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
@Nory_05 There's a reason I didn't finish reading Queen Victoria's diary. You'd think as a QUEEN, it would be interesting. Nope. Basically as you said "the author lists the daily activity in the most boring manner".
@VIRTUALEE They've also recently fixed the "headlineeffects on/off" to acutally remove the green plumbob. If they're talking to someone the light grey bob is still there though so @CathyTea's method is more surefire, but I spend half my game now with the headline effects off.
@mastressalita I find most of the writers around here are in the 25-35 range...perhaps that's just my own bias though. There's plenty of the 20-25 range of course, but there's a lot more over 35 than I normally see. I think it's awesome. But then I always get along with people older than me more
Also re:Elders. Half the problem is that EA has done a terrible job making Elders real people! They are so limited in what they can do. My folks are 60+ now and they are nothing like the elders in sims. Even my 96 year old grandmother is better off than many of the elders. They're like cookie-cutter folks each sim ages in the exact same way. I have minor hopes (and expect them to be dashed) that THIS time EA will do something cooler with elders.
@AdamsEve1231 & @everybody
"To everyone: Out of curiosity, do you use a lot of mods, poses, and/or cc in your stories (i.e. a combination, only 1, or none)? How do they affect your stories and your gameplay? Is it important to your storytelling, or could you tell your stories without them? Why do you use it?"
I have recently been seduced by the cc dark side. Basically I got tired of there being no decent curtains, only a handful of rugs and a limited number of pictures available in TS4 (HA! I just noticed a mis-typing of TS4 is TS$ <---so true!). Anyway that seduced me into CC. But I try to be sane about it. I also ADORED the autumn mod someone made for TS4 and used it in one of my stories where I wanted to show time passing. So that was important for the story (although I'm not sure anyone noticed). Most of my CC is just background flavor though. Modwise, most of them are to help the game run smoother and not erase all my ghosts. Poses...I installed them and was planning to use them in my short story this month. But every shot I used was a regular shot. I'll try again, but there's something unnatural about them. You have to get the shot just right to have it not look funny. Some folks (cough @InfraGreen cough) are great at utilizing poses. Me, I still need practice. Instead I end up using photoshop....And for my short stories photoshop was absolutely required to get the screenshots I felt I needed.
But as I've said before. My short stories are the only writing I do where I write first and screenshot second. So I don't really have the sims living their lives normally. It also helps me stay within that 12 screenshot goal...and I kind of cheated on that this month by photoshopping pictures together. I've yet to shoot all the shots I imaged when I wrote the story, but it's always worked out in the end. We'll see what happens moving forward though. I'm getting ambitious. I'll be interested to see/hear if it pays off.
@VIRTUALEE They've also recently fixed the "headlineeffects on/off" to acutally remove the green plumbob. If they're talking to someone the light grey bob is still there though so @CathyTea's method is more surefire, but I spend half my game now with the headline effects off.
@mastressalita I find most of the writers around here are in the 25-35 range...perhaps that's just my own bias though. There's plenty of the 20-25 range of course, but there's a lot more over 35 than I normally see. I think it's awesome. But then I always get along with people older than me more
Also re:Elders. Half the problem is that EA has done a terrible job making Elders real people! They are so limited in what they can do. My folks are 60+ now and they are nothing like the elders in sims. Even my 96 year old grandmother is better off than many of the elders. They're like cookie-cutter folks each sim ages in the exact same way. I have minor hopes (and expect them to be dashed) that THIS time EA will do something cooler with elders.
@AdamsEve1231 & @everybody
"To everyone: Out of curiosity, do you use a lot of mods, poses, and/or cc in your stories (i.e. a combination, only 1, or none)? How do they affect your stories and your gameplay? Is it important to your storytelling, or could you tell your stories without them? Why do you use it?"
I have recently been seduced by the cc dark side. Basically I got tired of there being no decent curtains, only a handful of rugs and a limited number of pictures available in TS4 (HA! I just noticed a mis-typing of TS4 is TS$ <---so true!). Anyway that seduced me into CC. But I try to be sane about it. I also ADORED the autumn mod someone made for TS4 and used it in one of my stories where I wanted to show time passing. So that was important for the story (although I'm not sure anyone noticed). Most of my CC is just background flavor though. Modwise, most of them are to help the game run smoother and not erase all my ghosts. Poses...I installed them and was planning to use them in my short story this month. But every shot I used was a regular shot. I'll try again, but there's something unnatural about them. You have to get the shot just right to have it not look funny. Some folks (cough @InfraGreen cough) are great at utilizing poses. Me, I still need practice. Instead I end up using photoshop....And for my short stories photoshop was absolutely required to get the screenshots I felt I needed.
But as I've said before. My short stories are the only writing I do where I write first and screenshot second. So I don't really have the sims living their lives normally. It also helps me stay within that 12 screenshot goal...and I kind of cheated on that this month by photoshopping pictures together. I've yet to shoot all the shots I imaged when I wrote the story, but it's always worked out in the end. We'll see what happens moving forward though. I'm getting ambitious. I'll be interested to see/hear if it pays off.
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