The Art of Sims Storytelling

@VIRTUALEE I loved it!!!!! Subscribed!!! I think audio story idea is great!!! I too just found this thread and have learned TONS already! Mostly what I became to admit by reading the posts is getting past my own fears!

Thank you so much for reading Frenemies @mastressalita and @VIRTUALEE you're too kind :)

Regarding the thread's topic, like many I first came across the world of sim literature by reading Alice and Kev. Even though I loved the story, the idea of writing one of my own didn't cross my mind until the release of The Sims 4. It all started with the creation of Chelsea and Jessica. I don't know why but those girls really got my creative juices flowing, which ultimately resulted in the creation of Frenemies.

I don't consider myself a writer at all, so I don't feel I could give any useful writing tips. The only advice I have is to be true to yourself. Freeing your mind from any preconceptions of what Simlit should be will help you develop your own writing style. I think it's better to figure out what works for you on your own rather than trying to box yourself into only doing what's considered as being 'the right way'. Now, I know this sounds like some very generic advice but that's only because it's true! :D

This is a very riveting thread and i'm glad I came across it! I've been playing the sims since 2004 (ts1) and find that it relaxes me. Over the course of the last 10 years, I have attempted several legacy-related stories but got bored and scrapped them. I did,however, complete a sim self bachelorette challenge (based on boy i was friends with in high school when i wrote it.) Ended up dating 3 of those people in real life xD It was cool because someone on the old ts2 site was inspired by that story and included my characters in her own challenge... i hope it's still in cyberspace somewhere xD I've been inspired by writers like Candi and Ephemeral Toast (ts2) and recently by The Wolffe Legacy. I really enjoy writing my current legacy because i feel like the character's identities are more fleshed out and real to me. I think cutting back on the number of children my founder has helps immensely. These days I like to read legacies and sim stories the same depending on how well they hold my interest. I like how there aren't any rules of writing and this community is generally an upbeat and supportive one!

I forgot to bookmark this thread when it first appeared and now it's already four pages in. The last two pages all seemed to be stating preferences for realistic and deep fiction, and I was all set to come to the defense of the shallow and mindless. But reading the first two pages, lot of folks were talking about writing more "slice of life" and fun stories.

I'm going to say random things now to catch up on the conversations.

Like several others I started writing simlit with very little exposure to the variety of stories out there. My first couple generations are more "how to legacy" like. But as I started reading other stories where people paid attention to the sim's wants and needs and personalities. I started doing the same. I consider this first year or two of writing simlit to be 'practice.' Try a bit of everything and see what sticks. I'm finding I enjoy the plot driven a bit more than expected so I'm starting to go in with a bit more intention now. The only stories that I write first and shoot later are my short stories. The stories I have that are completely sim-driven are a nice way to take a mental break and I have one game where I don't write anything for when I'm tired of screenshots.

As far as wordless chapters go...half of the 6 posts in my wonderchild challenge are completely wordless. And I loved them! It was so fun to try to figure out the correct order to put the screenshots to tell a story. I will have to do it again.

I write first and foremost because I enjoy it. Not for readers or comments or anything so @MedleyMisty write as much as you want if there's an audience or not for it. I think there are still a lot of simlit readers out there. Of course if it feels like a chore and not fun anymore, feel free to stop. I haven't written for perhaps 10 years because of life and full-time jobs and such. It's only now that I think I can fit it in my schedule and that I have the energy to do it.

@CathyTea I am 100% behind you with the narrator or POV character standing in for the reader. You said: "I feel very much that the narrator is not me--those aren't "my" thoughts or experiences, exactly, but I also feel it's really easy for "me" to enter into and share the narrator's experiences and perspective." When I read I am not aware of myself as a human anymore. *I* do not exist when I read. So the characters and the world I'm given are all I have. If they don't feel real then I don't feel real or it jars me back into being me.

And lastly to return my my defense of the cheap and mindless. Mindless and fluffy isn't the same as badly written or bad world creation. You can write a completely believable fun lighthearted stories with my little ponies and it not be trite or cheap . When the author doesn't care about the characters or bother to create the world around them that makes sense, then it's bad writing - or writing just to get paid. But most authors I've met or have read their 'on writing' books aren't like that. Even those that toss out multiple books a year with similar plots. They enjoy what they're doing. And as a reader - if I liked the world or the plot - I'd keep reading. I've read enough of "The Cat Who..." mysteries to prove that.

