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Post by queenofmyownfantasy on Oct 30, 2024 11:38:20 GMT
Talking about the challenges of finishing stories, I think it's really interesting. In a way, I find myself with the opposite problem. I finished my story over a year ago. I just can't stop writing.  I don't want to leave my world or my characters. I think it's my way of avoiding what arieltriffic is saying about being depressed when the story ends. I just keep going. Eventually, I worry I'm going exhaust the world, or my readers, by running around fleshing out supporting characters and side stories... but I just. Can't. Stop. Writing. My approach sort of counters this problem - my legacy story approach. I play a (rulefree) legacy, with each gen having its own whole arc & storyline varying in complexity and drama. It is build in variation, but i also can keep the sims/their descendants and keep on fleshing out my universe's lore. It's endless. |
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Post by luciusstorm on Oct 30, 2024 11:52:28 GMT
My approach sort of counters this problem - my legacy story approach. I play a (rulefree) legacy, with each gen having its own whole arc & storyline varying in complexity and drama. It is build in variation, but i also can keep the sims/their descendants and keep on fleshing out my universe's lore. It's endless. OK, so I have a question, or maybe just a mental block, about generational simlit... When I first started playing Sims 4, before I started writing (and before I discovered how to turn aging off), I played a couple of generational saves (variations on Gwen and Cassie). The mental issue I ran into was that I was playing the grandchildren of my original characters, but the world around them was unchanged. Sure, NPCs aged, died and were replaced but the physical world... the buildings, the clothes, the technology... were all the same. Maybe I'm too much the historian but that pulled me right out of my suspension of disbelief. I know how much the world has changed since my grandmother was a young woman. I know the changes just in my lifetime, most of them nothing like what we imagined when I was young. So, as a generational writer, how to do you deal with that? Do you ignore it and have your sims live in an unchanging world? Do you 'start earlier' and bring your generational family up to the present day? Do you try to change the world to try to keep pace with the passage of time? |
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Post by queenofmyownfantasy on Oct 30, 2024 12:26:17 GMT
My approach sort of counters this problem - my legacy story approach. I play a (rulefree) legacy, with each gen having its own whole arc & storyline varying in complexity and drama. It is build in variation, but i also can keep the sims/their descendants and keep on fleshing out my universe's lore. It's endless. OK, so I have a question, or maybe just a mental block, about generational simlit... When I first started playing Sims 4, before I started writing (and before I discovered how to turn aging off), I played a couple of generational saves (variations on Gwen and Cassie). The mental issue I ran into was that I was playing the grandchildren of my original characters, but the world around them was unchanged. Sure, NPCs aged, died and were replaced but the physical world... the buildings, the clothes, the technology... were all the same. Maybe I'm too much the historian but that pulled me right out of my suspension of disbelief. I know how much the world has changed since my grandmother was a young woman. I know the changes just in my lifetime, most of them nothing like what we imagined when I was young. So, as a generational writer, how to do you deal with that? Do you ignore it and have your sims live in an unchanging world? Do you 'start earlier' and bring your generational family up to the present day? Do you try to change the world to try to keep pace with the passage of time? I understand this issue totally. As for me, i make time progress a little. Less so in buildings and style (though i keep up a bit with real world trends through cc), but more so in thought. Like my first gen, they had cellphones, but Society was a bit backwards still and i played in a more old fashioned world ( moonlight falls, victorian themed). And ideas/inventions from previous gens are build up on. So some evolution, just slower in some ways and not fully in line with the real world. There are actually things like the millenia challenge and decades challenge, but they require a LOT of cc/mods/set up and i just wanna play and write dammit. But it is something i have considered. I also might start dressing my sims more futuristic at some point, or have them time travel and restart the fam in the middle ages (with their personal modern views - drama with the townies!) and continue that way... There are endless options! Sandbox game. But i am only on gen 3 now, to be precise, 80 years have passed since the start. So lets say from 1960 to 2040. Edit: forgot to say, i started playing with this family initially very casually - no big plans at all, and it sort of morphed into its current form. If i would start a "complex storylines written down legacy" on purpose, i might've decided to play more with time from the start. |
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Post by HermioneSims on Oct 30, 2024 20:16:44 GMT
luciusstorm It's something I noticed quite early on during my legacy, yup. In my head, on average the heirs in my legacy started having kids around age 30 (in real life terms), meaning that there is a 30 years time span between the beginning of each generation, and that at the end of the 10 generations it would be about 300 years covered! To me, the static time is part of the Sims-setting, just like the way spinning after blowing the candles on a cake change deeply their appearance, the fact that they can build a rocket from scratch in a week and so on. A few times I described some new technology or I changed the buildings around the neighborhood to give a more modern touch to the setting, but it was always related to some plot point more than trying to really show a realistic time evolution. To make another example, my legacy starts more or less "in the present", now I'm posting here Generation 9, and when writing it I'm thinking about the end of this century, more than 300 years in the future as a totally realistic representation should. In conclusion, to me it's just another aspect of The Sims magic: smartphones remaining to the 2014 technology level forever and ever XD
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Zeph
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Post by Zeph on Oct 31, 2024 4:11:41 GMT
Okay. So. I'm writing another story, one whose founder is a mermaid. I want to write a prologue set underwater explaining how and why she's on the surface... but there's no playable underwater areas that I'm aware of, and having them all be in pools would just be weird! Is there a mod that can help me, or do I just write the prologue without screenshots?
