Why do so many people write condensed stories? I mean they spend the time to sit down and write their stories, but give minimal dialogue, commentary, interaction, or action. The stories are just summaries.

And when they do write out the story showing us what happened instead of summarizing it they write in a bland passive voice.

When I was a child I could not figure out how people got simple stories to be so long. I first started writing when I was eight or nine, and I wrote those short little two or three page stories where I basically give a summary of an idea I had and think it's a story. Only later did I begin to understand that filling in the details is where the story really is. Showing and providing that emotional connection is where the story is. Taking your time and providing the information the reader needs is where the story is. And finally, and this is where I still need a lot of work, getting the ryhtm right so that readers coast through the slow but necessary times from the last burst of excitement and because they are truly concerned about something going on in the story. Those speed up slow downs have to be timed right and I haven't figured out how to do it yet. Possibly because it's one thing no one has any advice on.

Aside from impatient, I think there may be one other possibility: difficulty. When you get past this vague idea that aliens kidnapped these humans and took them to their planet and the humans escaped and found a way back home you have to figure some things out. You have to figure out who the aliens are, how they are diffirent from humans, what kind of society they had, why they would have kidnapped the aliens, how their technology works, how the humans managed to overcome them enough to get back home, and how the humans got back home. Did they drive the aliens own ship and how did they figure out how to use it? These questions are difficult to answer. THey are not part of the daydreaming people often confuse for storytelling. A lot of people think they like to write. A lot of people think they like to tell stories, but a lot of people are wrong and don't know what it's really all about. It's hard work and requires a lot of thinking. (In advance or during the writing, I'm not doing an outlining vs. just writing argument here.) You have to imagine more than something vague; you have to have something specific. It has to be real enough to make the reader believe.

When I dream at night I live out these incredible stories in my head and I used to try to turn them into stories. Just last night I had this exciting adventure of kidnap and escape from a riverboat moving down a dangerous river. But that's not a story, that's a thing. That's not to say I couldn't write a story of kidnap and escape on a dangerous river, but I would have to fill in all the details that did not come from my dream....which is most of them. Why did someone kidnap me? I have absolutely no idea from the dream. How did I escape? I don't know, I seem to have forgotten that part. Itgot really confusing around that time or maybe I just forgot. Point is, even if you get ideas from dreams there is work, work, work. Writers can be dreamers. I sure am. But we have to be MORE than just dreamers. We have to have dedication, talent, and a strong desire to get that butt in the chair and create something real.

And the whole while he thought his deluge of ideas was a constructive contribution to the process of "writing."

On a lark I once ran a game (as the storyteller/ gamemaster) never had played the game did not know the rules. Just looked at the pitcures and made up what if story.

I ended up getting paid to run these stories for about six months. It seemed most of the gamers could only summarize their scenes.

BTW I am not gamer and besides that episode haven't done it again.

Sometimes you need to summarize, because those parts aren't that important to the story.