The Art of Sims Storytelling

"InfraGreen;14329104" wrote:
I told myself that I could excise all of the "mundane" chapters from my story, but I'll admit, a lot of my chapters first come to my mind with a simple event I want to happen, and weaving into everything else that is happening in the story. Though my favorites start out with thinking of a mundane event, but adding something gross and/or intense for the sake of contrast. Renew wedding vows after your friend kills himself, get assaulted at a normal funeral, putting undertones of child abuse in a chapter about kids running away, almost getting shot when going out for cookies, etc.

But anyways, unless your story is entirely event-driven, I think those moments need to happen. At least I have trouble making character introspection happen at intense times. Closest is that they happen at quiet times right before the storm. I think that SimLit has helped me appreciate those moments in other media too. Nothing wrong with taking a breath.

@InfraGreen I think you found the right balance with this! If the character don't get the chance to just sit and do nothing for a while, it gets overwhelming.
I'm still battling with this a little bit. Sometimes i think "do the readers really need to know that Kate was reading a book, or that she's stuffing almond croissant in her face?", but thenk i realise they probably do, because tells what sort of person she is. Not everyone would read a book at 7am on a Sunday morning and enjoy it.

"mastressalita;14329619" wrote:


Though in retrospect, after seeing all the other SimLit out there, now I look back at my own stories and can only see myself as "doing them wrong." My word counts are very low compared to everyone else. I tend to screencap and then write around what happens rather than the other way around, composing and then going into game to get the imagery, which seems to be the standard, so now I've become really critical of myself when I hadn't been before. When I started, I didn't really think of there being any "right or wrong" way of doing things, but now I feel like my eyes have been opened and I'm "doing things all wrong," heh.

@mastressalita I don't think it's wrong or right! For me when i read stories it's never about the word count. If a chapter/post is 300 words, but it's badly written, or dull, i won't be tempted to read further. On the other hand if the story / writing peaks my interest, i will read it no matter how long.
But for me this is the same with actual literature and books too. The content matters, not how long/short it is.

"mastressalita;14331270" wrote:
I think, of recent, I've read a lot of TS3 stories that are obviously the product of heavy pose-mods, and I started reading about a lot more authors writing their chapters before going into game, so I started thinking that was a more prevalent method... I guess it is a bit of a comfort to hear there are quite a few folks that actually do let the game have quite a bit of control and do their writing second to the gaming. All these stories have been quite interesting. ^_^

I used both methods!
But i felt that my two detective stories are so much plot driven, that i had to write out first what is going to happen. Mostly so i can cross reference myself and not make weird plot holes.
I also got a bit zealous about controlling everything... :D Like for example the clothes my characters wear. I made little notes on my story regarding on what date and time we are in. (The first picture of my story actually tells the date/time where the chapter starts). So I dress my characters in different clothes every day. Therefore i had to keep track of which chapter i'm taking pictures for. It got so confusing even for me, that now i only take pictures for one chapter at a time, and in chronological order, so i don't end up mixing them all up :D

In my first story it was different. I mostly played first, took pictures, and only changed their clothes when the season changed. Although that story covered approximately 20 years of that person's life, vs. my current story that coveres about 1 week or 1 month.