"What should we call this?"...the making of a Sims story
Sul sul, Simmers. It's the holiday season, and it seems like as good a time as any to share my humble attempt at Sims storytelling with all of you. My twelve-year-old daughter, Z, is my Sims bud...
"MoonlightGraham;c-18137906" wrote: I think I might have figured out why I hadn't been in the mood to write much, or even play our story save, lately. If you're not interested in my thought process, please feel free to skip this post. I'll place my musings behind a spoiler tag. :)
Last night, I went back and read the first post I made in this thread, the one in which I described what I'd be writing about. I wasn't really sure what direction the story would take, but I thought I'd bring anyone who cared to read about it along for the ride. We followed our lead Sim, Cameron, as he lived his Sim-life through the game. We gave him a backstory and a family, but we had no idea what might happen next. The game took the lead.
While Z and I were playing and I was writing, we discovered all kinds of other Simlit stories, told by some amazing writers and storytellers. Some of them--some of you, rather--can create stories that are absolutely professional-quality, with gripping plots and engaging characters.
Aha, I told myself, so THAT's how you write Simlit!
This spring, Z and I began thinking of intriguing storylines we could add to WSWCT. Some of them were actually pretty good; good enough that we thought they could be worth writing about. But when it came time to boot up the game and play through these storylines, neither Z nor I was in the mood to do it. I couldn't figure out why, because we'd both had such fun up to this point.
Then it dawned on me. I like letting the game drive the story, rather than using the game to illustrate a story I've already written in my mind. I know some Simlit authors use the latter approach, and they're very good at it. Some of you have commented on our story here.
I'm definitely one who prefers doing the former.
So, Z and I are going to step back and let our Sims take the lead again. The result will be a "slice of life" story, driven by the development of Cameron's character...but I've decided I like telling that kind of story.
We've added some Sims to the cast who are mean, selfish, and manipulative; Seth Turner and the Atwood sisters for example. They'll probably do enough bad things to add some conflict to the story without us having to force it.
I don't consider myself a writer, and I most certainly have never written anything that would be considered Simlit but I do understand getting caught up in the story and driving it instead of letting the game do the work. Some of my favorite households have been those where the game made the decisions rather than me making them.
I play out stories in the game, I just don't write them down. I've learned, for me, starting with a loose backstory and let the game (and my mods) do what they do. If I plan an entire story out, I usually rush to the good part and get bored.
Another thing I've learned recently is, stop forcing my story to progress when my original goal was reached.
For example, The Green and Hill families, which you may be familiar with from my save. I played Sophie and Jack's relationship from the beginning as teens. I played all through Sophie's pregnancy and the ups and downs of the relationship. I ended the story when she and Jack got back together.
Jack and Sophie had the happy ending I had envisioned for them when I created them but I didn't see a need to continue their story from there. Some stories are meant to be short.
