Writing For All

Writing the Story

When you're writing or really telling any story, try to avoid telling it like instructions. Instead of telling what's happening, describe what's happening.

Ex:

Telling:

He listened to the birds chirp outside and felt a warm breeze blow through his hair. He sipped at his drink, holding the hot mug in his hands.

Describing:

Birds chirped just outside, their songs mixing with branches moving in the wind. The breeze came in, welcomed, rustling through his hair.

I'm not sure if either of those are actually decent, but I hope it gets the point across.

When you tell the story instead of describing it, it comes across as just reading a manual. This happened, then this, and then this. You're going to use this, of course, but try to not use it for every line in your story. If you do and it works, great! But I've found that it takes away from the story somewhat and the actual telling of it.

I thought of this 'cause I'm doing editing for my own story (only the first chapter- the only thing I have right now) and good gods, help me. I think editing is more painful than actually hard.