First off, 748 posts? Nice work And welcome to Lothere

Hmmmm... with that many posts, rewriting and reshooting is going to be a huge undertaking. Huge. I commend you for even considering the idea.

If you do choose to go ahead and rewrite and reshoot the whole story, then I wish you the best of luck there, but like you said, it's an overwhelming endeavor, especially when you consider the need to resurrect old sims and back up all your data. And then since you're actually playing the game too, you'd probably have to do that multiple times, because I imagine you wouldn't want to save those changes when exiting the lot if you also still play the lot.

What I might do in your position--and bear in mind that I am a person who is absolutely ruled by laziness--would be to just keep the old pictures and maybe just rewrite wherever I felt the need to.

Or, actually, I lied just there. Here's what I would really do, in all my lazy glory: I would play the game for a few sim years or one sim generation or something without any posts. Then, I would start a new blog called something like "Kingdom of : " with the new posts in the new style while maintaining a link to the old blog for background information on people's parents and grandparents and whatnot. Of course, that would probably totally screw with your storylines, so you might not want to do that either.

Sorry, that probably wasn't really all that helpful. I'm at home sick today, so if I suddenly think of something better (which, knowing me, is doubtful), I'll be able to let you know ASAP. Meanwhile, good luck with whatever you decide to do

Wow you sound to be in EXACTLY the same situation as me. I am a little embarrassed about my earlier posts, and worse, I'm afraid people will be scared off by them and not read to the more recent stuff where I am not so ashamed of myself. So I'll tell you what I'm planning to do.

If you've not read my "New Prologue Chapter" post on my blog, you should do so, since I talk about exactly this problem.

*waits for you to catch up*

Since then there's also been a little discussion about this subject here and there in the comments, but I'm too lazy to track that down just now. I'll tell you what I've learned from people's opinions though.

First of all, my readers have literally pleaded with me not to delete old chapters. Crudely fashioned as some of them were, they were the base on which the story was built, and we would lose something if they simply disappeared.

Now, if you can truly look at a chapter and see that it didn't contribute anything to later plots, and didn't contribute anything to character development, then maybe it's safe to let it go. But character development especially is a subtle thing, so be aware of what you're losing. (If the characters themselves disappeared never to be seen again... well OK there I admit you're probably safe. )

Second, about the pictures... For me the story is and always has been more about the writing than the pictures. Even back in 2005 there were lots of people who took better and more detailed pictures than I... and nowadays people slave for hours getting just the right shots with poseboxes and post-processing in Photoshop and so forth. I don't even bother trying to compete in the graphics department. The importance of the pictures in your story is something you have to decide for yourself.

I don't intend to reshoot any but the most important chapters (like baby Finn's kidnapping). I figure people are not reading Lothere for the pretty pictures, so I hope they will cut me some slack on the early shots, knowing that I was working with a very old video card, only base game + NL, and 2006-era CC.

And even if I wanted to retake the pictures, there are some scenes that would be spoiled if I did. Fuzzy as they were, there are some poignant moments in there -- some facial expressions I could probably never recapture if I tried. You may find yourself in the same situation, especially if you're like me and base your writing on the pictures, rather than writing the story first and taking the pictures second. It's hard to un-entwine the prose from the pictures if you replace the pictures.

Your situation (like mine) is further complicated by the fact that you would be resurrecting Sims and presumably older lots and castles also. It would be very much like writing the story again instead of simply revising.

So this is where I say it all comes down to what you want to make of your story. What you're considering is a huge undertaking, but that's no reason not to do it. I often fantasize about doing exactly what you propose: effectively starting over, passing every chapter one by one through the wringer, giving each an "Extreme Makeover", and pressing publish on its new-and-improved version on the new-and-improved site. That is, bringing every chapter up to my picture-taking and writing level of today, making every chapter be something I can be proud of.

Why don't I do that? There are three reasons.

First (and most importantly) I want to keep moving forward in the story. I have a lot of exciting storylines in full swing, and at the moment I'm really on a roll... I don't even want to stop to do a single "prologue chapter" at the moment. Only four more chapters planned for 1085 and one's half-written! Telling the story is what I REALLY want to be doing, and revising the past chapters is so many hundreds of hours of work... when it comes down to it I simply have to choose one or the other, and I usually only choose revising when I have a rare case of writer's block.

Second, as much as I cringe reading the older chapters, it's also very heartening to me to see how far I have come. (And perhaps to other new writers, too, to see that someone who writes as well as I do now was writing as poorly as that less than four years ago.)

And it is humbling too, because back then I thought my writing was really good. In fact, if you had asked me at any time in the past four years, including today, what I thought about my writing, I would say, "Well, the stuff I wrote a year or more ago was crap, but the stuff I am writing now is really good!" Therefore it's safe to conclude that if you ask me in September 2010 about the chapter I'm writing at the moment, I'll say "Well, that chapter was crap, but the stuff I am writing now is really good!"

So these old chapters inspire me to keep challenging myself, to keep trying to become a better writer; and furthermore they both prevent me from getting depressed (hey! I'm getting better!) and from getting too smug (hey! you sucked a year ago and will continue to suck compared to your future self, forever!). This is a very personal reason for me to keep the old chapters, but it's important too. And as I revise old chapters I plan to keep their original form in a publicly accessible archive, so everyone can see how much I have improved, and perhaps also compare them side-by-side to see what it looks like when an author revises her first drafts.

