The Kindness Bench for SimLit Writers - For All Games!
What is a kindness bench?
Kindness benches are inspired by the Buddy Bench movement which is in practice in many schools. With Buddy Benches, children who need someone to play with or talk to at lunch sit on the bench, and then others come around to ask them to play and offer friendship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QdFeQQHRSQ
With the Kindness Bench for Writers and Storytellers, we provide a thread where writers can go when they're feeling discouraged, frustrated, or in need of a shot of inspiration and encouragement.
With writer's block, game glitches, drops in readership, plot complications, and more, it's easy to become temporarily discouraged when writing. The Kindness Bench offers a way to get back on track so that you're writing again and inspired by the value of your stories.
We invite all Simming writers, bloggers, and storytellers to stop by when they can use some friendly encouragement, and when they've got some friendly encouragement to share with other writers and storytellers.
We welcome writers using any and all versions of Sims!
How have you taken an interpersonal conflict, complaint, or disharmony and used it in your writing?
What was that experience like for you? Did it help you to come to new understanding?
I can't really answer the second question but for the first question-I think the reason like a second, character in my Swanson story (either Carly in Gen 2 or Lucy in Gen 3) are spoiled because like my sister they got more freedom than the other character (either Molly in Gen 2 and America in Gen 3) since I always am jealous of the fact my (older) sister gets more freedom than I do. I haven't had a reason for my characters have an argument about anything at the moment with their parents (Well except for the whole Jacob business in Gen 2)
"CathyTea;14987966" wrote: Let's see.... since this is a Writers' kindness bench, I'm wondering if we could shift to looking at how these kinds of interpersonal dynamics might relate to our writing....
Here's a question for everyone!
How have you taken an interpersonal conflict, complaint, or disharmony and used it in your writing? What was that experience like for you? Did it help you to come to new understanding?
@CathyTea: This is gonna turn out to be a loose answer that's a whole lot of personal in with interpersonal, but whatever. Whatever disharmony I have, I prefer to make fun of myself.
As a fair warning, this is gonna be a pretty dark and off-color answer. So I'm putting both topics under spoilers. If they sound triggering or inappropriate, you know where to not click.
Eight Cicadas has a lot of death and a lot of sex and relationships hinging on getting it on. I actually was reading the Art Commune thread and getting a little antsy just reading others' answers on the recent subjects of death and (a)sexuality, so how fitting.
I've had to watch a number of family members deteriorate and die, and while I was wise enough not to get into the usual end-of-life arguments (accommodations and care, religious stuff such as Last Rites, funeral details, the will, etc), I observed and always hated all the fighting that was outside of the dying persons' control. My poor great-grandmother, rest her soul, had to slowly die while watching fights between her kids and grandkids that we almost had to call the police for. It was bad. And on top of that, she wasn't asking to die. She had a bunch of relatives (like my brother and I, who were young and cute back then) that she gladly would have kept living for, had it been in her control.
It probably colored a tasteless and disturbing view of death I had as a teenager, where I wanted to avoid that drama at all costs. And when I felt everything was out of control, I wanted my own death to be in my hands. I felt wronged by the world and those around me, and wanted my death to be a controlled middle finger to leave with. Or a controlled middle finger to myself. You're self-harming, have a newly-diagnosed seizure disorder, and might never be able to drive? This is what you deserve!
So here I am five years later, writing Cicadas, half-romanticizing the idea of dying on your own terms as mortal main character after mortal main character downs a bottle of pills or drowns themselves and their newborn in the tub, and mostly showing the tragic buildup and collateral on those still living.
It's a culmination of six-eight years of growing out of the mindset and listening to others...just a little bit. There's a lot of both sides: being a nihilist and treating death as cheap and morally-ambiguous, and showing the honest and messy process of mourning. Because there's been a lot of back and forth between others and I about death and suicide over the years, and I think we both miss a lot of each others' sides. My parents often "guilted" me with their feelings on if I died, and I try my best to consider those both in real-life and in my fiction, but sometimes I default back to "I've heard about you, but what about me?" And it's weird to talk to other readers and hear lots of pity and compassion for the survivors and ambivalence for the dead, whereas I feel a lot of compassion for who I kill. I try not to do suicide without buildups, because a part of me still wants to make it clear that there's gotta be some suffering that is worse than death.