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Post by arieltriffic on Oct 31, 2024 9:47:39 GMT
Okay. So. I'm writing another story, one whose founder is a mermaid. I want to write a prologue set underwater explaining how and why she's on the surface... but there's no playable underwater areas that I'm aware of, and having them all be in pools would just be weird! Is there a mod that can help me, or do I just write the prologue without screenshots? It might be more time/energy than you're willing to invest, but what you could do is build a set on a sandy area. Or build a castle that looks like sand and shoot the prologue from the inside. There are always photo filters if you want to change the hue of the picture. Ah, another thing I miss about the Sims 3. They had underwater lots! |
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Post by queenofmyownfantasy on Oct 31, 2024 10:31:03 GMT
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Zeph
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Post by Zeph on Oct 31, 2024 10:48:20 GMT
It might be more time/energy than you're willing to invest, but what you could do is build a set on a sandy area. Or build a castle that looks like sand and shoot the prologue from the inside. There are always photo filters if you want to change the hue of the picture. Hmmm... but how would I get them tails out? |
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Post by arieltriffic on Oct 31, 2024 11:19:24 GMT
Zeph that is a very good point. I hadn't thought of that.  Shoot from the waist up?
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Post by queenofmyownfantasy on Oct 31, 2024 11:34:13 GMT
Aren't there some sort of cc tails? Or a mod that can give sims their special outfit/tail randomly? I know that for sims 3 you can do that with mastercontroller, so it might be doable with the sims 4 equivalent (mc command, right?)
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Post by luciusstorm on Oct 31, 2024 11:49:46 GMT
Zeph, I don't know how they do it (or if they are still doing it) but check out Metior_Ice's Merfolk of the Sulani Seas. I expect mods are involved and I know they list the mods they use.
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Zeph
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Post by Zeph on Oct 31, 2024 16:42:40 GMT
Turns out it IS possible to show mertails with MCCC! A hooray in the chat for Deaderpool! I almost have my screenshots ready, so we're almost ready!
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Zeph
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Post by Zeph on Nov 2, 2024 0:48:56 GMT
Me: Okay! I'll come up with story details once I'm not sick!
Me: [stops being sick]
Me: [does not come up with story details]
Why am I like this? (silly)
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Post by arieltriffic on Nov 2, 2024 10:30:24 GMT
Me: Okay! I'll come up with story details once I'm not sick! Me: [stops being sick] Me: [does not come up with story details] Why am I like this? (silly) Zeph, you have described my week! Me: I'll work on Hansel and Gretel when I'm done with studying. Me: [finishes studying] Me: [comes up with a different story idea instead] Part of the problem for me is fear. I want to do well, but I'm afraid of making mistakes. However, the only way to do well at anything is to make lots of mistakes and keep going. One thing that helps me with writer's block is to just write down anything that comes to mind on paper. That way, it can be as messy as I am. I can then go over what I've written and refine my thoughts. |
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Post by luciusstorm on Nov 2, 2024 10:53:00 GMT
Zeph, arieltriffic ... ah, writer's block. I struggle with it all the time. It sounds like you two are putting extra pressure on yourself too... so my advice is, relax. Zeph, one thing I'll try when I get stuck is making a copy of my main story save (as a backup) and then just playing for a bit. I ran into a big block midway through my Strangeville story. Didn't see a way forward. So I made a side save and played as the Sigworth family for a while, because I realized I needed to get to know them. Got some great material out of that. arieltriffic, I'm not going to say we can't make mistakes in SimLit. We can... but at the same time, there isn't really a wrong way to do this. I decided to look at my story as serialized storytelling... once a chapter is published, I need to stop second guessing it and move forward. If I don't like that chapter, I may "clarify" (read: retcon) it later. I may ignore it and not chase that storyline anymore. But the key is, like you said, make lots of mistakes and learn and move on. In the end, the best advice I've gotten is always to get out of my own way and trust myself.
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I don't want to leave my world or my characters. I think it's my way of avoiding what arieltriffic is saying about being depressed when the story ends. I just keep going. Eventually, I worry I'm going exhaust the world, or my readers, by running around fleshing out supporting characters and side stories... but I just. Can't. Stop. Writing. 
Sims 3 isn't gone, you can just play it 
