Did you know that every single day, all over the world, thousands of romances are written?
Just like those we see on bookshelves everywhere, they run the gamut of time periods, place settings, and characters. Some feature fairytale damsels in distress in medieval castles, rescued by tall, dark, handsome princes who brave moats and briers to claim their fair maidens. In other stories, dangerously thrilling vampires hunt the night, in search of innocent victims who bravely—or foolishly—roam the menacing, modern city streets after sundown. Still other tales are rife with aliens who land their spaceships in desolate terrain, hoping to abduct an unwary victim or two.
From girls next door to kick-butt femme fatales, from shy guys who can barely stammer out a hello to macho males loaded with testosterone and cologne, the heroines and heroes of these romances are dating, marrying, making whoopie, having babies, building houses, casting spells, fighting and breaking up, and sometimes even committing murder and mayhem (not necessarily in that particular order).
Most of us, however, will never read any of these romances. Even the dozens I’ve penned will never be published anywhere beyond my own computer. Why? Because they’re all being created inside two games called The Sims and The Sims2.
Ever wished you could trade places with the heroine of a romance? Now, you can. Just pop into the CAS (Create-a-Sim) program and whip up an avatar, and you, too, can travel back into the past or forward into the future. Build a cottage in the woods or the mansion of your dreams. Surround it with a village, town, or city. Found a university, where your characters can study to become whatever they want in life, whether it’s a Wall Street wizard or the kind of sorcerer who brews potions from recipes carefully preserved in an ancient grimoire.
Many authors spend days assembling collages to serve as visual aids while they labor on their latest novel. I find it a whole lot easier and great deal more fun to open up The Sims2—where I can make my heroines and heroes look precisely as I envision them, and where I can not only build that towering castle or isolated manor that’s going to figure so prominently in my book, but also furnish it and actually walk through it to determine whether its layout is exactly what I need to make my story work.
And sometimes, if I’m lucky, the process operates in reverse. Recently, I constructed an old Victorian house. When I first began to build it, I had no real purpose for it, other than thinking that I wanted to try out various construction techniques. But the more I designed and redesigned, erecting some walls, tearing out others, adding a gazebo, stream, pond, and landscaping, the more I decided that it would make an intriguing house for one of my novels.
Who would live in it—and what would his or her story be? I wondered. I started imagining all kinds of different characters who might live in the house. I now have several from which to choose.
Here is a picture of the house I built.
Just for fun, I thought I’d share it with you, and ask you to tell me a (very brief!) story. If this house existed in your own imaginary world, who would live in it—and what would be happening in it? The sky’s the limit, so be as wild and creative as you like.
At the end of the day, I’ll tell you who’s currently living in this house in my Sim world.
No related posts.
A young lady, Camile, who’s parents travel for work. She has a governess who has outlived her usefulness and a maid who is a snoop. Camile is bored, like all 17 year old girl’s get bored, and starts messing around with candles and drawings on the floor. She opens a portal to another world where she has to fight to survive. She finds a friend, Urath the brave, and he saves her hide by showing her how to survive. She finds a portal back to the house but she has to decide if she will leave or stay with Urath. The decision is made for her when she is shoved into the portal. Now can she find a way back to see if Urath survived.
Mine’s very dull.
My hero’s sister lives in a very similar house.
She’s taken in the heroine who has some fanatics trying to kill her.
There’s hot sex with the hero though – in one of the bedrooms.
Oh Gods. That’s a brilliant idea.
… and now I’m thinking of the potential for excused procrastination: “It’s research! Really!” LOL
As for who would live in this house in my imaginary world…nobody at present. It was once full of family, servants and guests, until a fire claimed one wing on a cold winter’s night. Our heroine and her sister, the only family to survive, removed to the gatehouse (not pictured) where they live in genteel seclusion.
Until, that is, another winter’s night when a light appears in the library window. There are gypsies rumore about, and what better place to take shelter than an old, empty house? Two nights in a row, our heroine sees the light in the window, and creeps closer. When she peeks in, she sees a darkly handsome visage looking back at her. Gypsy. He beckons.
Heroine enters, wends her way through halls filled with memories but little else. Her gypsy meets her at the library entrance, too refined in dress and speech to be only a wanderer. Is she the daughter of the house? Ah yes, he thought so. He strikes a bargain. She will show him every inch of the house, and in return, each day she comes, she may take a treasure with her, some posession she had to leave behind.
Our heroine agrees, as reminders of their old life keep her sister from the edge of madness. She has only one stipulation; she will not show him the wing where the fire started. But can she keep her resolve, and why does he need her guidance?
I love Sims! I rarely play it though – I spend gaxillions of hours on the house and the characters and then while it takes ten days to load, I think of another house to create. Heh heh.
When I do play it’s always a romance lol. I make sure their turn-ons coincide… glasses, brown hair, underwear. Tee hee.
Melancholy colours this house more so than the faded paint. The lady of the home, Auliene DuBois stands, arms crossed and heart heavy, beside the third story window of the north tower.
