The Art of Sims Storytelling

"InfraGreen;14335593" wrote:

"GoddessSims;14335472" wrote:
I have a story I have been working on for almost a year now. I know what I want the characters to endue, their growth, hardships and the how I want it to end. I have problems with the build up. You know the stuff that makes people grasp the story and want to keep reading until the good stuff gets there. So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

@GoddessSims: This is where In Medias Res might come in handy. If you don't want to get lost in TV Tropes and don't know what it is, the gist is: don't start at the chronological beginning. Start at something good, and let the rest be revealed how you see fit.

Or in another wording: take everyone else's previous advice before I saw your post. :p

Yeah, this was pretty much what I was going to say. Kind of exactly what I was going to say - I was thinking about in media res earlier today.

I've been going around reading past short story challenge entries, and that's definitely something I noticed. People would start at the wrong place, and they'd tell you all about the character and their life and who they are before getting to the actual story events.

Well, maybe I shouldn't call that wrong, and maybe it worked for what they were trying to do. In general though, it's best to just start the story where things start to happen and show who your characters are and what their background is as you go and as it's relevant to the plot.

Okay, like, speaking of short story challenge stories, here's how the one I'm writing right now starts:

Daddy could tell they were coming. He said it was in the shape of the waves.

I said, "There ain't no waves."

He nodded and called me "astute", and then he said, "That's how you know. When the water gets real still and calm and the fish don't bite. The fish know they're coming too."

Hopefully anyone reading at this point wants to know who's coming and what's going to happen when they come. Also hopefully the narrator's voice tells you some things about her and her background and who she is, and then later on in the story there are some little details that fill in a bit of her past and her family relationships. But they are little, and they are relevant to the plot. Because you only need the things that matter to the events of the story.

So you could try starting the story right in the middle of whatever it is that the characters have to endure.

Other examples of ways I've started stories:

Seth Morrigan’s very own personal dark night of the soul had taken physical form, and it lay in wait for him on his bedroom floor.

He didn’t dream about the fire.

He didn’t sleep, most of the time. It hurt too much to sleep. But that wasn’t why he didn’t dream about the fire.

“Seth?”

I think they call it an imprint. When something real tragic happens, they say it leaves an imprint on the air and that sometimes when folks come by it replays itself. Like a moving picture. I reckon maybe the people in the tragedy leave a bit of their soul there. I think maybe that’s what I am. A bit of a soul. And I replay when someone comes and knocks on this stone here.

Mighty nice of you to come. No, no, don’t leave. I’d have to come up there, and it ain’t so easy to climb up through six feet of dirt. ‘Specially when you ain’t got no head.

Well, I’m using yours, of course.

See, all of them start the story where the action of the story starts, and hopefully also they interest readers in finding out what's going on.