Legacy Ideas: How can you make individuals exciting?

[Genevieve Peyton]

Hi everyone! I'm new to the site but certainly not very new to the sims. (Been playing most of my life away, in fact! ) Anyway, I've been creating challenges and stories for a long time, but I have a real problem making legacies interesting. I've come to find that it's not just the theme that creates a good legacy, but individual characters that make some sort of story.

So, I always end up with good themes, but relatively uninteresting characters and no real story. Just sims with good clothes, funny names, but who don't stick out. Sure, they have personalities and dialogs, but how do you create a good story that really keeps people interested?

Does anyone have any general ideas? Or even story ideas that would fit into a themed legacy? I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

[Sam the T-man]

Well, my inspiration came from a song about a mermaid/siren type creature, and decided to create the founder using that as a base. I now have a story going where said founder decided to leave the sea and live on land, and have been throwing in certain events where necessary to spice things up a little. Not that it always needs my help either - in fact you'll find the events tend to shape the story a lot.

Once you have the story, you can think how you want to develop the characters. Although some of what you're asking seems to be about general story development - there are websites out there that can help you with that

It's ultimately up to you how you want to tell it - a lot of them here tend to follow an imaginative way to caption the pictures. There's a couple of stories (including the apocalypse challenge, from the same challenge site) that take the traditional story approach (3rd person narrative, etc), while mine takes a narrative/diary-type approach, and tends to tell it from different characters' points of view. What you might be best off doing is checking out the different legacy threads on here and see which style sticks in your mind the most, then aim for something like that

Have fun - and be aware that they tend to be addictive

[Astral Faery]

Mine was started for pure stress relief.  I wasn't interested in having a complex plot line or spending a lot of time developing characters.  I'm just enjoying the pure silliness and chaos that is normal to the sims - particularly once you get a full house.  Random chaos abounds!  I usually let my sims do what they want, then try to tell my story around it.  Ocasionally I'll stage something, like dates, for example, don't happen on their own.  But a lot of times I just play the game, let the sims do their thang, and be ready to pause and snap if something catches my eye.

[Genevieve Peyton]

Thanks guys for your great suggestions!

[Devomuffins]

I personally love to read legacy stories, but can't write them at all. i do however think that it's important to capture the weirdest things your sims do and turn the into traits. i had one sim once who kept swooning at the fridge. I think it helps to try to imagine what your sim is really saying or thinking. translate random speech bubble pictures into hilarious conversations.

[Genevieve Peyton]

Thanks egghugger! I'm exactly the same way. I love to read them but I don't really know how to mimic what I see in other people's stories. But, yes, I agree. Random speech bubble stories are great!

[Genevieve Peyton]

Okay everyone so here's my new idea for my new uglacy which is a theme full of heroes (I know his has been done, but it really doesn't have to do with the story overall, just little individual characteristics will relate to famous heroes).

So, my legacy founder and his girlfriend are in college right now, meeting tons of students from all over. Most of the students are very smelly, but my founder (Aaron)'s girlfriend (Sophie Dallas, you know her? ) has a keen eye for these smelly people. In fact, she LOVES them. She cheats on poor Aaron all the time with these smellies, even though they're engaged. Anyway, once they get married and Sophie starts cheating even more I'm going to have Aaron go to the matchmaker to ask about this problem. The matchmaker is going to tell Aaron to beware of poisoned mashed potatoes (Which he does). Sophie is going to accidentally poison mashed potatoes and feed them to their neighbor (rather than Aaron), and the woozy neighbor is going to accidentally wander into the cowplant pen. You know what happens then....Well, this causes a little bit of a feud between my founder's family and a neighboring family. To retaliate against the horrible mashed potato incident, the neighboring family is going to try and steal away the uglacy heir.

Hopefully this will set up my legacy for lots of substories, romances, and just all around craziness through the generations.

What do you think?

[Zorom]

Brilliant! I only wish you hadn't told us the storyline.. 
Ah well. Looking forward to your legacy very much!
Zorom

PS.One thing I'd advise to you-keep strong! At the start if not many people comment on your legacy,
keep at it! No one wants to read one page of dialog that fades away because people don't comment. We've all seen this happening on the story forum. (I was one of those legacy writers wannabes, actually  )
Eventually people will notice your legacy story! Don't dwindle off!

[Devomuffins]

I suggest you read emphemeral toast's uglacy and apocolypse challenge, they are both hilairious.