The halls are as empty as her heart. Her handkerchief, soaked in tears, flutters impotently to the gorund as she parts the panes before her.
Chill autumn air caresses her cheek, breathes across her bosom. She steps forward, looks out. No one. No carriage, no caretaker.
No one.
The balcony is a short path to freedom from her pain. She steps to the edge and plummets.
Andrew Stuart Smith returns home, weeks past due, to find her broken, bloodied body. The salt of her tears crystalized on her lashes.
“Promises are for naught,” he moans, “upon an unpaitient heart.”
Thanks, Rebecca, that was fun!
The creator behind The Sims is making news with his latest creation. Instead of a house, you get to play Intelligent Designer and you build an entire species. Called “Spore”, you start from a small bug, and your “powerups” are similar to “evolutionary leaps” where eventually your critter becomes self aware and learns how to interact with others of his/her kind as well as eventually conquer space!
Screenshot of a three legged “creation”
I don’t think this new game will ever be as popular as The Sims, though. It’s too easy to relate to humans through the avatars of the games, and to create stories for your characters, as you point out so well with your post, Rebecca.
And… please forgive the typos
typing on the fly doesn’t produce the prettiest text…
The house is now owned by Derek Montgomery who inherited it after the “accidental” death of his brother. Derek isn’t positive that the death was accidental and believes that clues can be found in old manuscripts that his brother discovered. Actually, he suspects his brother’s former partner may have commited the murder. He hires Victoria, the daughter of that partner to translate the manuscripts in the home.
As she delves deeper into the texts, she uncovers more secrets about the brother, her father and Derek. Who should she tell? Who can she trust?
(Can you tell that I love a good gothic novel?)
Twenty years ago, Anne Morgan’s mother fell to her death from the roof. For years, she believed her mother committed suicide after the accidental drowning of Anne’s little brother. She couldn’t leave home fast enough as her father grew increasingly morbid and her older sister started cutting her own body. She came home from high school one afternoon and found her home, her prison, burned to the ground. She had never felt so free in her life . . . until she learned her sister and father perished in the fire.
Ever since he was a kid, architect Grant Buckley has been fascinated by the old, historic homes of the south. But nothing has intrigued him more than the history of Morgan Manor, the gothic-style mansion that burned to the ground in a suspicious fire. He bought the land with his savings and with an endowment from the local historical society, rebuilt the home off of original plans he uncovered in the library. But as he built, from both the plans and photographs, he knew the plans had not been followed, and he surprisingly knew what changes had been made. Driven, he and his team of builders re-created the house to its exact grandeur . . .
Nightmares begin to haunt Anne, nightmares that ended the day Morgan Manor burned to the ground. When she learns her childhood prison has been rebuilt, she’s compelled to go visit, to hopefully rid herself of her fears.
But nothing can prepare her to face the past, nothing can prepare her for the future. Anne and Grant find themselves trapped in a house of violence, a house that wants to keep those secrets hidden . . .
OMGosh – I think I’m gonna have to look into that – Thanks!
I’m so not going there.
That reminds me of some school homework, “write a story to this picture,” and I know what’s going to happen. Exercise books full of wild scribblings that scared my teacher. Not because they were so gory or depraved, but because the sheer length of my assingments. 
I don’t have the time for this any longer. I have some books to write.
All…I really enjoyed reading your stories about this house!
Anna…no, I’ve never uploaded anything to the Exchange. I have tons of custom content, and most of the creators don’t want their stuff uploaded there, so I respect their wishes. I get most of my custom content from the fabulous artists at ModtheSims2.
Inside, the house has many, many rooms, but I’ve only furnished the first two stories fully. Even so, it still takes a great deal of memory to play it.
Walt…hadn’t heard about Spore, but I think you’re right that it won’t be as popular as The Sims.
In my Sim world, the house is called Hemlock Hall. It belongs to three sisters: Belladonna, Hellebore, and Absinthe von Draco. They are all vampires.
That’s a terrific house! And I never even THOUGHT of using The Sims for a creative spark!
Here’s my story:
She inherited Great Aunt Jezebel’s house of shame right at the moment when she had only $5 in her Gucci rip-off handbag and a brand new manicure. Funny, it didn’t look like a former whore-house. Nor did it look like a place an accountant would slay his wife and three daughters. And those rumors of werewolves was just plain silly.
Camy
I’m a huge Sims fan. Unfortunately, my computer doesn’t have enough memory for Sims 2, so I play the Sims. I’ve got pretty much all of them, so I can make houses, which is more fun for me than creating people.
I’d love to get the Sims2, just to create characters closer to my own in my stories. *sigh* Maybe someday when I’m rich and famous. LOL!
[...] An article over at Romancing the Blog suggested using the computer game The Sims to create characters and then put them through scenes. Knowing my extreme addictive nature, I knew better than to actually get the real game (I would never get any writing done. The one time I played Civilization, I stayed up until 530am two nights in a row playing.). [...]