The next section pertains to sex in the most forum-friendly way I can put it, and is again under a spoiler:
Eight Cicadas also doubles as a super-dark sex comedy when it's not being nihilistic about death. Anyone who's gotten past Chapter 50 probably sees the full extent of it. Annette is a worrying specimen who has both a clear bad history with sex, yet still centers her life around it. Hypersexuality is far from uncommon. And even beyond the dirty stuff, I have a way I like to portray relationships. They're passionate yet shallow. The focus, for me, is always on touch and cuddles and affection and acting more like teenagers in love than, well, actual adult couples I know.
Of course I've talked to others about relationships in real-life, and I've observed too, but there's always a riff. For a while, I blamed it on "well, I'm gay and most of the people I know aren't. Straight people are so weird." But there have been plenty of people who were cool with that and not so much when I had a one-track mind that focused on sex and affection. People get weirded out by my thoughts on sex. Ex-partners have. I used to think it was strange that it wasn't on their minds 100% of the time. I know I'm not normal, but I thought I was at least a little normal there!
It gets personal where I have this fear of being the 40 or 50-something year-old in a relationship, and it turning affectionless. Not even loveless, but the "sleeping in separate beds, rarely sharing even a kiss, no matter how they feel about each other" thing. But instead of confronting my fears, I just project them into my writing! Which is why you have Annette, Amy, and Sinbad all in their 50's and pursuing a raunchy polyamorous relationship anyways. Or how Bill was anywhere from his 50's to his 70's while with Annette and almost every scene with them ended in a kiss or a cuddle, or the implication that they wanted to do it right afterwards. Heck, Shark and Harwood were (probably) put together just to confront my subconscious fear of the same happening but later in life. Not that I have any plans to pursue 20-somethings while well into my 70's, but having copious amounts of gay snuggling then? Please. And why my plans have a lot of "x character get into sexy, passionate new relationship at age 45-55, continues indefinitely."
But I guess nowadays I do it with a lot of irony and further nihilism? Especially in regards to Annette. I'd actually worry for anyone who thought that she was an example of a healthy sexual person. Of course not! She uses sex and physical affection as a quick band-aid over this giant emotional gash in her. Life's falling apart and your husband's dead? That's no excuse to not get back in the sack. But other characters fall into the trap. The first thing I wanted to show Franco and newly-adult Hannah doing is getting ready for some fun under the sheets, because as much as I like them as a couple, are they really that healthy in their sexual urges? Or is it just to mask mourning or the effects of abuse? Shark's obsession over Harwood was rooted largely in sex and physical intimacy, even if I mostly just left that up to interpretation.
I try to laugh at myself about it. I've put myself in a lot of terrible, borderline-dangerous situations because I wanted to scratch that itch in any way possible. So instead of getting help, I make a black comedy out of it by projecting those urges onto my characters and making a statement about it.
"InfraGreen;14989131" wrote: @MedleyMisty: It's fine! It just means that you guys are good with discussions. ;)
I'm glad we keep having spilling-over discussions! Discussions that begin in one thread, spill over to another, and so on. It's neat and organic. We're polythreadual! polythreadamorous...
So one thing I really enjoy personally about not really understanding sexual attraction is that it helps me to understand sexual attraction in a different way. It's like what I wrote in the spoiler in the Art Commune thread. When I encounter those who are very sexual--who perceive themselves, others, experiences, and the world--through the lens of sexual attraction, I can understand them (perhaps in an analogous way) by seeing that this is similar to my own aesthetic, romantic (but non sexual), spiritual, or even humanistic attraction. And one neat aspect of that is that it allows me to view sexual attraction apart from the moral baggage that has been heaped on it. Of course, from my perspective, health, safety, and procreative responsibility are essential. But given that, I find that I'm open to looking at all sorts of experiences. And that makes reading Eight Cicadas very interesting and fun. With the irony and hyperbole, there's a lot of joy and play in the story...
This is where the compassion and love that I find in your story enter in, with the way you explore suffering. I was writing in the Art Commune thread about a writer's capacity for discomfort being a key to being able to write difficult things, and Eight Cicadas is an example of that. There's also so much love. Maybe love, too, and compassion come from developing a capacity for not resisting the discomfort. Your respect for your characters and their decisions is so evident. At any rate, art comes out of that, and also understanding.
