How to deal with perfectionism in storytelling?

Having high standards is fine, but IMO there's nothing good about perfectionism. It's toxic and unproductive. The Sims is a game and Simlit should be fun. If it's not fun because it has to be perfect (which it inevitably won't be because as one improves the goal posts will always shift higher and become harder to attain), I think there's little point to it.
My legacy has inconsistent quality and it just is what it is. I leave everything up from the beginning, advise any potential readers to start reading from wherever they want, and only fix errors/typos.

Early screenshot (I forgot to get rid of headline effects)

Recent screenshots


I may create a list of 10 or so of my best legacy posts that I recommend people read if they want to start from the more recent posts while also catching up a little on the past. Other people create summaries of their legacies after each generation or stories after several chapters.

Another thing is that the Simlit community is extremely small and if everyone deletes evidence of growth or mistakes, it discourages others from joining. I think Simlit shouldn't be that serious. Some people maintain excellent and near-perfect levels of quality from beginning to end, but most people improve over time and for most it's probably easier to improve if they try new things with new chapters rather than re-doing the same chapter 100 times. BUT if people want to rewrite, they should do that because this is meant to be fun.

- Always aim to finish what you start. Folks have a habit of restarting things over and over, and that only makes perfectionist thoughts worse because what if reboot 2 isn't enough either? or reboot 3? or reboot 4? And then the story, or challenge never gets finished, and even worse you may lose your attachment to it and there is absolutely nothing worse than completely losing interest in something that was once fun. I've made some fairly big lore errors and such, I just retcon them and carry on. An imperfect finished story is better than a perfect unfinished story IMO.

- If the story elements get overwhelming, focus more on the gameplay elements and less on the storytelling side of things. Sometimes the gameplay might even spark an idea for the story part of things. Maybe it's the sharing aspect that's making the perfectionism worse? Would it be more fun to just do it as something to enjoy for yourself and then maybe post it all after?

- So long as the screenshot gets across what it needs to in terms of gameplay or story, then it's not a problem. Screenshots don't need to always be fancy or perfect or with lots of after-edits and such. I know it can feel that way with the folks who do editing and poses and GShade/ReShade and such, but there's little need to worry about screenshots, IMO.

As for my own stories, there are things that I don't really like about some aspects of first stories or first chapters- but it is what it is. Everything has to start somewhere, after all. And your vision at the start of the story is always going to be wildly different than it ends up, as is the case with most of my more recent stories- but as I say, it is what it is and I keep going. So long as I finish it eventually, it can be as imperfect as it needs to be. I've had folks move away from my story, quite a lot actually, but the only real way to get over perfectionism is to just keep going regardless and don't give in to any wants to change major things looking back, which is what you're already doing anyway so I say you're at least off to a good start.

This is something that I, too have been thinking about. I too, am a huge perfectionist. For me, I feel that my writing gets worse with each new chapter. Personally, I thought your first chapters were great! I immediately bookmarked your story after reading the first few chapters. (I didn't see your post until you had posted chapters 3 and 4). As haneul said, it's because Simlit is not so serious that I was encouraged to start my own story. I used to try writing stories when I was in highschool, but I never finished them since I critiqued my own writing based on the fact that I thought I'd have to write something "perfect" enough to become a professional author before I could share them. I'm glad to have found these forums and this game, a place that allows me to share what I write, a place where perfection is not expected. Enjoy writing your story. If you don't enjoy it, why write it? (That's something I have to remind myself of often, as well.)

Thank you so much for your responses <3

@haneul
I agree there's nothing good about perfectionism and it has blocked me and took the fun from me many times.

Having some kind of referral post is a good idea. I could add an introduction episode at the beginning when I reach season 2 as some kind of table of contents I think.

Thinking about the community is also a good point. I actually enjoy watching the growth of others and I wouldn't be bothered by an imperfect execution of a story that otherwise captures my interest. I guess there's a big gap between how I see other people and how I see myself and being part of a community is probably a good way to decrease this gap (talking about it also helps).

@SnowBnuuy
I definitely have the intention to finish this time. I would love to finally reach 10 generation of Sims for once :)

I had to look up the word "retcon", haha. But it kind of helps to know that there is a word for things like that!

I think the sharing actually makes the perfectionism better not worse. It's good for me to work on smaller creative things and this way I can start over with each episode.

I'm also happy with the recent storytelling. But I did not think that much about it at the beginning and just didn't take enough screenshots, so at first it's more a collection of screenshots than a story.

The things I changed are mostly the lighting of the images (Copperdale is sooo dark!) and some things regarding the comic-style (at first I tended to put the character's thoughts in the image captions instead of in thought bubbles). The worst I did was reshoot an image which had a family picture in it, because I took a different one later and didn't want to imagine that they threw the other one away, lol.

