing as things I did in my spare time.

    After my age became double-digits, I began to love hearing people's thoughts on books. SimLit-wise, this translates into me enjoying SimLit, no matter what genre, and liking to read all the comments. I regularly get behind (like now) because I read a lot of different ones at once, but I'm kind of glad about it because it means that many people are writing interesting things.
  • GlacierSnowGlacierSnow Posts: 2,301 Member
    edited March 2023
    Reading everyone's stories about how they started writing stories is really interesting. I see bits of myself in several of the others.

    I'm finally done with the work and the snow shoveling, so I can spend a little time to answer a couple of the questions now. I don't really have much to say on the "critiquing" question, and it seems we've left that one behind anyway. But the character question and the how we got started writing question intertwine for me.

    Creating Characters

    I actually don't put a lot of conscious effort into creating my characters. They are constantly in my head, often in a distracting manner, talking to each other and telling me about themselves. I don't know how they end up being complex. They just inevitably eventually turn out to be that way, unless I actively prevent it. When I write, I am just letting them be themselves. I mostly only intervene if some decision they naturally make sends the story in a direction that just isn't working. In Seventeen & Maldusk, I've had to do this with Reuben a couple times. Because that guy is really bullheaded, and he derails things very easily.

    Plot is way harder for me. I have to really work hard to come up with good plot ideas. And even harder to stick with them in the face of characters who wish to do other things instead. Often, I get the best plot ideas from my spouse who is a great idea generating brainstorming partner. On my own, I just write random, barely connected scenes of characters talking to each other.


    How I started writing - Sorry, bit of a ramble, but it's an interesting question that really got me thinking and remembering stuff.

    I think, for the most part, being a "storyteller" was hardwired into me from the beginning. I feel like I have always been a storyteller, as soon as I could talk enough to tell one.

    Caveat: I'm getting some of these early "child-me" stories second-hand from my mom, because the stuff that happened when I was around two and half years old to about 5 years old I don't have clear memories of.

    According to my mom, as a talking stage toddler, the easiest way for her to keep me entertained was to give me a tape recorder with a blank tape, set it to "record" and I would happily tell stories about my my stuffed animals, and characters from "Winnie the Pooh" (my earliest fan-fiction) for hours on end. Parts of the recordings are incomprehensible to adults, but I was clearly telling a story.

    By about 3 years old, I also wanted to know how to write words and I would ask my mom to write individual words on index cards. I would memorize which was which and make sentences across the floor by lining the cards up. By around age 4 or so I started drawing series of pictures that told a story visually and then I would dictate to her all of the dialogue and narrative and have her write it down for me. Then, apparently because I wanted to make sure she had written the exact words that I told her, I would ask her to show me which word was which (I actually do remember doing this). All of this before I was truly "reading". I understood that words could be written down, and I wanted "my" words written.

    Like @HermioneSims and @SnowBnuuy I also used to constantly make up stories about my toys when I was playing with them. If I was playing alone, I would get so wrapped up in the story going on in my head that to an outside observer it would look like I was just sitting there staring at my toys instead of playing with them. This was something I did well into my teen years.

    I also used to just wander around aimlessly talking to myself and making up stories. Or rather, making up dialogue between characters I was imagining. When I say "talking to myself" I literally mean talking out loud at a normal volume, being one of the characters talking to the other. It looked and sounded exactly like the sims who have the "erratic" trait. I still do this, but I've gotten better at hearing when someone is approaching and shutting up before they realize I'm not talking on the phone.

    I started writing my story scenes and dialogues down somewhere around 7 years old. Probably when my mom stopped being willing to take dictation from me. From elementary school through college, I was almost always "working on a story". But they never got finished, because I could only ever seem to produce random scenes of characters mostly just talking to each other.

    I've never wanted to be anything but a fantasy author. All the jobs I've done as an adult are just to keep from starving, even the "geologist job" that I had to get through six years of college for, literally it was just me trying to be "sensible" instead of spending all my time doing what I wanted to do, which was writing stories. Most of my free time goes toward working on or thinking about some story or other. I kind of feel like if I'm not creating stories, I'm not actually being me. Living without telling stories feels pointless to me.

    Because of the way my characters are constantly in my head talking, writing all the character focused stuff has always been easy for me. Most the time I'm just trying to catch on paper the words the characters are constantly saying to me before that scene gets lost because other characters start talking.

