The Art Commune Reading Circle

"MedleyMisty;14858799" wrote:

We could post like little intros to our stories, so people know what they're getting into. :)

An intro to Thirty Sims at Three Rivers can be found on the TOC page. I'll quote it here and revise it as needed to reflect where I'm at now with it:

Thirty Sims at Three Rivers

This project comes from a confluence of ideas and inspirations:

My Simming/Blogging friend Medley Misty shared with me a Tumblr project called 30 Days of Sims. The idea: create a prompt list of 30 seed ideas, and then develop a Sim for each idea. Medley created her own list of inspiration, which inspired me to create my own list.
My Simming/Blogging friend Moon in Capricorn (known in the EA Forums as NoWayJose527) has been writing about the essential scene elements (see Making a Scene, pt. 1 and subsequent parts), which can be distilled as conflict and change. She writes that “Conflict means wanting something we don’t have, or having something we don’t want.” In writing an effective scene, we consider “What does my character want here? What changes occur to thwart the character? How will the character deal with it?”
Tara Mohr writes about "writing for you" in Unhooking from Praise and Criticism. When I write with my most engaged sense of inspiration, it’s because I’m writing to explore something that I want to explore. In my other SimLit stories, I largely follow what is being presented to me through the game: I generally feel that my writing is in service to my Sims. With this project, I’m hoping to write for me: to discover and explore those ideas and feelings that I want to explore. And I hope to learn about writing and character while I do so.

So, out of the confluence of these three ideas, we get the Columbia River of Sims. Each will have one or more chapters, enough to explore the questions of “What does my character want here (or have that she doesn’t want)? What changes occur to thwart the character? How will the character deal with it?” Maybe my characters and I will find resolution. Maybe not. But along the way, I’ll have fun exploring dissonance and harmony.



That's a pretty good overview: I wrote a list of 30 prompts, and I'm working my way through the list creating or finding Sims to express the idea of that prompt. They're all in the same save, so it's fun for me to see how the stories are interweaving.

As much as possible, I'm using Townies for the prompt-Sims.

I'm having loads of fun with it, and I'm currently in a bit of a block, which I'll either blast through this weekend (I'm off until Wednesday) or share with you so we can talk about it! Sometimes, that helps!