Yet Another WritiN' mod, Too! UPDATED March 29, 2013

I have updated this to work with Supernatural/1.50 with some help from Amber Lokisdotter. If you have Supernatural/1.50, use YAWN2150. If you have Generations/1.22, use YAWN2122. If you have an earlier version, use YAWN2. Please be sure to thank fway for helping to make this update possible.

I've just uploaded multiple flavour options for YAWN2. There are now 3 basic varieties: writing gains fun (original YAWN2 style); writing loses fun (original EA/YAWN style); writing has no impact on fun (neutral fun). For each, there are five options for royalties: 1174 payment (original YAWN/YAWN2 figure); 10 years (520 payments); 5 years (260 payments); 1 year (52 payments); 6 months (26 payments). So if you want, for example, 1174 payments, but the original loss to fun, grab YAWN2122(FunLoss). Or if you want to gain fun, but only earn royalties for a year, get YAWN2122(52). To earn royalties for 5 years, but make writing have no impact on fun, try YAWN2122(NeutralFun260). Hopefully this will make YAWN more useful to a wider range of people, and solve compatibility issues with mods that alter fun for various activities. *The fun loss versions have just been corrected, and should no longer conflict with other mods that deal with fun.*

What is the purpose of this mod?

This is essentially a complete overhaul of the writing skill. I was not pleased with a number of things about the way the writing skill worked. I found it took too long to write a novel, found the advance and royalty payment systems to be unrealistic, and disagreed with the requirements for unlocking new genres. So I made YAWN to change these and other things. This mod is an update to YAWN to make it compatible with Late Night.

Is this version is compatible with only (insert Expansion or Stuff Pack name here)?

Being totally honest, I'm only guessing the answer is yes. I have all of them installed, and it works great. I can't say for certain if it will work with whatever other combinations are out there, though.

I am familiar with YAWN. How does YAWN2 compare?

YAWN2 is the same as the Quick flavour of YAWN, except that writing now gains fun.

I am not familiar with YAWN. What changes does this mod, YAWN2, make to the writing skill?

First of all, YAWN2 was designed with career authors in mind. For this reason, I did not change anything relating to the Article, Life Story or Political Memoir. These three "genres" are all related to regular careers, and so are not available to a normal career authors.

The changes I did make include making some genres available in a different order, making it easier to unlock a couple of the "hidden" genres, changing the value of written books, changing the number of times advances and royalties are paid, changing how much is paid for royalties and advances, and making writing faster and more fun.

Can you provide a list of all changes?

Sure, but I'll hide it as a spoiler for those that are interested in more details about what has been changed and why.

• Children's book available at level 1 instead of level 3
• Painting skill required for Children's book has gone from 4 to 3
• Romance available at level 9 instead of 10
• Book values are linked to book length (making some worth a lot more)
• Royalties are linked to book values (making some go down for each payment)
• The number of royalty payments has gone from 6 to 1174
• Advances for submitting partial work have gone up by 3 to 12 times the standard amount, depending on skill level
• The number of times partial work is submitted has gone from 5 to 4
• Number of Biographies required to unlock Autobiography has gone from 3 to 1
• Number of Sci-Fi required to unlock Fantasy has gone from 3 to 2
• Number of Drama, SciFi, Humor, Mystery and Romance required to unlock Vaudeville has gone from 2 each to 1 each
• Page Per Minute bonus for Sims that have mastered writing has gone from .25 to .5
• Hidden skill multiplier has gone from .1 to .15
• PPM bonus for Bookworms has gone from .03 to .1
• Max % change from hidden skill has gone from 60 to 90 ("GenreX Writer" is almost definately going to have a Best-Seller when writing in their specific genre.)
• Books required to unlock Masterpiece has gone from 25 to 20
• PPM base value has gone from .125 to .25
• PPM multiplier for "Speed Writer" has gone from 1.4 to 2
• § earned to achieve "Speed Writer" has gone from §30000 to §25000
• Tweaks to "Royalty Rating" system to allow proper number of "§" symbols to show for each genre
• Required number of books that have to be read to earn a speed bonus in writing has gone from 50 to 25
• Writing now gains fun at the same rate as painting

Can you be more specific about what you changed and why?