    But linking all the separate scenes of characters talking into a story that has a plot has been such an enormous struggle that I've had a really rough time writing anything resembling a novel. This has been a major frustration all my life. I went through a very dark period for several years after getting "this has no plot" feedback on the first novel I managed to complete. It's hard to explain why it crushed me so completely. But I felt that what I wanted to be was not really possible for me, and it spiraled me down into a very deep pit. I tried over and over to write novels with "normal" plot structure, and I even started (for the first time in my life) to hate writing. And for a while I quit. And life became pointless.

    Simlit is part of what happened as I started climbing back out of that pit. I re-discovered my childhood joy of using pictures as a major component of telling the story. And that seems to be working well for me. So I'm just having fun right now. There's a point in your life, I think, when "fun" becomes more important than "doing it right."
    Forum-Banner-01.jpg
    Seventeen & Maldusk Forum thread link
    My name on AHQ (and the upcoming sims forum) is "GlacierSnowGhost".
  • GlacierSnowGlacierSnow Posts: 2,301 Member
    @HermioneSims I just want to say that I was delighted to see you say you made up stories for "non-humanoid toys like glass marbles". I totally did this too! I had a jar of marbles of all different types and colors, and each one had a name and a personality and they had all kinds of different relationships with each other that I made up stories about. I even made some comic-book style adventure stories for some of them. Where literally, all the characters were marbles. :lol: Sadly, I have no idea what became of these.
    Forum-Banner-01.jpg
    Seventeen & Maldusk Forum thread link
    My name on AHQ (and the upcoming sims forum) is "GlacierSnowGhost".
  • SnowBnuuySnowBnuuy Posts: 1,767 Member
    @GlacierSnow @HermioneSims SAME! I used to love my marbles. I had a 'marble racer' made up of different parts you fit together to make a track, and the marbles all had names and I'd do races with them and log scores. XD
    There's a point in your life, I think, when "fun" becomes more important than "doing it right."
    THIS! THIS THIS THIS THIS! Divided is this now. Unapologetic wish fulfillment and references to my favourite games masquerading as a story.
    they/them or she/her
  • MonaSolstraaleMonaSolstraale Posts: 1,372 Member
    edited March 2023
    @HermioneSims @GlacierSnow @SnowBnuuy It's so funny you all mention the marbles.
    I remember I had some stones in the garden that had become my animals. I had been to a museum with an Iron Age exhibition. The exhibition gave an example of the toys of the past. Immediately I was in that universe for several weeks.

    I enjoyed playing in my own universe as a child and continued well into my teenage years, which I actually thought was quite embarrassing at the time.
    Today, I am very happy when I meet adults who have retained their ability to fantasize and play :smiley:
    This is probably why the sims game suits me so well because my drive is more to create fantasy universes than the competitive element that is fundamental to most traditional electronic games. I find games that require the player to be the smartest, fastest and strongest to be deeply boring.
  • GlacierSnowGlacierSnow Posts: 2,301 Member
    This is probably why the sims game suits me so well because my drive is more to create fantasy universes than the competitive element that is fundamental to most traditional electronic games.

    This is exactly how I feel. I have tried several other types of computer games and I tend to get bored with most of them fairly quickly. I never cared much for most board games, card games, or competitive things like sports either. All I usually want to do is use my imagination and create my own worlds, characters, artwork, and stories. I like sims because I can ignore most of the "game" elements and use it for making stories instead.
    Forum-Banner-01.jpg
    Seventeen & Maldusk Forum thread link
    My name on AHQ (and the upcoming sims forum) is "GlacierSnowGhost".
  • HermioneSimsHermioneSims Posts: 774 Member
    I didn't expect so much love for marbles XD

    I remember that I used to make path for them with legos and that the plot revolved around excaping from somewhere, but I don't remember much more XD
    2if86miljyb3.png
    You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.12 posted on the 25th of March 2024*
  • SnowBnuuySnowBnuuy Posts: 1,767 Member
    @MonaSolstraale
    Today, I am very happy when I meet adults who have retained their ability to fantasize and play
    This I love this so much! Growing up I was always considered 'childish' for my interests XC
    Adults who don't care to 'act their age' are the best. Some people will consider literally ANYTHING fun as childish and it's just... ugh. -.- So many people are so obsessed with being a perfectly acceptable adult member of society and doing everything in a way that won't get them laughed at or whatever. This is also why I love tabletop RPG, and I've never been but it's also why I love live-action roleplay as well.
    they/them or she/her
  • SirianaSimsSirianaSims Posts: 176 Member
    What caused you to dive into storytelling as a hobby? Alternatively (if you can't remember), what part of storytelling do you like the most?

