Tomorrow To Muse and Dream Heavenly will be published. It is the first real short story I have ever written and I am quite proud of it.
It is strange to think it was only an idea eight years ago. Something I randomly thought and then for eight years forgot until I was on Tumblr hunting down an old post to link for an ask. I stumbled upon the post discussing Sims 2 story ideas and I had two.
This first one was to make a neighborhood based on Greek deities where I pondered how exactly the family trees would be possible.
The other was a light versus dark story. This arose in a discussion of my character Latimere Greenbrooke from Alternate Universe. His base sim was a character named Dream Heavenly, which I created with the intent of writing To Muse and Dream Heavenly into a sim story, but it never happened.
So Dream became Latimere and the rest as far as Alternate Universe is history and my light versus dark story was long forgotten. That was until my determination to find an old post completely irreverent to storytelling had me stumbling across my old notes. It sparked an entirely new interest in the old idea.
Creating a sim story is very different from prose. It is more heavily relied on visual aid based on scenes taken from the game, much like a picture book or in some instances a graphic novel. I decided that I wanted to transform my idea into prose instead.
As with all storytelling, you have to tell yourself the story first. I never wrote down the details of what I wanted my light versus dark tale to be. I just knew a few of the characters involved.
I visualized how it started quite clearly and allowed myself to let the story evolve line after line. I do quite a bit of what we call "pantsing" in the writing community, but this particular story, I did not know it as intimate as Alternate Universe or other manuscripts.
Even if I do not make an outline, I know beginning, middle, and end, every point set in stone, every turn and twist. This story was the exception to the rule. I knew the beginning; only as I wrote the middle, did I decide how it would turn and what messages it should convey to the reader. By the time I made it to the climax and the end, I knew what to expect. So, it was an interesting writing experience and I believe it is one of the reasons why this story is so special to me.
I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did. It is a good story.
-MDP
You can find To Muse and Dream Heavenly on Amazon. Published on March 13th, 2022.