This tutorial gives you some tips on how to develop your writing talents and become a better sim story writer. It also briefly adresses the use of hacks and cheats in story writing, and gives you some basic tips on how to take better screenshots.

Download PDF »

Soyou want to write a really good Sim Story? Read on and I will give you someadvice on how to become a better writer.

First Things First

Awriter does not just sit down to write. Instead, a writer has a story to tell,and sits down to write that story.

Itall starts with an idea.

Idea:

I want to write a story about Dusty Rhodes from the “Failure is not an option” TSR-Challenge

Thewriter turns the idea around in her head, asks herself questions like: “Whatif?” and “Then what?” This is how the idea gets turned into a plot – a very,very basic outline of the story. And when I say very basic, I really mean verybasic. The plot might not be more than just two or three lines, but it decidesthe course of your story.

Plot:

Because of his childhood trials, Dusty grows up badly and – having lacked love in his life so far – he becomes a romance Sim. He makes a complete mess of his life, fathers several children with several women, but in the end he becomes a dedicated family man.

Develop your Storyline

Nowthat you’ve got your plot - also called storyline ¹) - your time has come todevelop it.

Sincewe’re talking about Sim stories here, you could actually start up your game nowand start playing. You’ve got the main ingredients of your story, and should beable to steer your main character in the general direction you want him to go.If you’re a good writer, I’m sure you could pull it off that way.

Butit’s not the best way. Not in my opinion anyway.

Iusually develop my storyline simply by asking myself more questions about thestory and the characters in it. More “what if’s” and “then what’s”.  In myten-part Sim story “Dusty’s Diary” it meant answering questions like:

·                What werehis childhood trials?

·                What kindof a mess does he make of his life?

·                How manywomen is he going to seduce?

·                How manychildren will he father, and with whom?

·                Is he evergoing to get married?

·                Whatcauses “The Big Change” in Dusty’s attitude?

Asyou see, I’ve got a lot of questions to answer, which is a good thing. It meansI’ve got plenty of things to write about.

Developingyour storyline usually also means creating sub-plots. Yes; that’s right:sub-plots.

Asub-plot is a secondary storyline - separate from the main plot – that servesto flesh out and strengthen the main plot.

Two examples of sub-plots in “Dusty’s Diary”:

1) Shortly after Dusty gets married, both his parents die, leaving him to take care of his two younger sisters.

2) Dusty’s teenage sister is raped and becomes pregnant.

Character Building

Havinga nicely developed storyline and some subplots ready to go, still doesn’t meanI’m going to be able to write a good story. I might have all this, and maystill not be able to draw my readers in. What I need now, is some good, strongcharacter building. Again, the game is going to be able to help you here.

Inthe case of my Dusty Rhodes, I know that he is a very nice person. He’s kind,active and playful, but unfortunately also hopelessly shy. Poor Dusty, I turnedthis very shy young man into a Romance Sim – I bet he must hate me for it, butthat cannot be helped. Thankfully his other character traits will help him makefriends. Lots of friends. I decided early on to stress on his strong charactertraits and not to dwell too much on his shyness. Additionally I gave him a bitof a temper too, just to make things more interesting and real. After all, onecannot be nice all the time.

What’svery important in character building, is that you want to create real people;no Mary-Sue’s ²). You have to give your “good” characters at least one seriousshortcoming as well as some minor bad habits, and your “bad guy” (or girl) some“nice-aspects”. This is very important! Nobody is all good or all bad. It’s notlike that in real life, and should not be like that in your stories either.

The Writing

Withthe stage set and the characters more or less defined, we’ve finally come tothe part you’ve been looking forward to: the actual writing.

Sitdown at your computer, open MS-Word or any other word processing program ofyour choice and start writing. Alternatively, just grab a pen and paper and letthose creative juices flow. Put on some nice music if it helps you relax, havecup of tea – ok coffee’s alright too - and simply get those words down. Rightnow you don’t have to worry about grammar, spelling and punctuation yet. Norabout style. Just write.

Whenyou’re done writing, save your document, put away your pen and paper and dosomething else. Forget about your story for now.

Imean it! Do the dishes, walk the dog, have a bath. Anything that takes yourmind off your work in progress (WIP, for short), but whatever you do: Don’tthink about your story.

The Editing

Afteryou’ve left your story alone for at least a couple of hours – but preferablyfor a day or even two days – go back to it and read what you’ve written so far.You’ll see things you didn’t notice when you first wrote it. Things that needexpanding, improving, deleting… That’s why you needed to leave it alone in thefirst place: to be able to look at it with fresh eyes.

Nowthat you can see all these things, you can start editing your story, and now isthe time to pay attention to little details, too.

Have you used the same wordover and over and over again? Try to think of synonyms, or go to HThttp://thesaurus.com/TH , type in the offending word and thesite will come up with a list of words with (nearly) the same meaning.  

How’syour grammar? Your spelling? Punctuation?

Didyou use your times consistently, or are you constantly switching between thepast and the present?

Doyou know how to use “their”, “there” and “they’re” correctly? “Its” and “it’s”?Do you write “should of” instead of “should have”? Do you know the difference?If not, you’d better brush up your grammar quickly because those are mistakesthat make a writer look stupid – and you definitely don’t want to look stupid.