I know what it's like to experience overwhelming sorrow and to analyze - really look deep within - my emotions, how they make me react, and if they are justified, even if it's just in my own mind. Because I know how it is to experience such deep emotions, it helps me write my characters in situations where life may seem hopeless. Even though my characters go through things that I didn't (in one of my stories, my main character lost everyone she loved except one person), I can tap into how I was feeling at a certain point in my life and translate that into a character's reaction and actions. I hope that makes sense.
I like what you wrote here, @sweetnightingale. The darkness, the sorrow, the pain - all of that helps us to learn who we are and to really know ourselves in the good and the bad. When we know ourselves better, I think this makes it easier to know our characters and to understand and sympathize or in some cases, empathize with what they are going through and how they react and experience situations and scenarios.
I do also think that it's okay for your characters to experience things you haven't. There's possibly an element of research or basing it off someone else's experience or possibly thinking about how you would react if you were in their shoes, etc. but in any case, I wouldn't want my characters to experience everything I have and vice versa because again, this would be dull.
I once received the advice "write what you know." I think that's fairly common advice for writers actually. I find, I often write because I do not know and I want to know. I want to explore. I want to feel. I want to think. I want my characters to think differently than I do, feel differently, and act differently because this helps me to expand my worldview, to learn what I do not know, or to at least better understand and hopefully, in some cases, this can translate to other areas of my life. Writing what I do not know has helped me become more understanding, more sympathetic, more patient, and more loving and respectful to others in my world. (This also happens through reading).
Yes there are certain things I wouldn't read or write, but to only read the genres I write or what I am familiar with seems terribly limiting. To only write what I know seems boring, at least in my mind. I dare to stretch myself, challenge myself, and to try things. Sometimes I fall flat on my face. Sometimes I learn the hard way. Sometimes I learn something new about someone else, and in turn, learn something about myself. I often learn to know myself in the context of the other. Then something truly beautiful happens.
I found this has happened frequently in my writing. For example, when I first outlined my fantasy plot back in high school, I hadn't actually read a lot of fantasy. When I attempted sci fi, I didn't know a lot about it. When I first tried Sims stories, I had no idea what I was getting myself into and if I would succeed. Yet if I hadn't tried, if I hadn't given myself the opportunity to learn and grow, if I hadn't branched out, I wouldn't have gotten the results that I have. The learn as you go method doesn't work for everyone, but it has worked for me, and I think this definitely shows in my Sims stories and other stories respectively.
"sweetnightingale;14988471" wrote: I find it very therapeutic to sometimes have my characters in situations I can identify with. For example, I belong to the Lions Club, which is a service club organization and they're all about helping people. In one of my stories, I have a couple characters doing volunteer work with orphaned kids. I find it very rewarding to write those chpaters because it's rewarding work for the characters and the kids (even if they are fictitious) benefit.
In one of my stories, I'll be dealing with fertility issues, which is going to be tough to write. Again, I'll have to examine a very painful part of my life and attempt to adequately translate all the deep-seated feelings and reactions into the story. That will be coming up very soon, and I hope I can convey everything I want and how I want where the reader can sympathize/empathize with the characters involved.
I love that you are daring to write about painful things and that you don't shy away from it because this demonstrates you have courage and you can extend hope and healing and peace to others through your courage.
I, too, find writing to be a therapeutic way of dealing with my emotions and experiences. I didn't speak to either of my parents at one point or another in my lifetime and this is something that shows up in my SimLit - Kass's character struggles with her father and my Lizzie character struggles with her mother and my Jess character struggles with both parental figures. Kass battles depression and anxiety, which I have and still do struggle with at times. Kass' mother also struggles with depression and has a hard time admitting it which is the scenario with one of my parents. I have a good friend who is bipolar and Gage, Kass' friend struggles with bipolar disorder also. In my offline life, I am passionate about helping young women cope with mental illness in their everyday lives and also with families and reconciliation.
