The Art of Sims Storytelling
Hi guys! @CathyTea and I were talking, and we thought we'd try making a thread that would be focused solely on writing, especially Sims story writing. The writers' lounge thread is great for being ...
Forum Discussion
Do you have any preconceptions about how SimLit is supposed to be? Or did you used to have some, but you've grown past them as you've read and written more Sims stories?
Yes, I did have preconceptions about SimLit. I was heavily influenced by the TS2 classics by Candi and ephemeraltoast: hilarious, witty, goofy, with lovable characters.
These are very light, satirical, and so much fun.
We don't learn a lot about the writers, and there's not a lot of plot, but we get to know and fall in love with the Sims.
In my dabbling with writing TS2 and TS3 legacies, I really wanted to develop character, but I wasn't sure how to do so. I couldn't figure out how the writers saw such depth in their Sims.
In the past year, I've pretty well tossed out all preconceptions. Your writing @MedleyMisty has helped with this, and so have all the short stories for the contests.
It seems like we can write whatever we want!
If you did have any preconceptions, how did they affect your writing and reading?
I kept looking for work with depth in it: character development, especially, but also reflections on life.
In my own writing, I started by inserting little "reflection" pieces into the legacy--these started out as jokes for in TS3, if Sims had blogs, they could blog about "Reflections on friendship" (or so on). So I thought it would be funny to do "Reflections on game-play." As I started writing these, I began to share more of myself--at first it was pretty scary, for I wasn't aware of any SimLit where the writer revealed herself directly--her opinions, insights, and so on. Then, when I realized I could do that--and readers responded well, and I could survive the exposure and lack of privacy involved with making my views public--I started including more and more of myself in more of my writing, as if it were regular fiction or nonfiction, and not SimLit.
Then, when I felt I had an idea I wanted to explore, I started to look for ways that I could explore it through SimLit.
Are there any stories in particular that made you realize that Sims stories could be more than what you thought they could be?
In the early days of TS4 (fall of 2014) I fell in love with @RachelRosebud 's "Gather Ye Rosebuds" and FloorRaisin's Wolff Legacy. Both of these provided the perfect bridge that I was looking for from the traditional TS2 classics to the deeper, more character-rich TS4 writing. Before long, these two broke out into literature: well-written, insightful, and full of moments.
There was this incredible, exciting explosion of SimLit last year around this time--and reading all those exciting works, it seemed like anything was possible.
Yes, I did have preconceptions about SimLit. I was heavily influenced by the TS2 classics by Candi and ephemeraltoast: hilarious, witty, goofy, with lovable characters.
These are very light, satirical, and so much fun.
We don't learn a lot about the writers, and there's not a lot of plot, but we get to know and fall in love with the Sims.
In my dabbling with writing TS2 and TS3 legacies, I really wanted to develop character, but I wasn't sure how to do so. I couldn't figure out how the writers saw such depth in their Sims.
In the past year, I've pretty well tossed out all preconceptions. Your writing @MedleyMisty has helped with this, and so have all the short stories for the contests.
It seems like we can write whatever we want!
If you did have any preconceptions, how did they affect your writing and reading?
I kept looking for work with depth in it: character development, especially, but also reflections on life.
In my own writing, I started by inserting little "reflection" pieces into the legacy--these started out as jokes for in TS3, if Sims had blogs, they could blog about "Reflections on friendship" (or so on). So I thought it would be funny to do "Reflections on game-play." As I started writing these, I began to share more of myself--at first it was pretty scary, for I wasn't aware of any SimLit where the writer revealed herself directly--her opinions, insights, and so on. Then, when I realized I could do that--and readers responded well, and I could survive the exposure and lack of privacy involved with making my views public--I started including more and more of myself in more of my writing, as if it were regular fiction or nonfiction, and not SimLit.
Then, when I felt I had an idea I wanted to explore, I started to look for ways that I could explore it through SimLit.
Are there any stories in particular that made you realize that Sims stories could be more than what you thought they could be?
In the early days of TS4 (fall of 2014) I fell in love with @RachelRosebud 's "Gather Ye Rosebuds" and FloorRaisin's Wolff Legacy. Both of these provided the perfect bridge that I was looking for from the traditional TS2 classics to the deeper, more character-rich TS4 writing. Before long, these two broke out into literature: well-written, insightful, and full of moments.
There was this incredible, exciting explosion of SimLit last year around this time--and reading all those exciting works, it seemed like anything was possible.