The third reason may sound a bit harsh, and forgive me for mixing metaphors here, but I think you'll see what I mean: Doing a full-out reshoot and rewrite of KoL would be like "polishing a dead horse". The question I have to ask myself is: What do I want to accomplish by doing a full revision? The story is already written: my primary job here is done. Maybe readers have to hold their nose a little while reading the first chapters, but quite a few people do manage it and get to the good stuff, so it can't be utterly off-putting.

So what would I be doing? Just trying to reduce my own embarrassment at my early schlock? Or make the story more approachable to new readers?

And this is where I drag the dead horse into it. If I am going to invest a huge amount of time in a story, I figure it might as well be a new story. (Or at least new chapters on the existing story.) I don't think I would be learning and improving as much as a writer if I were simply rewriting and repackaging old content. Nor -- if I may be pretentious for a moment -- would I be offering the world as much as if I came up with a new story and new set of characters to dream about. Early KoL was an important part of my life, but that part is over, and I don't feel like KoL is going to be my "life's work" to the extent that it is worth doing a full "Digitally Remastered Collector's Edition Director's Cut" version of it. Like you, I am very attached to my characters and my story, so I keep going with it, but I know that someday I will move on. I don't want to invest too much effort into my earliest work on a story that was never meant to be published as a whole consistent unit anyway.

So I suppose the question you need to ask yourself is the same: what do you want to accomplish by revising/rewriting? Then figure out the best way to do that. If your worry is that people may be turned off by your early writing or the sheer number of chapters then an alternative way to accomplish that might be by writing summary posts that allow people to get up to speed quickly. That way if they want to start with recent chapters, they will still have the background, and if you really get them hooked they will want to go back and read anyway. (This is something I too am considering doing... summaries of years, summaries of main plot lines, etc..)

But if you do believe you have some actual deadwood among the chapters, then it might be good for you to hide them (or move the story to a new site and not move some of the chapters). The problem with publish-as-you-write is that you end up with a lot of dead-end storylines that an ordinary writer of an ordinary novel would freely remove. And I don't want to let it be said that I discourage revising one's writing! We simply happen to have chosen a format that makes it more difficult to do. There are plenty of things I wish I had done differently, but people have already read the story as it is, so it's too late to change.

Anyway, that is sort of a rambling reply, but I don't have time to revise. Hopefully I at least gave you something to think about.

wow Fab reply.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head, you see part of the reason i wanted to go for "new site" was so the old stuff wasn't lost in time as it were and doing a new site was a way of keeping both, the new site would just have the new and improved stuff on without the "chaff as it where"

I think my main problem is is give all my sims a storyline and personality even when im playing im constently thinking up how couples met how they interact etc even for sims i don't ever write about, sometimes it can be difficult to hold off writing about it even when i know it's not gonig to move the plot forward which is how the odd "pointless" chaper ends up slipping in.

Summary chapters are a good idea and i do try and summerize when a charecter hasn't turned up in plat for a while but it's quite hard sometimes without chapters turning into massive "And last week on..... "

I was also looking at perhaps stealing your idea of putting in place "Storylines" sections at the moment my chapters are catagorized but the family name of who-ever is in the story and im at the point now where i don't always feel that is the best way to handle it. For example at the moment i have two storys one in involving the mother and one the daughter of the same family, the pots overlap somewhat which means choosing that "family name" doesn't give you a nice linar read on either story.

Using the Storylines section is way i've been reading your stuff certainly in the early days it was easier to pick a storyline and following just that from the start to then. As just trying to read them all in date order was quite overwhelming i just got really confused with who was who etc. These days i can just pick up your latest post and read it because although im still not fully "upto date" on all your early stuff ithink i have a rought idea of ho all the family's fit together now.

But even just adding storyline sections would involve a major re-work as i've have to read though it all and decide which posts belonged to which.

I'm still playing with the idea of the whole thing i just feel there is alot of room for improvement right now, i don't want to get bogged down re-vamping that i don't continue the story but at the same time i do feel it could benift alot from a streamline.

I think for now what i've decided to do is to add StoryLine sections much like lothere has, allowing readers to come in and read just the most important storylines.

And OMG how hard is this, i've got a few places where storylines cross over and some posts don't make much sence alone or as part of storyline a) because they are more to do with storyline b) but at the same time if you skip the post intirely from storyline a) readers are going to miss something vital and find themself scratching thier heads going "what the hell happened"

I was trying to run one together last night where by i have a noble lady blackmailing another nobleman having had him arrested and locked in her prison. Now the reason he's even in her castle and the storyline about how he manages to get himself into trouble is really "another plot" but the fact that he ends up there and her blackmailing him is vital to her story... its just abit of a nightmare to be honest. a can't tell this "noble prisoners entire story" just to have the post make sence but him suddenly appearing for no apparent reason in her prison just seems to make no sence alone.

Yeah i've been adding notes i think, tbh atm i'm seriously debating setting up a proper web hosting service and moving the whole lot over. But the man hours and effort involved in working out how to do everything is frankly scary as the whole "web development" thing is all abit alien to me.

Especially for a blog i suspect im the only one who get's any enjoyment out haha as my writing certainly lack's your flare... mines more on level with a small child hammering out at a keyboard hoping it makes sence to anyone who might be unlucky enough to foolishly stumble on it, tbh im not even sure i've had any regular readers for a long time.

Still im endevouring to make sence of it all and i wanted to add some sort of timeline so the posts fit together meaningfully time wise, as right now i know things are more than alittle disjointed and it can be quite hard to work out what happened especially when certain event's are supposed to be occuring at different times etc. Unfortunatly i think in order to make this happen i'm going to need alittle more freedom than my basic wordpress.com account allows.