    I'm hyperlexic, which is probably part of my autism. I taught myself to read around age 3, I'm not sure exactly when, but my mother was surprised that I could suddenly just read on my own. As a teenager I was reading at a speed of 800 words per minute and I've spent my life reading anything and everything since.

    This means that a lot of people have asked why I didn't become a writer. And I was like - I'm not a writer, I'm a reader! Writing is slow! I hated writing stuff for school because it was boring, and I'd read so many books that I felt like I could never write something original since every story had been told before. I spent a lot of years telling myself that I could never write. I didn't think I could be original, and I knew I could never write as well as my favourite authors, so why even bother?

    And then about a year ago, I was really sick and bored and desperate for a hobby. I also have ADHD, and I've never had a hobby that wasn't reading, everything bored me after a short time, no matter if it was knitting or drawing or painting or playing instruments. All I wanted to do was read books and play Sims. But I also kept getting bored with my Sims games after a short time, I rarely played with a family long enough for anyone to even die from old age. So to challenge myself, I decided to start a legacy challenge, and to keep myself going, I wanted to blog about it.

    And thus The Duchelli Legacy was born. It quickly turned into actual simlit and I haven't looked back.
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  • HeyJewelHeyJewel Posts: 13 New Member
    Hi there, I am new to the forums and to Simlit in general, but I am working on creating a pretty lengthy legacy challenge with an optional storyline to go along with each generation. I am wondering if that is "too much" for a legacy challenge, I am looking at just my first two generations and they are several pages long - is that even something others would be interested in? Or when you click on a legacy if you see a whole bunch of words you kinda back away?
    I am by no means writing something fabulous and in-depth, but I know I like extra details in my legacies, and I sometimes find it a challenge to make the gameplay interesting rather than just completing a checklist of goals. I dunno, I am very new to this, I would appreciate any advice!
    Thank you in advance for reading this!
  • SnowBnuuySnowBnuuy Posts: 1,767 Member
    edited March 2023
    @HeyJewel Hello and welcome < 3 My response is under the Spoiler cut for neatness:
    I am going to be really honest with you, from my experience people don't really like long stories much. I've had folk walk away from / lose interest in my story because of its length and likely because it's narratively-written instead of commentary...BUT, what I will say is don't make your story shorter so it's easier for people to take in despite that. One thing is you'll likely lose the intended depth, and secondly I don't like that creatives feel the need to make things brief, just to cater to the modern need for all entertainment to be brief and 'immediate'. I was kind of upset to see someone ask if someone would back away from having to read a story because of too much text ;-; Also I don't think you should make the storyline elements optional. That should go along with your challenge-related sections, definitely. < 3

    You shouldn't have to feel the need to make your story shorter, I say go with long-form personally. < 3 For me, legacy challenges aren't meant to be short because they span such a long period of time. Part of the joy of a legacy is seeing the way the families grow and change over the years. The fun part for me isn't the checklist-ticking but seeing the author commentary and the interesting / funny bits of the family and the author's gameplay. Don't worry about your work being 'too much' and if it'll generate interest. If you throw your stuff out there someone out there will enjoy it! Everyone loves a good legacy. Trust me, you will eventually find something of a readerbase at some point! I have at least 3 or 4 active readers who will happily read the long chapters after so much time writing SimLit. < 3

    The only 'pro' to a shorter story is it will be easier for folks who don't know a lot of English. A lot of avid and active readers on the forum have English as a second language, so there's that to potentially consider. I know some folks who are put off longer stories solely because of the language barrier.