Then again, I tend not to read or watch "real" world stories. What folks consider "modern literature" or movies and TV shows listed as "dramas" - I avoid. Not because I don't think they're good. But I live in that world so I tend to choose to spend my free time in other worlds. To me, simlit is like another world so even when it "realistic" - I still enjoy it. If it's got vampires, demons, mages, aliens, or sims, I'm going to be there.

/novel

@ra3rei I actually wrote a My Little Pony fanfic when I was 18. I didn't finish it, but I think it was the first thing I wrote and shared in public online.

What do you mean by "cheap and mindless"? We might be working from different definitions here.

I guess to clarify - I know it might have come off as judge-y, because it usually does when we talk about things that other humans do that we don't understand, but when I read essays and blogs online where people defend their "guilty pleasures" it doesn't make sense to me. Like any of it, including why they'd say they were "guilty". I don't get why people would feel the need to defend their choices of entertainment, but I think that's because there's a lot of social status and external expectation stuff there that I just don't get because that's not how my mind works. And again - that's probably coming off as judge-y to people outside my mind, but I really just honestly can't wrap my brain around it no matter how much I try. I can intellectually understand that there's stuff going on there that I don't get, but I don't think I'm ever actually going to be able to get it.

And then on the Big Five personality test I score 100% openness, so when I read people defending what they call "mindless" and "genre" because it's predictable and ends all nice and snug and happy, I guess my brain doesn't grok that because it likes new and different and unexpected.

Realism doesn't have anything to do with anything for me. If it helps, if you forced me to define what I mean by cheap and trite, much of what I read when I try to check out literary magazines and also most of the books cranked out by MFAs would be examples. I can't force myself to feel anything about a middle aged professor having an affair with a student other than maybe disgust.

But I guess I just want to reiterate - this is all just me and my brain and my experience, and after years of wandering the internet I have realized that I am not like most other people.

Also Surreal Darkness does not at all feel like a chore. I'm going to keep writing it. It's just that for me, reading and writing is a relationship, not a one-way thing. I grew up in a small Southern Appalachian town where the culture was more collectivist in nature than individualist, and so I tend to see myself as being in relation to others and as having a place in a community that is very much a part of my identity. I don't write to please myself or for numbers on a stats page or for social status. I write for my community. I was kind of feeling like I'd lost my community, although I am trying to find one here and the short story challenge has definitely helped with that, since people who aren't willing to read Surreal Darkness are at least reading the short story and commenting on it.

And there's really not as many readers as there once were. Or if there are, they've moved somewhere in the community where I either can't find them or I am too scared to go after all the bullying and hate I went through with Valley.

Actually the other day I looked through my referrers on the WordPress and went to two of the forums where people came from on my busiest day ever. One was completely gone, and the other had not been posted on since 2012. Also I used to post an ad on Sim Storytellers on LJ and start watching the clicks roll in. These days I'm doing good if one person clicks on that link.

Anyway, I have to go to work. But I do think we're coming from pretty different assumptions and ideas here, and if we work through them we'll probably find that we don't actually disagree on that much.

Re: the number of readers dwindling over the years: I blame a shift in where the Simming community chooses to go, as well as trends in what kind of online communities are popular.

I never really got into LiveJournal beyond lurking, but it seems like a better place to share long stories than a place like Tumblr. There are still good stories on Tumblr, but they tend to be shared in a very piece-meal fashion. A few pictures, and a little bit of text. I could find a way to post 3,000 word/40 image chapters there, but it's not a popular format.

Tastes have changed with online communities. I understand the appeal and current popularity of "microblogging" like with Tumblr and Twitter, but I don't like how it was at the expense of the popularity of forums and longer-format blogs. I'm more comfortable with those, and I ended up writing in a style that is best shared over some obsolete platforms.

The best I can do is cross-promote wherever I can. My WordPress stats tell me that some people still get the idea to read Eight Cicadas thanks to me posting the links on Tumblr.

