Ripples and Branches
Oct. 29th, 2008 03:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orikesA couple of weeks ago, De brought up the idea of talking about our plots and characters. It was an intriguing idea, so I said I would write something up. This was extremely easier said than done. It was kind of like trying to catch fish in the middle of a rushing river with just my bare hands.
First off, it felt strange attempting to sit down and actually explain and quantify my methods and goals when it comes to plotting and characterization. While I consider myself a relatively educated person, I've never had any formal training as a writer. I never took any creative writing courses in high school or college. Because of that, it makes me feel a bit like I'm a big faker when it comes to even discussing this stuff. I know that not every successful writer has formal education for writing, but it still makes me hesitate to spout my mouth off.
Since I don't have a writing background, one thing that seriously influences the way I handle the Pseudo Legacy is my experience with role-playing games. I think this needs to be clarified up front to explain how my brain works in regards to all of this.
In addition to table-top games, I spent many years lost in text-based online games. These were mostly MUSHes, but they could also be called MUX, MUCK, MOO, and so on. I played in almost any type of setting you could imagine - modern horror, historical fantasy, super hero, post-apocalyptic dystopia, cyberpunk, and so on. You name it, I probably made a character there at least once.
To anyone who's ever experienced 'role-players' on a massively multiplayer role-playing game like World of Warcraft or Everquest, please let me clarify that most of what I did was NOTHING like the 'thee and thou' type of role-player you'll see in those games. When it was at its best, my experience with these games was essentially cooperative, real time storytelling where each person was the 'author' of one character in the scene. When you got the right group of people together, the story was king and all else paled in comparison. I had the privilege of taking part in some amazing storytelling done in these games with some truly talented people.
So what does any of this have to do with writing my sims stories?
Well, when you're in a role-playing game, you have to act and react in relation to the overall story the game master presents. The actions the various characters take can and do influence the outcome of the story. While there might be a loose script in the background for what's happening, what the characters do is integral to the whole process. Things may go exactly the way expected, or they could take a sudden left turn that no one anticipated. This is exactly how I treat my sims.
I usually have a general idea of what's going on or where I want to head with a particular storyline, but I leave enough room to let my sims tell me what they want and let them change the storyline. This is one of the reasons why I really can't plan too far ahead, or why my plot ideas are only very loosely kept ideas.
To illustrate one old example that I can talk about without spoilers (unless you haven't read Chapter Three) let's talk about Brody's relationship with Heather. I've mentioned this before, but this was never planned. It all started because I decided to have a heir poll and I never realized that people wouldn't vote the way I wanted them to.
See, I wanted Brody as heir. Brody was my favorite of the generation by a very small margin. Micah comes in a very close second, but I knew I didn't want him as heir since I'd already had three out of four sims be popularity among the legacy couples. I liked Persephone well enough, but I'm not a fan of family sims. Brody was my choice, but I'd decided I wanted to do a poll. They always seemed like such fun when I read about them in other legacies. Yeah. Right.
Anyway, as anyone who has seen how polls actually work at Boolprop, the prettiest sim got voted heir and I ended up with Persephone as heir. Since I have to turn EVERYTHING into a plot development, this meant I needed to do something to deal with the fact that I wanted Brody as heir, but he couldn't have it. My initial idea was to have him named heir but have the woman he chose to marry betray him since she would be secretly working for Kirstial. I was even briefly considering killing him off. I wasn't sure I could go through with it, but I was thinking about it. Either way, I went so far as to start perusing the dormies and townies to find a red head that would work for my purposes.
While this was all still in the infant stages of plot development, I moved Brody into a dorm at Sim State. I was quite amused to see that two of the dormies moving in with him were Heather and Tamara. Completely on their own, they utterly changed my plotline. Tamara kept trying to get cozy with Brody while Heather and he became best friends almost overnight. As a result, Tamara and Heather started fighting. Then suddenly Brody and Heather autonomously flirted and he fell in love.
This was not in the plan. I suppose I could have had Heather, with her bitterness towards Zoey, working for Kirstial and used her instead. With her animosity towards Tamara, though, that really wasn't a viable option. On top of that, there was just something so perfect about Brody and Heather as a couple. I'd already put out the fact that Brody was considered exceptionally attractive, but was completely unaware of his affect on the women around him. Then there was Heather and her self-doubt at her own worth now that she was a zombie. After all, how could someone like Brody ever really care for her romantically? Shouldn't she just be happy with his friendship? Why did she want more?
Well, this was all well and good, but it didn't really address the fact that I had a plot I had to get back on track. On a whim, I decided I didn't want to use any of the dormies or NPCs (I had considered the red haired girl in a grey skirt suit or the red haired gardener chick), so I created Deena in CAS. For some reason, it felt easier using Deena as an unrepentant bad guy than taking an existing sim and using them.
Now, considering how intense Brody and Heather's relationship was once they admitted their feelings to one another, there was no way Deena would be able to seduce him away from her without help. Brody had already proven that he was really rather clueless about his affect on women and as far as he was concerned, Heather was the perfect woman. What more could he want? So, Deena turned to the love potion for help.
