Sims 4 Creators Camp: Writing and Books

Writing is back and in good form in The Sims 4. There is still a writing skill and one still needs a computer to work on their writing. There are also a number of improvements and additions to the writing system.

When you want to start writing, you go to a computer, same as it has been since the Sims 2. When you are unskilled the only two options are to practice writing or to start a Children’s book. As your Sim grows in writing skill, they begin to unlock new book types. The types I observed were: Children’s, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Screenplay. My Sim did not get anywhere near to maxing her writing skill so that is NOT a comprehensive list, but that was all I observed in my play time. Different book types take different lengths of time to write. Children’s books and poetry books are fairly quick to write compared to Non-Fiction.

Different book types take different lengths of time to write.

When you start a book, it needs a title and description. These are filled in for you with a random title and a description of “This is a [genre] book” but you can give it your own title and description.

In addition to writing new book types, being a writer gives you a few more perks. Once you are skilled enough, your Sim can write a love email. I put this to use for my Sim’s future mate. It’s effects were not immediately clear, but she did end up marrying him, so it couldn’t have hurt. Along that line, a face-to-face interaction ‘recite poetry’ becomes available around the time you can start writing books on poetry.

Lastly my Sim was able to ‘write an excuse note’ for her husband to get him out of going to work. I didn’t actually test out this interaction as I wanted him to go to work and earn money.

Other improvements to the writing system include the ability to have multiple books in progress at a time and the ability to resume any of them at any time.

Your Sim no longer gets paid *during* the writing process; they don’t get forwarded money for pages as they write, meaning a book won’t earn you a dime until you finish it and publish it. (Don’t worry, this is balanced out, keep reading)

Upon finishing a book, a copy of the book is placed in your Sim’s personal inventory. You have a few options. If you want to publish it, you need to interact with your mailbox. At first, “Self-Publish” is the only option available but as your skill increases, “Publish with Publisher” becomes available.

Publishing with a publisher earns you more money than self-publishing. Other than the skill requirement, I did not observe any negative consequences to using a publisher, though there may be a ‘good in the short term, bad long term’ balance, and I simply didn’t play long enough to get to any ‘long term’ negative consequences.

To help make up for the fact that you no longer get paid up front, you are paid royalties every single day, rather than just once a week, at 10 am. A pop-up notification will remind you of all the book titles you have published and how much in royalties they have brought in. You are paid self-published and publisher published royalties at the same time. I did not play the game long enough to know if the royalties taper off after awhile or what happens to them when the author dies.

To help make up for the fact that you no longer get paid up front, you are paid royalties every single day, rather than just once a week, at 10 am.

The royalties seem to be more based on skill and mood than book type, strictly speaking. My very first book written when not inspired and self-published netted me $20/day. A book of the same genre (Children’s) written while inspired and 4 skill points higher in writing netted me $70/day. The royalty payments have daily variances and will fluctuate up and down, but not wildly. I did not write enough books to know what had the biggest impact on royalties, or what book genres are the most profitable.

Also, you don’t *have* to publish a book. You can stick it on a bookshelf and use it as a normal book, knowing that you have the one and only copy. I had my Sim write a children’s book just for her son Lance.

The ability to read to children is back, though the book in question must be a ‘children’s book’. One of my Sim’s spouse’s aspiration wishes (He had the Family > Successful Lineage aspiration) was to read to his children for a total of 3 hours. Lance (Who took on the Whiz Kid childhood Aspiration) had one of his aspiration goals asking for him to be read to for a total of 3 hours, so I was able to fullfill this requirement for both father and son at the same time.

When my Sim was writing early on, she would only be able to write for a few hours at a time before getting a “Writer’s Block” negative moodlet, which made her tense. However, writing while in the “inspired” mood seemed to make her resistant (possibly immune) to writer’s block, as she was able to write for hours and hours without writer’s block interruptions while inspired. Needless to say, being inspired helps the quality of your books too. I saw a notable increase in the royalties for books written after I figured out how to keep her inspired for long periods of time.

Other book-related observations:

• Sims can still read books for fun, though the rate of fun gain is slower than TV watching for most.
• Sims can converse with other sims while writing books or reading them. Conversations distract sims, making them write and read slower, but the write/read action merely shares the sim’s attention inbetween topics of chitchat. That said, if you really want your Sim to focus on reading or writing, find them somewhere to be alone. This makes perfect sense and is a clever use of the multi-tasking system.
• New book-related conversation topics become available to Sims with a healthy writing skill and two writers will tend to get along well due to shared interests. Simply having the writing skill at a high enough level opens these interactions; you don’t NEED to have the bookworm trait.
• Skill books are back in the same way they are in the Sims 3, complete with levels. You CAN make a Sim read a skill book that is too advanced for them, but after a short while they’ll adopt the tense emotion and pick up a negative “Confused” moodlet.
• Bookshelves purchased in buy mode come pre-seeded with a variety of freebie books of different types, but no skill books. You can purchase books by interacting with a bookshelf. You can add and remove books from a shelf and a Sim’s inventory manually.
• I had a “Neat” Sim come visit my lot as a guest and she compulsively started re-shelving all my stray books. My non-neat (and non-slob) Sims would sometimes re-shelve a book after they finished with it, but if something else forced them to stop reading early (Like sudden urge to use the bathroom) they were more likely to just find the nearest available surface to dump the book so they could do that more pressing action.
• Writer Sims will often generate whims to read books. It is unclear if reading many books will improve the quality of your writing like it does in the Sims 3.

To summarize, writing seems to be alive and well in the Sims 4. At the end of my three day experience, my Sim was earning the family about $1,000/day in royalties, but given the cost of items and especially the cost of bills, the amount felt balanced for the level of time and effort she put into her writing.