I’mnot the right person to teach you grammar, as English is not my first languageand grammar isn’t my strongest point anyway. I use it correctly – most of thetime – but don’t know how it works. But if your grammar needs improving, doyourself a favour and read up on it. There are probably tons of helpful sitesout there on the internet.

HThttp://www.dailygrammar.com/TH seems like a good starting point tome. There’s no need to sign up – just go to the lesson archive section andbrowse all the lessons.

Ifyour spelling needs improvement, there’s nothing like the spelling check ofgood old MS-Word! It usually does a pretty good job of weeding out the stupidmistakes you made because your fingers were faster than your brainsJ. Of course it’s not fool proof: it won’t find mistakeslike “you” when you really should have written “your”, or “how” where you meantwrite “howl” but it’s a good start.

Spendingsome dollars on a good dictionary certainly won’t hurt, but with a free onlinethesaurus and dictionary at your fingertips this isn’t really necessary.

Taking Good Screenshots

Whenyou’ve written your story – and rewritten it several times – it’s about time tostart up your game and take the screenshots. This can be tricky, because noteverything you wrote is possible in the Sims to start with, but also, takinggood screenshots is an art in itself and doesn’t come easy. Not if you’re likeme anyway.

Ifyou take a look at the first screenshots I took for my Dusty Rhodes story, youwill notice that they weren’t any good at all.

Firstof all, the pictures (dating back to early February 2007) are taken from toofar away – I should have zoomed in closer. Much closer! But that isn’t nearlyall. Plumbbobs and headlines are showing, and in the first picture the roomseems to be toppling over.

What’sless obvious, is that my camera settings were bad too, resulting in ever poorerquality pictures.

ButI think I’ve learned a thing or two and know how to take pretty decentscreenshots now.

Thesescreenshots are from Chapter 4 of my story “The Queen of Hearts”, and weretaken in May 2007. As you may notice I updated my camera settings, resulting inmuch clearer pictures.

Ialso learned how to use the free camera mode, and zoomed in close to theaction. I turned off the headlines and the plumbbobs, used the slow motioncheat to be able to pause the game at the exact right moment, and made use of ahack to get rid of the cartoonish stars around the head of a person who’s beingslapped.

You’llalso notice that all vertical lines in these two pictures are really vertical.No walls falling down on me this time J.

Howdid I learn all this in such a short time? Am I such a genius? No I’m not, butI got some help. First of all I found this really great tutorial on how to takegood screenshots:

Sims Photography - Taking Better Photos – by Wildstar24.

HThttp://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/articles/sims2/tutorials/strategy/296675/TH

Ialso learned a lot from my conversations with another writer on TSR, who veryhelpfully supplied me with links to some great hacks, and even sent me somefiles directly. Thanks B!

About hacks and cheats

SinceI’ve mentioned hacks and cheats a couple of times now, I might as well tell yousome more about the use of them.

Firstoff – it is possible to write a Sim Story without the use of hack and cheats,but personally I wouldn’t even try. If you are one of these people who areagainst the use of hacks and cheats, my best advise to you is: get over it!

Iwrote most of the first chapters of Dusty’s diary without any hacks in my game,but even then I was already making use of cheats. As the story progressed Idiscovered that I needed some hacks in my game, or I wouldn’t be able to let mySims do the things I needed them to do in order to take the right pictures.

Myfavourite cheats are definitely:

“moveobjectson” to move sims around, clean up rubbish, etc.

“plumbbobtoggle”to get rid of the horrible plumbbob

“showheadlinesoff” to get rid of the headlines. Unfortunately this cheat also turns off someimportant warning messages – your child might just miss the school bus, or yoursim might get sick without your knowing it.

“slowmotion”(0-8) to play the game in slow motion. 0 is the default setting of the game; andin my experience slowmotion 2 or 3 works really well for story tellingpurposes.

I’vegot a whole list of favourite hacks, but discussing them is beyond the scope ofthis tutorial.

One suggestion though: Go to HThttp://www.insimenator.net/TH and look for Squinge’s Mods. He’sdeveloped tons of very good hacks and updates them regularly too!

Eversince I started writing Sim Stories, more and more hacks have entered my gameas and when I needed them. They enable me to take pictures of actions thatotherwise would not have been possible in the Sims.

Making Backups

Usuallythe hacks I use are perfectly safe, but sometimes things go wrong and if theydo, they may even go terribly wrong.

Soif you are going to use hacks in your game – and I really cannot think of anyvalid reason not to do so if you’re serious about writing a really good story –it’s always a good idea to back up your game before installing any customcontent. Personally I backup my game almost every night. It only takes a fewminutes and has saved my stories several times already.

Have fun

Nowgo and write that amazing story, play your game, take great screenshots. Givethe best you have, but above all: Have fun!

Notes:

¹)Some writers distinguish between plot and storyline, others don’t. To keep thistutorial simple, I will (for now) not distinguish between the two, butpersonally I don’t think the two are exactly the same. I would say plot focuseson events, whereas storyline focuses on character building.

²)A “Mary-Sue” is the literary term used for cliché-characters. She – or he, asthe term is not gender-specific – is either too good or (less often) too bad tobe true. You don’t want that kind of characters in your stories. Most readersdon’t like them, and will quickly become bored with your story.