: Re: How to make travel stories interesting? I have some good, true travel stories. Things that involve guns, explosions, and all kinds of other good stuff. I want to write them down, but I'm

@Lengel543

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You have travel stories that sound like they could be interesting, but it doesn't follow that seeing or doing interesting things will make interesting stories unless you tell them as a story, with beginnings, middles, endings, etc.

A lot of this depends on who your audience is. If you're giving an after action report to an Incident Commander after spending the day fighting a wildfire, the type of writing you'll use is completely different than the type of writing you'd use as you describe to your friends how you were driving through the forest road escaping from a flareup and the stupid bear wouldn't get out of your way.

You say that it's against your ethics to make stuff up, and that would be appropriate in an after action report or other kinds of reporting, where the facts of what happened rule over emotional impact and enjoyment, but in a story you can't use dry factual reporting and keep people's attention. This isn't making things up, it's being true to the essence of what happened and helping your readers feel as if they're in your shoes experiencing the things you're telling them.

So the question is, are you writing a story or a report, and who is your audience? If your audience is expecting a story and you give them a report, then you'll lose your audience. If your commanding officer, or your editor is expecting a report and you give them a story, they might enjoy it, but still be unhappy because they had to dig through your writing to find the facts.

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