    they/them or she/her
  • MonaSolstraaleMonaSolstraale Posts: 1,372 Member
    Hi @HeyJewel Welcome to the thread :)
    I recognize your uncertainty about how to start, so I will briefly say a little about my experiences.
    I think you should first of all focus on your own desire to tell stories and what makes you happy and not so much on the readers. As @SnowBnuuy, I would say that readers are a side benefit that can definitely be encouraging, but the lack of readers should not be what holds you back.
    I am probably one of the non-English speaking readers who have a language barrier which means that I often give up texts that are too long. However, there can be so much else that maintains my interest despite the language. For me personally, the image universe means quite a lot. Another thing that can keep me going is a clear sense of humor.
    I myself am a relatively new Simlit narrator. I published my first English-language story in 2020. For me, Simlit storytelling is a playground that constantly teaches me something about how I can use images and language and makes me want to develop.
    I wish you the best of luck with your process <3
  • SnowBnuuySnowBnuuy Posts: 1,767 Member
    I would say that readers are a side benefit that can definitely be encouraging, but the lack of readers should not be what holds you back.

    @MonaSolstraale is spot on. Trust me, sometimes a lack of / drop in readership can get disheartening, but it's all about writing for yourself first before anyone else 90% of the time.
    they/them or she/her
  • Kellogg_J_KelloggKellogg_J_Kellogg Posts: 1,548 Member
    HeyJewel wrote: »
    Hi there, I am new to the forums and to Simlit in general, but I am working on creating a pretty lengthy legacy challenge with an optional storyline to go along with each generation. I am wondering if that is "too much" for a legacy challenge, I am looking at just my first two generations and they are several pages long - is that even something others would be interested in? Or when you click on a legacy if you see a whole bunch of words you kinda back away?
    I am by no means writing something fabulous and in-depth, but I know I like extra details in my legacies, and I sometimes find it a challenge to make the gameplay interesting rather than just completing a checklist of goals. I dunno, I am very new to this, I would appreciate any advice!
    Thank you in advance for reading this!

    Make it as long as you think it should be....I've uploaded 190 chapters of my story so, really, there's no limit until you think you've reached it.
  • haneulhaneul Posts: 1,952 Member
    @HeyJewel Let us know when you start posting your SimLit/legacy. To answer your question, it's hard to say if "several pages long" is too long. It depends on what your goals are.

    If I look at a legacy and see many words, I don't immediately back away. I'll give it a go. My legacy started with short posts (300 - 600 words), and now my posts are 600 words to about 1,500 words. For me, posts shorter than 1,000 words (maybe around 600 words) are the best at attracting and engaging new readers and those who are occasionally interested in my legacy. 600 words still has enough depth to satisfy me, while 300 feels too short to contain anything interesting in my own legacy. I don't have a dramatic plot, so there has to be room for me to explain things to keep it at least a little interesting.

    Several pages for two generations seem fine. It might be shorter than average if 2 generations are completely covered in a few pages. I think most people who mix SimLit and legacies average 8-15 posts per generation and a few hundred words per post.

    If you're reading what you've written and it feels long, consider breaking your SimLit into shorter parts. If something's interesting and you want to include that interesting fact as a bit of backstory, I'd include it and see what kind of response it gets. You can change things at any time. I hope you have fun.

    My legacy is obscenely long (almost 100 posts and I've covered 0 generations from birth to death B) ). I also don't follow any challenge rules (except no cheating and my SimLit is based on my gameplay). I've had fun changing my writing style as I go along.
  • HermioneSimsHermioneSims Posts: 774 Member
    Hi @HeyJewel , welcome!

    I think I may be another culprit of writing very long legacies, on average my legacy has about 25 chapters per generation (and the length of chapters is increasing as well, from about 600 words in gen1 progressively up to 2000). It probably depends on how much the chapters are about pure gameplay and how much is about storytelling on it though, the latter definitively tends to bring more numerous and longer chapters.

    Other than the length of the legacy, I also have the impression that adding a small picture in your forum signature linking to your story may help to attract users to your thread. A catching thread title may also help. I say this forum section there are a lot of different stories and legacies being updated all the time, so it may be hard to "stand out" sometimes, in particular at the beginning.