@CitizenErased14 Thanks for your support it means more to me than you know! I totally understand know why copyright is a no go, especially because of our use of EA’s game for visuals 

@GoddessSims Thanks for your support I appreciate it so much! I read Shinya Ginoza’s Intro excited to read 1st chapter but the web page states ‘Not Found’, will check back later this evening to see if it’s just my work computer  his background intrigues me and I need to know whats going on lol!!!

@MedleyMisty You are now my hero. That's awesome that you wrote a my little pony fanfic.

Perhaps I don't read the stories that you consider trite - I'm not sure I've ever read one where a professor fell in love with a student...unless it occurred on a space station...although nothing comes to mind... And no worries, it takes a lot to offend me. I will always assume I'm the one misunderstanding. One of the downfalls of forums is it's hard to know if our references are the same. So I wouldn't be surprised if for the most part your idea of fluff books doesn't match mine. As @CathyTea pointed out my own sim stories, which I consider very light and fluffy, can be defined in a completely serious, deep manor.

Glad you're writing despite the dwindling audience. I love the libraries that contain ever book not finished, but only in my fantasies. In real life. I like to be able to read endings eventually.

I remember taking a writing class back in university where I tried to write what everyone else was writing. About my life or real life stuff. To be honest my life is utterly boring. Honestly. So I can't remember a single comment anyone gave me or a single thing I wrote. Two years later I took my second writing course and said screw this - I'm writing about lizard people - sue me. I got a lot better results because I wrote a lot better. Sure half the students were utterly confused but the other half could actually give me meaningful feedback.

It's why when I ask for advice on my simlit work, if the advice giver doesn't read simlit, I pay close attention to why they're saying what they're saying.

@ra3rei - I love that you wrote, "When I read I am not aware of myself as a human anymore. *I* do not exist when I read. So the characters and the world I'm given are all I have. If they don't feel real then I don't feel real or it jars me back into being me."

This is so much my experience! With novels, I had to go through long droughts, for when I'd read, *I* would become so lost!

I don't have to worry about that so much with most SimLit--though I had to be careful when I read Casusbella2, or I'd easily get lost in there, and I find that I need to take extra conscious effort to stay grounded while reading @MedleyMisty 's Surreal Darkness, for I could easily get lost there.

And it's funny to me that you find your work light, Rae! I would definitely say that it has an uplifting, affirming, and joyous quality, even when dark, and I can't think of any post that feels fluffy to me! It's all got a gravitas! Or maybe, sobriety. Which, to me, is one of the greatest sources of lasting joy!

Also, when reading through these posts, I'm not picking up on any disagreement at all!

I'm picking up on furthering... like someone will mention something, then another says, "Oh, yes, and consider this!" and so on. It feels like we're exploring and creating meaning and shared definitions and expanding our views.

Very lovely, really! I also appreciate a thread that's quiet and a place for sustained conversation, like the quiet corner table by the bookshelves in the noisy cafe!

I know I've just been replying all over the place with this thread, I guess with my headaches lately I've had trouble trying to stay cohesive and on track, so bear with. I'm just going to jump into two topics that I think were brought up earlier, and if they weren't... then I'm an idi*t. It's the headache meds talking. -_-;;

On going back to earlier work and re-writing: Lately I've been looking back at my earlier chapters and absolutely cringing. They just look so bad compared to what I've seen/come to know of SimLit from more and more exposure to it, both in writing and screencapture technique. I know some folks have talked about re-writing earlier work, and I have to admit, looking back at some of my earlier stuff certainly makes that tempting... but you know what? I sat and thought about it for a long time, and ultimately decided... no. Because I feel like it is important to be able to see the growth and change as a writer, to see how I may improve over time. I suppose the downside is I may lose potential readers immediately if they start at Chapter 1 and see such low-quality writing and screencaps with walls down before I'd learned how to hide plumbobs, but... so be it. As I've said before, I spent far too much of my life being a pessimist so I like to be an optimist now, and I like to think (or at least hope) that most readers will understand that new writers have a... "learning curve" before they discover what they want to be and catch their stride and start to really improve. I think most writers will probably feel their writing improves over the generations in their ongoing legacies, right? And therefore, I think most readers will probably expect that early gens are probably going to be a little "rougher" but stick it out if they find something that engages them.

