Writing More Goodly

A guide to creating and writing sim stories.

Writing, in essence, is an enjoyable experience. Once you've finished there's an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and joy. But unfortunately it's not that easy to do. It takes hours of planning and even more hours to actually make a decent 40 - 80 page album.

This guide is designed to try and help you get the most out of your stories starting with the basics, story planning, controls and following through with uploading your story to The Sims 2 website.

You've probably notice the title 'Writing More Goodly' is taken from the University expansion pack subject of the same name.

We'll start with the basics. To make a story you're going to have to at the very least create a family and move them into a home. Once this is done you click on the little storybook icon on the tool bar as highlighted above.

Now you're in the family album. This is where the magic happens!

You'll notice any family photo's you've already taken are stored here. If you click on them a bigger picture will appear above as shown. Now we'll go through the commands available on this page:

1. More: The little + sign will allow you to access pictures from other families and universities in that neighbourhood to use for your stories.
2. Add to Story: Self explanatory. Adds your selected picture to the storyboard.
3. Remove Entry from Story: Removed the picture from the story. And don't worry, it won't permanently delete it from your game.
4. Move Entry Up and Move Entry Down: These move your selected picture up and down the storyboard.
5. Delete Snapshot: Permanently deletes the picture from your computer. This option is not available to a picture being used in a storyboard.
6. Title: Your story title. Can be edited by simply clicking the heading.
7. Organize Story and Edit Story: Organize story is the main page where you add pictures, whereas edit story allows you to add text.

Clicking Edit Story will take you a page like the one above. There are two new icons here:

Edit Blog: The top icon. This allows you to edit your story in a more blog-style format with smaller pictures and more text based.

Package to TheSims2.com: Uploads your story to The Sims 2 website.

Storyboard

Before you go any further you need a story idea. Ideas don't just happen. They can come to you at the most obscure of times (such as waking up at 3am and going, "Oh my god I have an idea!" and it does happen). I've had stories pop in my head during a shower, through dreams and just staring at my coffee in the morning. I've never actually sat down and it's come to me.

I'd suggest you write up what you want to achieve in your story and a general idea of what kind of genre you want. Any time something comes to you write it down. Try to write dot points of your characters traits.

Avoid Cliches!

The nerd who wants to be popular is the most overused, unrealistic cliche ever. Nerds do not want to 'hang' with popular kids in real life (trust me, us nerds prefer how we are). Lesbians do not suddenly turn straight and the mean girl doesn't realise in the end how awful a person she has been the whole time.

Stay In Character

Give each of your characters a different personality and stick to it. An outspoken Sim isn't going to keep their objections to themselves, just as a depressed Sim doesn't want to go out and 'have fun' so to speak. This included their attire. Don't dress tomboys in skirts, etc.

General Tips
- Use proper grammar and spelling.
- Check to see if anyone has already taken your idea on the exchange.
- Your title doesn't have to be unique. You can adopt the KISS strategy: Keep It Simple Stupid.
- Don't introduce your characters unless it's part of the story (eg, Diary). Their personalities should be able to shine through on their own.
- Plan your stories beginning (interest), middle (revelation) and end (cliff hanger).
- Write your story in one persons view point or as narrator. You don't need to inform the reader which viewpoint it is.
- Don't worry about ratings. As long as YOU'RE happy that's all that matters.
- Controversy is good, but don't overdo it.

Now you're ready to start your story...

Picture Quality

Always ensure your pictures are of the highest quality. You can do this by going to the Options button on the menu labeled "..." then Camera Options (the camera icon) and you'll get a list of camera settings. You only have to worry about the mid-section for this. Change snapshot size to large and snapshot picture quality to high.

Pictures are taken using the little camera icon on the toolbar.

Creating Your Family

There are two ways of doing this. Through the Create Family option in your game or The Body Shop. I'd suggest you use the Body Shop for your main characters, and preset characters (use the dice icon in create family) for sub characters that won't be seen too often. The reason I suggest you make your characters here is because if your computer crashes (god forbid) you could lose your characters forever.

You can access The Body Shop from these locations:
Start Button\All Programs\EA Games\The Sims 2\The Sims 2 Body Shop
My Computer\C Drive\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\CSBin

To build a new Sim select Build Sims from the top menu, then Build or Clone Sims and click the + sign.

Try to make all your characters unique so people will be able to distinguish them even from the back. A lot of characters will have to look alike if your story is family-based. This can prove a problem if you're not used to the Body Shop. Muck around with all face changing options and you'll be making original faces in no time. Give family members different eye colour, dyed hair, nose and eye shapes and so on.

If you're making clothes you can change the mannequin to suit your Sims skin tone for a better preview. Select the little icon at the bottom of the menu as shown above and you'll get a choice of skin tones. This option is only available at the start when you select Create Parts or Start New Project. If you click Load New Project the option will disappear.

Clothing

If you've entered the boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true cheat whilst in neighbourhood view you can go into Create a Family and before you do anything press Shift and N together to bring up all the hidden outfits, hair and skin tones in the game. If you did it right you'll get a little pop up like in the screenshot above. Now you can create some zany characters like naked chip lady for your equally zany stories!

Remember to go to community lots to buy your Sims more clothing to use in your stories; and be sensible with your purchases. T-shirts and jeans are common for laid back male Sims, whereas black (slimming) and longer skirts with stockings or boots are more common for overweight female Sims.

Sub Characters

These guys are your ticket to creating characters you'll only use once or twice during your entire story. With a limit of 8 people per house you can change these characters features to make them look like a completely different person as shown above. This is much easier to do with females than males because of make-up.

The alternative is killing off or moving out unwanted Sims and moving new ones in.