    However, apart from all this reasoning, I also agree with the others who say they write for themselves and not for getting readers. Above all this is supposed to be funny for you, and only secondarily it is supposed to be about giving the readers what they want.
    2if86miljyb3.png
    You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.12 posted on the 25th of March 2024*
  • RandomMicrowaveTMRandomMicrowaveTM Posts: 17 Member
    hi everybody! another forum newbie here. i had this thread recommended to me by SnowBnuuy and wanted to say hello, since i'm not only an emerging writer but also new to simlit! i saw lots of interesting discussion happening so i figured why not jump in?

    i don't really have a story to share yet (let alone the option to even share it, new member problems amirite) since i'm still fleshing out the plot, but that actually leads me to an interesting discussion topic that i wanted to share.

    for those with a more story-driven approach, do you try to draft out everything extensively before writing, do you prefer to wing it and see where it goes, or are you somewhere in-between?

    for me, personally, i'm more of the former. my story ideas tend to be quite complex, so i'm trying to get into the habit of using planner apps like Fortelling & google doc notes to organize my overarching timeline, the main plotline, and whatever subplots i might have. that way, i have a clear path forward when i start writing so i don't get overwhelmed and give up just as i'm beginning.
  • MonaSolstraaleMonaSolstraale Posts: 1,372 Member
    edited March 2023
    For those with a more story-driven approach, do you try to work everything out thoroughly before writing, do you prefer to wing it and see where it goes, or are you somewhere in between?
    Hi @RandomMicrowaveTM
    Welcome! It is always great to have new questions :)

    For me, I would say that the visual story is the basic element, but that does not mean that the text is unimportant. I spend a lot of time considering and testing different formulations. I would also like to add that English is not my native language.
    I have always a roughly outlined manuscript that gives me a direction for basic conflicts and goals for my story.
    I write my script in a Word document so that I can easily correct and add new ideas along the way.

    When I write a chapter it happens as follows...
    Step 1: I go into my game and take pictures of the scenes I have planned. Here, however, it has happened more than once that the game takes me on an unplanned journey. I am quite open to these detours from my script as they can be quite inspiring.
    I place these images in a folder on my computer and give the folder a chapter no.
    Step 2: I choose a title for my chapter. I often choose a title that contains some kind of theme that runs through my chapter. (Some titles are planned in advance in the script). I then choose a header image that says something about the theme of the chapter.
    Step 3: I select the images I want to use. I will crop them and maybe add some effects and then upload them to my blog (Pending mode)
    Step 4: This brings me to the last step where I add text to the images. When everything is read through and edited I am ready to publish my chapter.
    This process normally takes 14 days per chapter.
  • hellohannah2hellohannah2 Posts: 839 Member
    @RandomMicrowaveTM Hello! We already met in the other thread, but it's nice to see you here too - it's great to have these types of discussions, and I feel like this particular thread is so fun when everyone gets going.
    for those with a more story-driven approach, do you try to draft out everything extensively before writing, do you prefer to wing it and see where it goes, or are you somewhere in-between?

    I'm the same as you! I'm a planner. I'm not one to draft everything out, but I certainly make sure to have a clear plan in my head before beginning a story. Before I started writing my story, Lucky Girl, I already knew of the main things would happen and how it would end - I wanted to be sure that I knew exactly where I was going with it so that all roads would lead cohesively to a satisfying conclusion. I think it's important for me to do this, as in the past I've tended to veer off course and start following irrelevant threads just because they seemed interesting to me. I made a lot of mistakes in the past so I'm approaching this current story with steely determination and a rock-steady set of rules for myself.

    I do keep a brief word document so that I can jot down ideas and do outlines for each chapter, basically just spelling out the things I want to portray and whatever transformation will happen to the character during the course of it. It's never more than maybe a page on google docs, but I find it to be enough for me. I have a good head for storing information, and I like bouncing ideas and dialogue around in there for a good while before I ever start typing.

    I couldn't even estimate how long a chapter will take from start to finish because it's such a disjointed process. I start coming up with ideas here and there, usually when I'm out walking by the river where I live, and I'll think about things over and over again until something feels right. Sitting down to type a chapter can take a few hours, and then getting all the screenshots for the chapter can be maybe two more. I'm heavily focused on the story, the screenshots are secondary and are only really there to illustrate what's happening as best I can. (But obviously I love the sims so this part is a thrill too.) The settings in my game are totally locked down. No free will, no ageing, no motive depletion. My characters are essentially puppets who do what I tell them to do with no complaints. Haha that sounds a bit dark, but you all know what I mean :wink:
    s54gWQ5.png

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