I changed the order in which some genres are available, and the level needed for them. It made sense that longer books are harder to write, so the order has been adjusted so genres become available in the order of shortest average length to longest average length. Of course, this won't apply to Biographies or Autobiographies as they are dependant on Opportunities, nor will it apply to Fantasy or Satire as the levels required for Sci-Fi and Humor have not changed. It will apply to Vaudeville as Romance will be available a little earlier, but the requirements for Vaudeville kind of make it no big deal. The only two changes were Children's book went from level 3 to level 1 and Romance novel went from 10 to 9.

What about changes to requirements for certain genres?

For one thing, I lowered the required Painting skill level needed to unlock the Children's book from level 4 to level 3. While I understand the idea behind needing some artistic skill to write kids' books, I don't see why it should have to be so high. So I lowered it.

I also lowered the number of Sci-Fi books that need to be written in order to unlock Fantasy from 3 to 2. I just don't see a need to be so experienced in science fiction to be able to do fantasy. Actually, I personally don't even see the need, but I think it's more fun to have to work to unlock it.

I changed the number of Drama, SciFi, Humor, Mystery and Romance required to unlock Vaudeville from 2 of each down to just one of each. The only reason behind this is the fact that I considered it difficult enough to have to write in five other genres first and thought that having to do so twice was just too much.

Finally, I lowered the number of books that need to be written to unlock Masterpiece from 25 to 20. I could say that the reason for this is because there is a hidden bonus for writing speed once you have written 20 books and so this seemed like a good number to use for the number of books required to unlock Masterpiece, but in truth I only lowered it because I wanted to.

I did not lower the number of Humor required to unlock Satire! Good satire requires a certain sense of humour, and pulling it off successfully requires a little more experience.

So what about this new way payments are made?

First of all, I changed the values of the books. It seems to me that the higher the level of a writer, the better known they are, and the more their books ought to be worth. In reality, this is reflected in the number of copies sold, and can vary a great deal, but in the Sim world, all you can do is change how much the book costs. So the values for written books are now related to the length of the book as much as possible. Yes, this means that some books will be worth a whole lot more than they used to be. Please note, however, that I have not changed the values for game-supplied books, only the ones that your Sims write.

More importantly, Royalties are now linked to the value of the book, just as they should be. Before you go thinking you're going to be stinking it rich in no time, I have to tell you that all of the Royalty payment have been lowered. Some by a lot. For example, the default average for a Masterpiece was 2925, but I've lowered it to 678. But don't start yelling yet, you will make more on average than you used to! For one thing, just as with the very excellent "SolaceInSound's Writing Mod With Royalties for Life," Royalties will be paid out "for life." To be more exact, Royalties will be paid 1174 times, which should be enough to cover the entire life of a long-lived Sim with an Epic life span.

I've also greatly increased the amount for Advance payments. I found it a little stupid that the default setting had my Sims earning (for example) Advances of §8 for each of the 5 parts that were submitted for a book that would earn a total of §150 in Royalty payments. When a publisher pays an author an advance, it's usually a great deal more than that. Advance payments are linked to book length, and, in an unmodded game, are paid at the rate of 1/2 Simolean per page. Oh, and for some extremely ignorant reason, this amount is the same whether your Sim is a level 0 unknown or a level 10 world-renowned master author. Call me silly, but I think most publishers would gladly give Stephen King a much larger advance than they would give to Johnny Noname. So I changed the amount of Advances as follows:

• level 0 - There was no option to change this for level 0, but it seems to be the same as level 1.
• level 1 - §1.5/page
• level 2 - §2/page
• level 3 - §2.5/page
• level 4 - §3/page
• level 5 - §3.5/page
• level 6 - §4/page
• level 7 - §4.5
• level 8 - §5/page
• level 9 - §5.5/page
• level 10 - §6/page

So you're total Advance for a 2200 page Masterpiece will be §13200! I think that makes up for the much lower Royalty payments!