This whole plot also helped me develop Persephone into the heir I needed her to be. As I said, I'm not really a fan of family sims. Up until this storyline, Persephone had been a sweet and nice girl who was mostly level-headed but impetuous about falling in love. Of all three siblings, she understood the importance of the carrying on the legacy. Even if she didn't know the specifics, she had that hint of second sight that let her know there was something vitally important about making sure the legacy carried on. That said, she had no personal ambition for herself in regards to taking over the legacy, so she was perfectly content to let Brody be heir. At least until Brody fell in love with a zombie.
It was an interesting challenge to take a likable character and keep them likable while giving them an unpopular opinion. In Persephone's mind, Brody was failing in his duty to the legacy by choosing a zombie as his wife. Children are the lifeblood of a legacy and zombies can't have children. No matter how nice Heather was, there was no way she could be a legacy spouse. So when Deena showed up, she seemed like the answer to Persephone's prayers.
If Deena had been trying to seduce Micah away from Genesis, Persephone would have picked up on the wrongness of it almost right away. Instead, Persephone was so relieved that Brody had stopped seeing 'that zombie' that she didn't see the signs that things weren't what they should be. By the time she started picking up on things, the stubbornness that's almost a genetic Legacina trait kicked into high gear and she was firmly entrenched in her boat traveling up the river of denial.
Ultimately, it's all a ripple effect. I take a small idea, a plot nugget, and drop it into the sea that my sims exist in and see what happens from there. In many ways, it's a game of 'what if'. What if this happens? How do these characters handle it? So many of my plots have started that away and the ripples then branch outward. Yeah, I know I'm mixing my metaphors, but it's my head. It's a jumbled place.
What if Brody is named heir, but is betrayed by his fiance?
What if the weather gets broken by an experiment gone wrong?
What if they get the wrong child when they try and rescue Brody's child?
What if the kids try and track something down and get in over their heads?
What if Elijah gets a quest to restore the seasons?
What if Ian falls in love with a woman for all the wrong reasons?
If you know who your characters are and you let them be who they are in game, these questions are easy to answer and simply lead to more questions that fill in the story along the way.
In other words, I'm making it up as I go. :)
First off, it felt strange attempting to sit down and actually explain and quantify my methods and goals when it comes to plotting and characterization. While I consider myself a relatively educated person, I've never had any formal training as a writer. I never took any creative writing courses in high school or college. Because of that, it makes me feel a bit like I'm a big faker when it comes to even discussing this stuff. I know that not every successful writer has formal education for writing, but it still makes me hesitate to spout my mouth off.
Since I don't have a writing background, one thing that seriously influences the way I handle the Pseudo Legacy is my experience with role-playing games. I think this needs to be clarified up front to explain how my brain works in regards to all of this.
In addition to table-top games, I spent many years lost in text-based online games. These were mostly MUSHes, but they could also be called MUX, MUCK, MOO, and so on. I played in almost any type of setting you could imagine - modern horror, historical fantasy, super hero, post-apocalyptic dystopia, cyberpunk, and so on. You name it, I probably made a character there at least once.
To anyone who's ever experienced 'role-players' on a massively multiplayer role-playing game like World of Warcraft or Everquest, please let me clarify that most of what I did was NOTHING like the 'thee and thou' type of role-player you'll see in those games. When it was at its best, my experience with these games was essentially cooperative, real time storytelling where each person was the 'author' of one character in the scene. When you got the right group of people together, the story was king and all else paled in comparison. I had the privilege of taking part in some amazing storytelling done in these games with some truly talented people.
So what does any of this have to do with writing my sims stories?
Well, when you're in a role-playing game, you have to act and react in relation to the overall story the game master presents. The actions the various characters take can and do influence the outcome of the story. While there might be a loose script in the background for what's happening, what the characters do is integral to the whole process. Things may go exactly the way expected, or they could take a sudden left turn that no one anticipated. This is exactly how I treat my sims.
I usually have a general idea of what's going on or where I want to head with a particular storyline, but I leave enough room to let my sims tell me what they want and let them change the storyline. This is one of the reasons why I really can't plan too far ahead, or why my plot ideas are only very loosely kept ideas.
To illustrate one old example that I can talk about without spoilers (unless you haven't read Chapter Three) let's talk about Brody's relationship with Heather. I've mentioned this before, but this was never planned. It all started because I decided to have a heir poll and I never realized that people wouldn't vote the way I wanted them to.
See, I wanted Brody as heir. Brody was my favorite of the generation by a very small margin. Micah comes in a very close second, but I knew I didn't want him as heir since I'd already had three out of four sims be popularity among the legacy couples. I liked Persephone well enough, but I'm not a fan of family sims. Brody was my choice, but I'd decided I wanted to do a poll. They always seemed like such fun when I read about them in other legacies. Yeah. Right.
