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
@MedleyMisty : Play-by-post is round-robin writing, pretty much, between two (or more) people. One person has a character they control and they write a bit of the the story and put it out there, and the writing partner then has a character they control and then they post back a response to what the writer before them provided. A lot of forums based on different novels/TV series/video games/etc. that use this style of writing are out there (I played on one based on the world of Anne Bishop's The Black Jewels novels for several years before forum llama-drama and my escalating health problems caused me to throw in the towel). A few years ago I found I missed play-by-post, but I definitely didn't miss the forum-drama that tended to go along with it from being part of those communities, so now I just have one author I work with independantly that I keep in touch with over e-mail and Skype and we use Google Docs for our compositions rather than a forum, and we've had that going for over a year.
While it may sound odd, when I write Sim stories, I actually think of the game as a co-author, which is why I always go in game first, and do the writing second. I might drop into the game with an "idea" of what I'm going to guide into happening that play session, but I never set anything in stone, because I like to see what the game is going to throw my way, which could be incorperated into the story as a result. I think the fact I think of the game itself as my writing partner is probably from my background in play-by-post writing.
While it may sound odd, when I write Sim stories, I actually think of the game as a co-author, which is why I always go in game first, and do the writing second. I might drop into the game with an "idea" of what I'm going to guide into happening that play session, but I never set anything in stone, because I like to see what the game is going to throw my way, which could be incorperated into the story as a result. I think the fact I think of the game itself as my writing partner is probably from my background in play-by-post writing.
