Featured Author: An Interview with Darren (freejack100)

Happy Wednesday, Friends! Today, I present to you an interview with Darren (freejack100) the writer/creator of “The Musketeers!”

The Musketeers is an epic saga told with Sims 3 in which a group of friends have many surprising adventures. They live by the code: “one for all & all for one” and they call themselves The Musketeers. The story is fun, and there is a team of heroes, and a team of villains to wow you at every turn!

What makes the story even better is the creative way Darren handles the pictures. They are definitely worth looking at.

Okay, shall we begin?

1. How long have you been playing The Sims and what got you into it?

I played the Sims 3 for the 1st time at the beginning of 2013 and was hooked on it for about a year. But my game ran into problems and I lost all my saved games and all the progress I had made with the Sims (this is before I knew about nraas). So in frustration, I gave it all up and had no intentions of ever coming back to it. But about two years later, one of my friends was playing it on his PlayStation and I started to remember how much fun it was, so I started playing again in the summer of 2016.

2. Why did you begin blogging your Sims story?

I was chasing badges on the community and one of them was a bloggers badge. Gay Nell and Jowita seemed to really like the story I was doing, even though it was really bad at the time. But they both gave me loads of encouragement to continue. I was starting to get fed up with playing the game by then, anyway, and I was having more fun doing the blog. It was Jowita that convinced me to start the blog here. In fact, she has helped me a lot over the past two years with the setup of this site and all the proofreading she has done for me. I would never have gotten this far without her. The only thing I had ever written before this, was a comic book and that was only 3 pages.

3. How do you come up with your story ideas?

The story was based on 6 big ideas that I had to explain at the beginning while I was playing and when I created the two main characters, “Avon and James,” and everything else has come from there. It’s like you answer one question. but that leads you down a rabbit hole because you get 3 more questions in its place and when you answer them they, in turn, give you more questions. I have read somewhere there are only really two styles of writing. One is controlled with a clear focus on where they want to go with their story and the other is when the story almost writes itself and your not to sure where it’s going to go next

It’s always best to try and have a balance between the two styles and I do try my best to do that. But as you must realize by now my story is wild and in some ways uncontrolled. To tell you the truth, I kind of like it that way as my two favourite chapters came out of nowhere like that.

Chapter 24: Love Me Tender, But Don’t Love Me Crazy

Chapter 2.7: Everybody Hurts Sometimes

4. Do your sims actions help create new ideas or make the story go in a differentdirection then you had intended?

Yes! well, in the beginning, they did, but I haven’t played the game in a while. I only create and take screenshots in the game now. When I did play the game, James died very early when I 1st started the blog and even though I went with it at the time. I thought to myself, “why do we have to stick to the rules here?” That’s how I came up with a great plot to bring him back into the story and the idea really enriched that 1st season.

5. Which is your favorite character and why?

I like them all.

In every season, one of them is my favorite and I will put more into that character than the others.

• Season one it was Avon… he is kind of based on me. Well, the way I imagine myself anyway.
• Season two it was Kitana. She was based on a character from a TV series called “V.”
• Season three was kind of Avon again even though Joel took his place.

(it was supposed to be Avon who was lost in time and also in the world of the sims 4 but the whole story was given to Joel instead, who was based on the character Avon.)

• By the end of the 3rd season, it has become Savannah and at the moment she is still my favorite.

I don’t know who she is based on, she is one of a kind as it’s like the character has been born in the story and come to life in it.

6. What chapter has been the most difficult to write so far, and why?

It’s always the one I’m working on, as I try to do something different. Something that I’ve never done before with the pictures, and its the pictures I write the story from. I do have an idea where I want to go. but its the expressions on my sims faces where I get ideas of what they are thinking or what they sometimes even say.

7. Is there anything you wish was different about your story?

Yes… So I have changed history in the story, and now I’m rewriting it. It has become the backbone of the story at the moment. I would like to redo some more of the early chapters, as I’ve learned a lot since I started, and some of them are very basic. But I decided on changing the history for now and have some fun with new chapters instead. 🙂

8. Do you have any advice for other writers who may just be starting out?

As you must realise, I’m still very new at this myself. but I would say to anyone who is reading this, write the story for yourself and have fun with it. And, if you can give a few people a smile or a giggle or even just a hell of a ride along the way, then that’s really great.

it’s always nice to give someone a smile, but if it doesn’t happen as much as you would like it to, don’t worry as you only really wrote it for yourself anyway. Just writing a story is a really big achievement in itself. Especially if you never believed it was something you would ever do.

9. What are the challenges of bringing your characters to life?

I have given this very question a little thought on and off while I’ve been writing. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I did it or even if I could do it again with a brand new story. I would have believed it would be difficult to give a character a different personality. But every time I created a new character, they always had one and they always seemed different to me.

I can only think that this is the way we perceive them, and our imaginations do the rest. The game helps in that way too.

That leads us to another question… Could we do this without the game and using pictures?

As I rely on the picture so much, I don’t really know the answer to that. I suppose one would have to try and see what happens.

10. Would you like to share an excerpt from your story or a summary of your story? Or both?

This is from one of my favourite chapters, 2.7 Everyone Hurts Sometimes  

But on the second day, I met two very odd men who told me their names were Ollie and Stan. I had shown them the picture of Octavia and asked if had they seen her, and the little one took it and scratched his head, then said to his friend, “You know, Ollie, I think that was the girl who pinched my newspaper at Bridge Lane station.” 

To which Ollie replied… “Bridge Lane station? Wasn’t that when fell asleep on the train and it made us late? That was ages ago. now, how could you even remember something like that? “Pinched my newspaper” of all the things to say…” 

“Well, she did, Ollie, and I saw her reading it, as the train was pulling away,” Stan said.

Savannah: This was the stop you must have missed, then?

Stan: How did she know that, Ollie?

“I don’t know. how did you know that?” Ollie said with a puzzled look upon his face.

Savannah: “To a great mind, nothing is little, when you have powers of the deduction”.  my dear Ollie.

Stanley: Powers of the deduction? Hey, that’s good. I’ve never heard that one before.

Savannah: Really? It’s a quote from a character from one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels… The great detective Sherlock Holmes. You must have heard of him, Stanley?

Stanley: Not that I can remember, can I, Ollie?

Ollie: Now how am I supposed to know what you can or can’t remember?

Stanley: I have a great idea, Ollie… Maybe we should hire Sherlock Holmes to get back my newspaper.

Ollie took a double look of disbelief at Stanley to what his little friend had just said, and then he looked at me and gave me a really nice smile with a friendly laugh. Then he said, “I’m sorry you have to forgive my friend, he’s a little slow”.

Savannah: That’s quite alright, there was nothing to forgive.

Ollie: Come on now, Stanley, give the nice lady her photo back. after they both said goodbye

They had both been really nice, and the little one was so funny. And more helpful than they could possibly realize. Thanks to them, the game was afoot, as I now had three clues… Bridge lane station, the direction they were headed in, and I now knew that they had traveled by train.

These clues were the start that would lead me like step-in stones to the next clues that would eventually lead me here, the little town they ended up in.

Follow this link to read another favorite of Darren’s: 2nd Anniversary: the musketeers at comic-con 2019. Here is another post about the 2nd Anniversary: Special 2nd-year-anniversary post.

Wow! This was so much fun! Thank you, Darren, for allowing me to interview you! 😀

Did you all enjoy this interview as much as I did? I hope you will check out Darren’s story soon!

Notes:

If you are a blog author (it does not have to be The Sims related) and would like to be featured in an interview, please send me an email using my contact form! I would love to interview you, too!

Thank you for stopping by! See you Saturday!