I hope this is okay for me to ask, but do you have any tips for someone who wants to start writing a Sims story with many characters? With MV you have many storylines but they are all so well-developed and interesting. Do you let the simsā in-game actions drive the story at all or do you have everything plotted out in advance? Thanks for your time & excellent stories!
Ohh my gosh, this is absolutely more than okay to ask, and I hope I can give you a helpful answer!! Thank you so much for reading my silly little sims story!!
I got kind of long-winded, so my answer is below the cut -- if I didnāt quite answer your question, please feel free to send another ask or IM me!! (Or if youāre on Discord you can always send me a DM there!!)
I joke a lot that I mostly fly by the seat of my pants -- and thatās really only half a joke. When I started MV, I had four characters in mind -- Taz, Adia, Gretta, and Sforz. They were the four main characters from a story Iād written 8 years before, and when I set out, Iād intended on just kind of playing TS4 and seeing what happened (with a loose framework for the story I wanted to tell in mind -- that is, Taz having a romance with both Gretta and Adia, and having a baby with Gretta).
About a month or so later, Iād given up on actuallyĀ āplaying the gameā and started staging screenshots and telling the story. (Obviously Sforz didnāt make the cut to stay relevant; whoops!)Ā Cadence and Nickās romance in Gen 2 was as far as Iād plannedĀ āaheadā -- which is to say, I knew I wanted Cadence and Nick to have a romance, but not exactly sure how Iād wanted it to play out. Since about January 2017, Iāve been just kind ofĀ āplanningā what I want to happen in fragments, jotting down ideas or snippets of dialogue, and going from there. So, to answer part of your question -- I plan things out and write them rather than letting my sims drive the story. I honestly donāt remember the last time I just opened my game to play it -- a lot of what you see on my blog is staged and posed screenshots. Even if Iām using in-game animations, Iāve learned which animations will give me the facial expressions/reactions I want to use in my screenshots.
As far as organizing the story and keeping track of the different plot lines -- THISĀ (Google Sheets) is how I organized my timeline towards the beginning. Itās sort of an interpretation of how JK Rowling organized her outline for Order of the PhoenixĀ that worked for me -- that is, each character has their own personal column/timeline, so I could keep track of how everyoneās story lined up with everyone elseās.
Obviously in some time periods I got very detailed with what was happening (generally the points where lots of people were together at the same time and lots of things were happening at once), and other places were more vague -- ultimately this system got overwhelming for me (and Google Drive) as I continued adding characters, so I switched to a much more streamlined method to keep track of things.
(Iām always on the lookout for other ways to keep track of various characters, their plot lines, and the passage of time -- currently Plotist seems to be a fairly decent way of keeping track of things?Ā Thereās a bit of a learning curve, but itās free and definitely worth a look -- Iām still learning it myself, but Iām definitely willing to share what Iāve learned if youāre interested!)
My new systemĀ (Google Sheets) relies a lot on me knowing or remembering when certain events that arenāt births or deaths happen -- and a little bit of retroactive guess-timation. I have a few notes off to the side about particular (recent) events, but generally I retroactively fill in the dates of things in my head, and I wonāt lie -- the ambiguous TS4 seasons helps a lot with this. (Iām more than happy to talk about this some more -- just send another ask!!)
Most of my plots tend to be moreĀ āsequentialā thanĀ āsimultaneousā (that is, Character Aās plot happens before Character Bās plot, rather than Character A and Character Bās plots happening at the same time), so I tend to keep up withĀ āmilestonesā to keep track of time -- specifically births, weddings, deaths, and maybe a few others, depending on context.Ā But if you want to talk strategy about planning out some simultaneous plots, hit me up and we can chit-chat!!
I feel like I donāt have anything else to add other than that without getting horribly off-topic and rambling!! But basically -- I wouldnāt say I plot everything outĀ āin advance,ā but everything you see isĀ āscripted.ā Anything posted on my blog is typically āplannedā approximately 48-72 hours in advance on my morning/afternoon commute to/from work -- enough time for me to get in-game, take screenshots, batch edit them, and queue them.
Every now and then inspiration will strike and Iāll get enough screenshots/plot to write out enough posts to queue for more than a few days at a time (especially since my queue only posts 3/day) -- but that hasnāt happened in a while!!
Anyway, I hope this answered your question and helped at least a little!!
TL;DR -- figure out a system for yourself that lets you keep track of where everyone is and what theyāre doing!!
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ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
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How come all of your sims are bright colors and have long pointy ears? Iām not trying to be mean or anything I like your sims! I was just curious. :D
Short answer - because I think the bright colors and long ears are cute and fun and I like them! (Itās my ~Aesthetic(TM)~)
There are kind of a couple of parts to the long answer (Iām so sorry I canāt ever give a simple answer to anything oml) --
My current sims specifically are bright colors and have long pointy ears because theyāre based on characters from a story I wrote about ten years ago, where the majority of the characters were brightly colored demons with things like wings and horns and tails. (The other characters were boring and vanilla, and Iāve had a few of those too from time to time.) I was too lazy to track down wings and horns and tails for my TS4 game when I created the characters as sims, but I did stumble across some really cool pointy years, and the rest is history. :)
Custom alien skins in TS2 were myĀ āgateway skinsā into the world of berry cc, and Iāve never been able to go back. I just knew I wanted to populate my game with lots of colorful alien babies, and didnāt want them to all be plain old EA green!
In the TS3 era, one of my friends and I liked to doĀ āgenetic experimentsā (essentially a reverse 100 baby challenge), where we would start with oneĀ āalienā/āmutantā/berry sim and see how long it would take to have him disperse his genes throughout the entire town.
Somewhere along the line, I discovered the online simming community and learned thatĀ āBerry Sweetsā were a thing, and Iāve never looked back! I stray a little from the more traditional berry sweet world in that I donāt use food/sweet treat names or have elements like color shifters and dream walkers, but berry simmers are a wonderful part of this community, and Iām proud to include myself in their ranks!
(PS - You can find the skins I use here and here, and the ears I use here, here, here, and here, if youāre interested, and Berry has a ton of other resources on her blog here!)