Anyway, as anyone who has seen how polls actually work at Boolprop, the prettiest sim got voted heir and I ended up with Persephone as heir. Since I have to turn EVERYTHING into a plot development, this meant I needed to do something to deal with the fact that I wanted Brody as heir, but he couldn't have it. My initial idea was to have him named heir but have the woman he chose to marry betray him since she would be secretly working for Kirstial. I was even briefly considering killing him off. I wasn't sure I could go through with it, but I was thinking about it. Either way, I went so far as to start perusing the dormies and townies to find a red head that would work for my purposes.
While this was all still in the infant stages of plot development, I moved Brody into a dorm at Sim State. I was quite amused to see that two of the dormies moving in with him were Heather and Tamara. Completely on their own, they utterly changed my plotline. Tamara kept trying to get cozy with Brody while Heather and he became best friends almost overnight. As a result, Tamara and Heather started fighting. Then suddenly Brody and Heather autonomously flirted and he fell in love.
This was not in the plan. I suppose I could have had Heather, with her bitterness towards Zoey, working for Kirstial and used her instead. With her animosity towards Tamara, though, that really wasn't a viable option. On top of that, there was just something so perfect about Brody and Heather as a couple. I'd already put out the fact that Brody was considered exceptionally attractive, but was completely unaware of his affect on the women around him. Then there was Heather and her self-doubt at her own worth now that she was a zombie. After all, how could someone like Brody ever really care for her romantically? Shouldn't she just be happy with his friendship? Why did she want more?
Well, this was all well and good, but it didn't really address the fact that I had a plot I had to get back on track. On a whim, I decided I didn't want to use any of the dormies or NPCs (I had considered the red haired girl in a grey skirt suit or the red haired gardener chick), so I created Deena in CAS. For some reason, it felt easier using Deena as an unrepentant bad guy than taking an existing sim and using them.
Now, considering how intense Brody and Heather's relationship was once they admitted their feelings to one another, there was no way Deena would be able to seduce him away from her without help. Brody had already proven that he was really rather clueless about his affect on women and as far as he was concerned, Heather was the perfect woman. What more could he want? So, Deena turned to the love potion for help.
This whole plot also helped me develop Persephone into the heir I needed her to be. As I said, I'm not really a fan of family sims. Up until this storyline, Persephone had been a sweet and nice girl who was mostly level-headed but impetuous about falling in love. Of all three siblings, she understood the importance of the carrying on the legacy. Even if she didn't know the specifics, she had that hint of second sight that let her know there was something vitally important about making sure the legacy carried on. That said, she had no personal ambition for herself in regards to taking over the legacy, so she was perfectly content to let Brody be heir. At least until Brody fell in love with a zombie.
It was an interesting challenge to take a likable character and keep them likable while giving them an unpopular opinion. In Persephone's mind, Brody was failing in his duty to the legacy by choosing a zombie as his wife. Children are the lifeblood of a legacy and zombies can't have children. No matter how nice Heather was, there was no way she could be a legacy spouse. So when Deena showed up, she seemed like the answer to Persephone's prayers.
If Deena had been trying to seduce Micah away from Genesis, Persephone would have picked up on the wrongness of it almost right away. Instead, Persephone was so relieved that Brody had stopped seeing 'that zombie' that she didn't see the signs that things weren't what they should be. By the time she started picking up on things, the stubbornness that's almost a genetic Legacina trait kicked into high gear and she was firmly entrenched in her boat traveling up the river of denial.
Ultimately, it's all a ripple effect. I take a small idea, a plot nugget, and drop it into the sea that my sims exist in and see what happens from there. In many ways, it's a game of 'what if'. What if this happens? How do these characters handle it? So many of my plots have started that away and the ripples then branch outward. Yeah, I know I'm mixing my metaphors, but it's my head. It's a jumbled place.
What if Brody is named heir, but is betrayed by his fiance?
What if the weather gets broken by an experiment gone wrong?
What if they get the wrong child when they try and rescue Brody's child?
What if the kids try and track something down and get in over their heads?
What if Elijah gets a quest to restore the seasons?
What if Ian falls in love with a woman for all the wrong reasons?
If you know who your characters are and you let them be who they are in game, these questions are easy to answer and simply lead to more questions that fill in the story along the way.
In other words, I'm making it up as I go. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-29 05:38 pm (UTC)I love incorporating plot and cliffhangers, but only what could tie into the storyline. I had tons of characters and plot events going on, but I'm tying it up again so the story will begin to make more sense. Too little plot is a no-no for me, but too much just makes and overdone; too much sugar is sour. I want it to be a captivating plot, but I also want to eliminate anything that won't contribute to the Story. A lot of it I have planned, For example, I already know how the story is going to end, who's going to be the "immortal guide" (Like Brody and Heather, Or Denise's Amelia, Now her son), who's going to die, and the Epilogue. I know how certain Fairytale Modernizations are going to be done, like Beauty and the Beast, and Sleeping Beauty, and of Course, Alice in Wonderland, which is my favorite.
A lot of it is planned as I go along, but I like to have a basic idea of what's going to happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-29 07:11 pm (UTC)