The Art of Sims Storytelling

"ra3rei;14344707" wrote:
My mom will read my short stories - but I do send them to her in draft form which means without the pictures. I usually send her the link to the finished product, not sure if she's read them but I bet she will when I visit for Christmas. I can usually get people to read those since they take less than 10 minutes to read. My sister rarely reads something, but she's very kind and lets me babble to her all the time about sims which she has perhaps a 5% interest in. (She helped me make her simself).

Other than that I only know one other non-digital friend who plays the sims and we chat from time to time, but she doesn't read simlit. I've given my blog out to some coworkers who game...since my blog occasionally showcases other game stories...but if they're reading I don't know about it. Luckily all of you read (maybe not my blog, but the simlit genre) so I'm in good company.

Oh - and as someone who normally avoids "literature" I figure I'll just add that it's not that I hate it. I think there's only one book I've ever thrown across the room in disgust and that was a SF book. So when I read them, I do enjoy them. It's just that for the most part they don't call to me. Not the way a dragon, or a really interested alien race will seduce me into buying the book after reading half of the back cover blurb. I'm not going to say it's right that I avoid classics and modern literature - but I will say they tend to cater to 'careful' readers. Which I am not - I'm a full tilt race through the book not putting it down or stopping for anything reader. So I miss a lot of the language play and prose and poetry. That's not to say I require my books action packed. I was exhausted after reading Dan Brown since he never gave his character (and therefore never game me) more than a few hours to rest and recover before we were being chased again.

I'm not likely to change my reading habits after 35 years. (okay fewer than that, I wasn't reading before I was five). But I do tend to try to read more classic and poetic works via audio book. I find I'm more likely to read them that way since I'm forced to read every word...or at least hear every word. Shrug.

And now it's way past my bedtime....as @RipuAncestor said: priorities. :P

Why do you think that literature can't include dragons or alien races?

Terry Pratchett wrote straight up literature, and I will fight anyone who says different.

Harry Potter is also literature. So is the Hunger Games. Not seeing where you have to be absolutely realist to write literature.

Douglas Adams too. And Madeline L'Engle. And plenty of others.

Do you really think that Tolkien had nothing interesting to say about humans just because his work included elves and dwarfs and dragons? I was in the theater for the LoTR movies, and I can tell you that the audience felt a deep connection to the story and that it meant something to them. It is literature.