"sweetnightingale;14988471" wrote:
As music has always been one of my biggest passions, I use it to gather inspiration. When I need to evoke a particular emotion to get me in the mood, I'll pick out certain songs or artists to listen to. I sit, listen, lose myself in the music, and just let my muse take over. Once my head is full of things I may or may not include at some point in the story, I'll do a "brain dump" in a notebook (my beloved fountain pens come in VERY handy for this). Then, I stew on it for a while and decide how I want to proceed. Another thing I like to do is keep a character diary/journal. This is basically where you take a character and write their journal for them. I'm doing that for my current gen in one of my stories and it really helps to get into the character's head.
I love this! I love music too and I think it's awesome how you utilize music as a way of inspiring or evoking emotion or writing. Music helps put me in the correct mood to write certain scenes, especially with an emotion I might struggle with or for a particularly difficult scene.
I think the character journal thing is a cool idea. I am sort-of doing that with my current main story, KFLL, as a way of helping one character understand another character. I have pages of notes elsewhere for each character and possibly an entire novella length collection of notes on Kass, my MC.
"sweetnightingale;14988471" wrote:
Although I am a bit of a sad-sack at times (hehe) and write angst, sorrow, grief, and such, I do enjoy writing happy things when called for. I write a LOT of romance, which some might find how I do it too mushy. For me and how I like to write, it's about a good balance. Life isn't all sunshine and roses and you need some bad times and such to make the characters grow and strengthen them. Plus, it would get boring if everything was all happy-happy-joy-joy. On the other hand, if everything is all doom and gloom, it gets a bit heavy and eventually puts me into a depressed mood.
I agree. I was reading/watching a video the other day about an author I follow/read/like. She was talking about what happens when your character becomes too unhappy and how you can write yourself into a corner because your character is too depressed and doesn't have a moment's reprieve. I was thinking about that in my current story about Kass and thinking I might need to include a down-time chapter where something pleasant or at least relaxing and less stressful happens. I don't want her to get so depressed that I get depressed and then the story starts to feel like an overwhelming burden and becomes off-putting to my readers. It's good to balance things out when the scales tip too far in one direction.
P.S. I was thinking the same thing, @MedleyMisty, and that @sweetnightingale would probably enjoy our discussions over at the Art of Storytelling thread.
Most of the stories I have the most enjoyment writing are about abuse and overcoming it. And that's all because I was abused (all but physical) althroughout my life, and I overcame all of it -- with some mental scars, naturally. So writing helps me get through the depression and it slowly heals the open wounds with minimal scaring because to me, it's like I'm talking about it without saying details about my own abuses. So I guess it's safe to say that I pour more of my tears, my heart and my soul into those types of stories over the others.
It was all awful because at the time, I didn't know what was happening to me. I didn't know the signs of abuse because I thought there was only really physical abuse -- which was dumb of younger me because I watched a looooooot of character study type of movies as a kid.
This spoiler is going to be super personal but it definitely helps me to explain why I didn't realize sexual abuse was actually happening to me.
I was sexually abused as a child(5-6)by a childhood "friend" a couple years(7-8) older than me. So all sexual abuse after that I thought was normal. I never told my parents, and there's only 4 people that know the details of the childhood abuse and the abuse from my ex. Me, the abusers, my best friend, and my husband.
After all of the abuse ended (I still get the occasional verbal from my dad during his bipolar episodes.) I now understand the signs to look for so I don't fall into another abusive friendship/relationship. It helped me understand other victims of abuse, and to find ways for them to overcome it -- like my characters in my stories.
I actually do the opposite. I've not had the best luck in real life with health or relationships, so in a way I use the sims and storytelling to reassure myself that things can be good (or at least not terrible =p).
I'm a lesbian, and unfortunately in media almost every lesbian is killed for stupid reasons, so for ages I thought what I was meant that I was going to be killed. I guess the Sims gives me hope that being gay isn't such a big deal, and that we get to be happy sometimes. Also the lack of 'Can I watch?' and 'Maybe you just haven't tried me?' is very refreshing in the sims world =p
I can't believe I'm actually posting this, but here goes.
I want to add something to my above post-because I never been in any kind of a BF/GF relationship-I never experienced any kind of abuse but I have heard of other women's abusive partners so that's how come I'm able to write the chapters for Gen 3.
