With some exceptions, most stories incorporate some measure of outdoor setting. If you’re like me, trying to pen a believable and fully enveloped outdoor scene that will draw your readers in is very difficult in front of a monitor screen. Trying to write about a babbling brook cascading over polished, mossy rocks can be difficult if the only noise you hear is the humming of your computer fan.
I’ve found that being right in the middle of the great outdoors can increase your sense of the surroundings and better translate that environment into your writing. We often forget the many natural sounds, smells and sights that are all a part of a real world setting and to omit such details in a narrative can leave readers unfulfilled.
On the other hand, writing about an outdoor setting while sitting upon a rock and listening to the birds, insects, wind and other sounds will undoubtedly affect the words in your paragraph. Such activities also create a lasting memory from which you can draw from if the writing bug hits you at a time when you can’t make it outside.