On legacy/challenge writing: I know I saw this come up at some point. You know, I honestly felt, at one point, that the only way to get an audience with SimLit was if you were writing about a legacy/challenge. And neither of my stories are such. I'll be the first to admit, I'm just not a wildly huge fan of legacy play, and while I do enjoy challenges, the first few ideas that I just really wanted to write about was not in that vein. But it always seemed like the stories that garnered the most popularity were always of the legacy/challenge variety. I immediately started thinking, "Well, I'd better add a legacy to my site to draw people in" and then realized... what a silly way of thinking. Play something that I likely wouldn't be wholly invested in, that would undoubtedly reflect in the writing, just because that seems to be what is expected of SimLit authors? Thankfully there are a lot of excellent stories out there that are not based on legacies or challenges that reaffirmed my thoughts that, indeed, you don't have to be playing a certain challenge and writing about it to create a Sim story. But yes, I will admit, the more immersed in the SimLit community I became, I sort of fell into the "legacy trap" and started thinking that I'd have to write one, even though playing one hasn't really caught my interest. Like @Mightydan said, have to listen to that gut instinct to be true to yourself, and not think you have to write something just because that's what is "expected" or what "everyone else wants"!

On online communities: There definitely have been so many shifts and changes over time. My site was originally set up on LiveJournal. I love LiveJournal, I know how to use it, I've been using it forever. But no one would go there to read my stories. I could not get comments. Even with anonymous commenting turned on so no one needed any accounts and did not have to use Twitter/FB/Google or anything, I just could not get anyone in to view my work with it on LJ. Just this month I moved to WordPress, seeing that the majority of the SimLit community these days is on either WordPress or Blogger. Within a day I'd say I probably had more hits than I ever had on all the months of my LJ hosting my Sim stories combined. I didn't really want to move off of the site/host I loved, but sometimes, you have to move to where the community is... the community isn't going to come to you. There are definitely things about my new host that drive me nuts (but I'm not going to get on that soapbox here) but ultimately I'm glad I made the move: for the first time since joining these boards, I finally feel like some folks are actually checking out my stories. (Poor LiveJournal... I still love you!!!)

And Tumblr... I'll probably get kicked out of the thread for saying it, but I have never been a fan of it. I am old (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I bet I'm older than the majority of most of the folks that are in this community/hang out on these boards) and I've just never felt comfortable with it. It is such a chore for me to navigate. I loathe the constant popups in my face to subscribe to this or that when I don't even have a frickin' account and am just trying to read a story. And the way the durn page keeps shifting over to the side on me as I'm trying to read a story! ARGH! That drives me bonkers! I have Daily Chronic Headache, I like my websites to just STAY STILL! Not to mention often I find posts aren't dated (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, sometimes they just say "such and such hours ago") which make anything posted on Tumblr an absolute chore for me to try to archive the updates for on the Stories and Legacies Index. I'm not going to say if a story is posted on it that I won't read it, but I definitely will say that probably would push the title a bit lower on my ever-growing reading list.

@Mightydan : A wild Mighty Dan appears! Well thank you for the story, I quite enjoyed it and consider it one of the influences on my own writing. ^_^ And another Alice and Kev fan! <3 (I'm so excited that Book Club is going to read it in the future...)

@ra3rei and @MedleyMisty : I have MLP figures on top of my monitor on my work computer. In fact, my internal quick-code linked to my library card at work to access my account is "DERPY." Also, I'm hiding these in my closet. >_> *has no shame*

@ra3rei : You mentioned libraries that contain "every book not finished." Heh, I think that was my inspiration for creating the sister thread of the Stories and Legacies Index, the Stories and Legacies Archive, which is a link collective mainly for SimLit sites that have stories that were never finished and are no longer updating (though there are also ones in there by folks that are not members of these forums or inactive on these forums... a.k.a. they have active sites, but I have absolutely no way to contact them to get them to submit their sites to the main Index). While I do enjoy completion myself, I like to think that just because a work didn't finish (especially with the online medium where, well, things just come up to stop that from happening) that doesn't make the entire body work that was completed up to that point suddenly not worth reading. There might be a wealth of inspiration in those old, unfinished works of the past to new, currently writing SimLit authors. At least, that's what I like to believe!