How much faster is writing with this mod?

Well, it will depend on what sorts of bonuses are applied. At the most basic level (just starting out and without any bonuses), writing will be about twice as fast. The stock Page-Per-Minute value was 0.12 (or 0.125), meaning it would take 8 minutes and 20 seconds to write a single page, or 12 1/2 hours for the average (Non)Fiction novel. This mod will increase the base PPM all the way up to 0.25. The reason for this is so that the beginning career writer can crank out an average-length (Non)Fiction novel in six hours (the average work day for a normal starting career) and earn about §135 in advances. This works out to about §22 to §23 per hour, which is in keeping with starting wages for decent careers.

I've also increased a number of the bonuses that deal with speed. In the base game, Sims that have mastered Writing are able to write twice as fast as those that have not. In keeping with this, I have bumped the PPM bonus for masters of Writing up from 0.25 to 0.50. I also increased the PPM bonus for Bookworms from 0.03 to 0.1, and the PPM multiplier for Sims that have completed the "Speed Writer" challenge from 1.4 to 2. There is also a hidden PPM bonus for Sims that have written 20 books, but in the vanilla game, it is set to zero! It seems strange to me to have it there and not use it, so I increased it to 0.1.

What changes have been made as far as the skill challenges?

For one thing, I've lowered the amount of § that needs to be earned to complete the "Speed Writer" challenge from §30000 to §25000. The only reason for this was that I liked the sound of §25000 better.

I also made a change that relates to the "Genre Writer" challenge. It's not a change to the challenge itself, but rather to the reward for completing the challenge. What I did was increase the "Max % change from hidden skill" value from 60 to 90. What that actually does is it increases the likelihood that a (for example) Masterpiece Writer (a Sim that has written 5 Masterpieces) will have a best-seller when they write a Masterpiece. In fact, there will be very little chance that it will not be a best-seller. After all, a true master in a specific genre generally does have a best-seller when they release a new novel in that genre.

What other changes have been made to writing?

Well, the biggest and newest change is that writing will now gain fun instead of draining it. I know I personally (usually) enjoy my writing, as does every other author I know. If you don't enjoy it, you're not going to pursue it as a career! The base value was set at -0.1. I just removed the minus sign. I found that worked quite well, as 0.1 is the same setting that is used for how much fun is gained from painting.

I also lowered the number of books that need to be read in order to gain a bonus to writing speed from 50 to 25. 50 just seemed too high. And I also increased the hidden skill multiplier from 0.1 to 0.15. To be perfectly honest, I don't recall why, though.

The only other change I made was to tweak the "Royalty Rating" system. This doesn't actually do anything that changes writing. All it does is control the §,§§,§§§ et cetera values listed next to the available genres in the skill journal. With the changes I made to the values of written books, the default values for this system would have had every genre listed with only one § symbol next to it! Now they will all have the same (or at least nearly the same) value listed in the skill journal as they had before this mod.

Is there anything else I ought to know about this mod?

I guess first of all, though it shouldn't need to be said, YAWN2 will not be compatible with the original YAWN. And it won't play well with other writing mods either, including any other mods that make writing faster or more fun. That's about all I can think of. I hope you enjoy this mod. Thanks.

Additional Credits:
Thanks to SolaceInSound's Solace In Sound's Writing Mod and Chaavik's Faster Novel Writing For Sims 3for the inspiration to do this.
Extra special thanks to everybody that has ever taken the time to help people figure out how to make mods.
A world of thanks to the 10,763 (as of right now) people who have downloaded the original YAWN, and all of you that said thanks and gave feedback! This one's for you!
And a big thank you to the mod(s) that patiently worked with me to help redesign this description, all the mods in general for helping to make MTS an excellent site, and everybody else that is responsible for even making MTS exist.
Oh, and thanks to me for making the original YAWN so that I could update it.