@MrPlumbob
It's good to connect with someone who has similar thoughts/problems :)

Do you have an idea why you feel like your writing gets worse with each chapter?

I really hope you continue to write and post your story! I really enjoy it especially for its situational humor :)


Side note: This morning I did a yoga practice with my favorite yoga teacher on Youtube. She has a playlist for each month and for today there were two videos that were 10 and 11 years old. Her current videos are super high quality and although her teaching was awesome too a decade ago the videos have noticeably worse lighting, a messier background, you can hear another person walking in the background and there's car noise and even sirens in it. It connected quite nicely with what I wrote in this post and what @haneul said about community and I'm grateful that she continues to put these old videos in her current playlists.

@flauschtrud I am glad to talk with someone about this as well. :)

As for my writing, I just feel that it's getting harder to write the dialogue between the sims. There were a few times I just didn't know what to write. (For example, I'm still not satisfied with the scene with Monica and her mom looking through the decorations.) I feel like my first few chapters just had a better flow to them, if that makes sense.

I suppose I need to take my own advice that I gave you, and just enjoy it. (By the way, I'm glad you're enjoying the story, and I definitely plan to continue writing. Monica's life is just beginning!)

About your side note, I've noticed this with some of the YouTube creators I watch as well. I enjoy looking through their old videos and seeing where it all began. I suppose those who begin reading our stories later will feel the same way.

Most simlit writers have thoughts like this.

I used to focus on perfectionism back in the day when doing Sims 4 simlit. As time went on, perfectionism became less important to me (I still take good screenshots and do my best when writing, though). I used to write cliched villains and other cliched characters. Nowadays I try to make my characters three-dimensional. Currently, I'm doing a TS3 legacy.

So, something I could say is, learn from your mistakes and don't worry so much about getting every detail right.

@MrPlumbob
Yeah, let's return to this thread whenever we feel bad about what we created :)

Maybe it's harder now because you progressed in the story and there is now so much more? Like more characters, more possible situations, story lines?

@Lenny_Ogg
It's interesting to think about not even comparing yourself to your past self... (since I think this is an advice often given). But yes, it's probably best to be respectful to your past self and appreciate what you did in this moment.

I'm not really worried about numbers though. It's more the difficulty to tolerate imperfect/wrong things no matter whether anybody sees them. I'm the kind of person that's also stressed when writing in a book and I don't like my handwriting afterwards :(

Yes, I really appreciate the connection to my characters. I'm usually a very technical player. I'm good at building, challenges, managing money or needs and so on, but I normally don't gravitate to storytelling (that wasn't any different as a child and I was often confused by others' playstyle, lol). So it's a super interesting experience and also quite empowering to learn that I can actually do that if I make it my focus.

@Sims4MagicalTales
I can imagine that getting free of perfectionism makes you able to create more interesting characters. I actually think the most beautiful things in any art often come from making mistakes or moving away from predefined ways, although this is again something that I can appreciate more with others than myself.

Meanwhile I do fancy myself perfectionist in many things
I often try to just say ''plum this'' and move on when I notice myself being too nitpicky with things

like for example I could sit here for weeks trying to get perfect screenshot of Vlad in bathtub for my simstory
or I could actually you know have a life in which... yeah. I should clearly choose the latter right?
although that Vlad in tub could very well be the next Mona Lisa...

as for writing I gave up perfection ages ago though
considering my nonexistent grammar it'll never be perfect
I'll just correct obvious mistakes when those attack my eyeballs out of nowhere
or someone else feels attacked by my bad grammar I guess but mostly people don't seem to mind

also I just feel like so many times perfectionism kills the creativity
because there is so little room for happy accidents when all is planned in your head

anyway yeah, that is my chaotic thoughts on the subject that probably answered no question :lol:
have I regretted writing things in certain way? heck yeah
but I also know I would have never gotten it written at all if i tried to do it perfectly from the start
just like this comment I will just edit things thousand times more after posting if it bothers me :lol:

I'm pretty much a perfectionist, but I like it when sometimes the game or the automatism decide where the story goes. If I want to try something out storywise I make back ups. Yesterday I make the mistake and overrode my latest decadechallende save, after transfering the data from my laptop to my pc. That save where my story from the Kaufmann Family was. All what's left are the older back ups, but the current heir didn't have not any of his children yet. I'm very sad, but one the other side, I think it's finally the time to close that chapter and start a new one, because the challenge and the story already ended long time ago. To keep my inner perfectionist happy, I do chrochet, here I have to work perfectly, and I can redo it it until it fits. That gives me the freedom to relax more on other things, especially in sims.

@Daravi Oh no, I'm sorry you lost your save! But it's good if it helps you to look forward...

And yes, I actually appreciate things that the game does and I can accept these more easily than things that are totally under my control. So I actually find Neighborhood Stories a relaxing feature, because it removes the task from me to make the NPCs go forward in their lifes myself, haha.