Art book because yeah-

Tips For Story Writing... From a Child :]

It's me. I'm the child. I've kind of just been thinking about it and I thought I'd put some things about writing stories that I've learned over the years. I've been writing since I was somewhere around eight(8) or nine(9) years old. I'm not telling you how long it's been since then since I don't want to put my age on here, but I'll tell you I am much older than that now.  But anyways, let's begin!

Emotions
An important thing to look at is how you write how characters are feeling. If you want someone to feel immersed in your story, it helps to really describe the emotions a character is experiencing. If I say: 

' He was sad, but tried to hold it back as not to embarrass himself. '

you don't really get much out of that. It's about show, not tell. So, instead, you could try something like this:

' He took a shaky breath, his eyes stinging as he blinked back the tears threatened to crawl down his face as best he could. A lump was forming in his throat, making it impossible to respond. His arms were shaking. Why were they shaking? He wrapped them around himself to try and get them to stop, his chest still stuttering as more uneven breaths came. God, he probably looked like an idiot, curling into himself like this. Why wasn't he saying anything? Say something! '

Don't you feel more when you read that? I didn't even use the word 'sad' or 'anxious' once. You know so much more about how the character thinks and reacts to things and, based off of how it's written, you can infer someone has told them some terrible news, or maybe reminded them of a sadder memory, causing them to be super upset. The character also clearly doesn't want to seem upset while around whoever they're talking to. You can't infer this from the previous example, even though both examples tell you the same thing. 

Show not tell is one of the most important principles in a ton of different creative medias, and writing is definitely one of them. Describing how a character feels can make it easier for the reader to feel the emotions the character is feeling. Telling a reader how the character is supposed to feel and, subsequently, how they're supposed to feel doesn't give much depth to your stories or characters. 

How do you do this? Well, how do you feel when you feel a certain emotion? Focus on the reaction. How does your face look? Is your nose scrunched up, your eyebrows up or down, your mouth tense, your forehead creased? What are your hands doing? How about the rest of your body? How do you feel in your stomach or throat? Is your mouth dry? Are your eyes wide or pupils dilated? Is there bags under your eyes? Are your ears ringing? 

All of these questions can help to understand and write out an emotion. You don't have to check all of these off, as not every emotion needs all of these to be described, but it's good to look over them. If your character is upset, panicking, angry, sad, happy, excited, sick, fond, tired, terrified, falling for someone, day dreaming, or anything else, it's good to do more than just say that. 

Sensory Details
A lot of the time, people forget to describe what a character feels sense-wise. Everyone knows the five senses: Smell, touch, sight, taste, and hearing. It's good to try and incorporate those into your story. Senses are like a simple way of doing what describing emotions does. It helps to immerse the reader. 

If your characters are out on a beach, describe the beach's special properties sense-wise. 

' The wet sand clung to her skin, the parts that had dried feeling irritably but not unbearably scratchy. Salty sea air filled her nose as she took a deep, delighted breath. The whooshing of wind was drowned out every couple of seconds as waves crashed heavily against the nearby rocks. She could almost taste the ice cream they used to get when they were little kids. The tasty treat would've melted down her fingers as she and her friends ran across the sand, chasing birds and each other. The sun warmed her skin as she walked, and she could see it reflecting off the ocean in bright bits of white. '