Camera Angles

Pressing Ctrl and holding down the right mouse button will allow you to move the camera view around to take a better shot for your story. I moved the camera view around to take the four different shots shown above of the same scene as an example of how simply changing an angle can greatly increase the quality of your picture.

Take a couple of shots at different angles before choosing one for your story.

Walls Up!

Which side of the above snapshot looks better? The right side easily comes across as the better shot simply because the walls are up. Always keep your walls up during snapshots. You can take them back down when moving Sims, but always put them back up to take a picture. You can't naturally see-through walls so your Sims houses shouldn't be any different.

Editing Pictures

If you want to edit pictures (example: for front and back covers) you'll need to go into your Sims folders. You'll need to access the following folder:
My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2

Now, if you only have the original Sims 2 all your pictures will be stored in the folder named Storytelling. The University expansion pack, on the other hand, shuffled everything around so you're going to have to go into the Neighborhoods folder. From here you'll see all your neighbourhoods with their corresponding file names.

As shown above the three original neighbourhood folders are:
Pleasantview: N001
Strangetown: N002
Veronaville: N003

Any user created neighbourhoods will be named in the order that you created them. Such as if you created Sunset Valley then Black Point it would be:
Sunset Valley: N004
Black Point: N005

Once you're in the neighbourhood folder select Storytelling.

Now that you're in the folder you can find the picture you want to edit. If you're creating covers just take a snapshot of anything since you'll be editing over it anyway. It's best to right click the background then select 'View' from the menu and 'Thumbnails' so you can see the pictures.

All snapshots have the image and a corresponding thumbnail. You don't have to edit the thumbnail, but I'd suggest you do so you can recognise it in the family album.

The thumbnails have the exact same name as the image except with the word 'thumbnail' instead of 'snapshot' at the start.
Example:
snapshot_6f5371ca_ef541a78.jpg
thumbnail_6f5371ca_ef541a78.jpg

A good story is going to require a lot of one very important thing... cheating!

Unless you're using your legacy family I'd strongly advise you use cheats. Without them you're not going to be able to afford to refurnish rooms, Sims moods up, etc, without having to spend hours trying to keep your Sims happy or earn enough money. To use cheats hold down Ctrl, Shift and C for a window to appear at the top of the screen.

Here's a list of cheat's you'll need:

boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true: Allows you to boost Sims moods, interests, skills, relationships and personality points. Amongst it's other uses are killing off unwanted Sims and adding new family members. This specific cheat must be entered in neighbourhood view.

moveobjects on: Move Sims or objects to places and positions you generally can't. Example: put a Sim up against a wall to make it look like they're walking on the wall.

motherlode: Adds $50,000 to family account.

kaching: Adds $1,000 to family account.

exit: Closes the cheats window.

Story Parts

Most stories are too long to upload all at once so they'll be in parts (part 1, part 2, etc). Since you can't upload from the same house twice without overwriting the original story here's what I always do.

After you've uploaded the story go to your neighbourhood view and click on the household. Select the first icon as circled in the picture above. This is the package lot option. It makes an exact replica of your house and family and sends it to your packaged lots folder located at:
My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\PackagedLots

Once you've exited the game you can unpack this lot (double click it) in the folder and you're ready to place the lot in a neighbourhood (it's in the house bin) and start the next part of your story.

Neighbourhoods

If you're using the same method as myself it would be wise to make a whole new neighbourhood just for your story houses. That way they're not taking up space next to your normal playing Sims.

Covers

A front and back cover to your story doesn't necessarily have to be flashy. You can use a simple scenic shot just as affectively. Experiment with different angles to get a nice front cover. Do not use the original Sim family snapshot for your cover if you want it to stand out.

I've created a small page with some templates for people to use with their stories. They're located at: http://simstories.lidonet.net/index.html

Setting The Scene

Some stories have many scenes set in different locations. There's an easy way to make all these locations without changing your main rooms.

Make sure your Sims have a two storey house. Make two or three extra rooms you don't plan to use as regular setting rooms (regular room examples, kitchen or bedroom).

These rooms can be used to create scenes that look like they're outside of the family home. The above picture shows the one room that has been split in two. It's half gym, half medical room. You wouldn't even notice without a full room shot showing the break.

Even with these rooms set aside, they won't break your house structure because nothing has been moved where it counts.

Making your whole album will take a few hours/days, so you'll have to be patient. Hopefully you'll really get into it and the time will just fly by.

Once you're finished read over it to make sure there are no mistakes. You can even let someone else read it first to make sure it's understandable and easy to follow.

Once you're happy with it click the little upload button, choose the most appropriate categories, a description and you're done! Your story should show up on the exchange and be ready to read.

If some of the pictures are missing near the end unfortunately you'll have to remake them. The best thing to do is take some random snapshots and overwrite them with the old ones. This means renaming the OLD shots with the NEW ones names.

Categorizing Your Story

You can add your newly written story to up to three separate categories. A mistake a lot of people seem to make is filling in three categories even if the story has nothing to do with it just so they'll be in an extra group. Only put your story where it belongs.
For some bizarre reason there is no Thriller/Suspense category (though there should be) and some substitute it with horror. This isn't always the case.

This is how to distinguish the two:
Horror includes violence and gore with some element of fear for a character, whereas a thriller generates anticipation (or excitement) regarding the outcome itself.

Tips:
- Thrillers go in Sim Life Stories.
- Don't give away an out of the blue, tragic ending by listing it under Tragedy.
- How To/Tutorials do not fall under any other category.
- Two funny lines do not make it a comedy.

And that concludes this short guide to story making. I can't actually give you any ideas since that's half the fun of writing.

Feel free to leave me any comments or questions in my guestbook :)

Happy story building!