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 |  This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
| Epistolary Writing So, this is an old way of writing that sort of faded for a while, and then made a brief resurgence, and now is returning with the modern technology trappings we have about us. So, I guess the first thing is: What is epistolary writing? Well, it comes from the Greek word for ‘letter’ – hence the epistles in the New Testament – and originally it was a story told by means of letters between the characters, or letters from one character to another detailing the story. It was as though writers “back then” thought they needed an excuse to have a story told in the first person point of view. Later on, this was mixed in with diary entries, ship logs, police reports, etc. to give a more rounded feel, and also giving multiple first person PoV characters without it being confusing. I guess the best known of these would be Bram, Stoker’s Dracula. It faded as literary tastes changed, but then Stephen King wrote Carrie which was partially epistolary, including amongst its narrative excerpts from books written by people on not only the events but on the subject of paranormal abilities. This seemed to bring it back well, and so we have Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy series where there are excerpts from the titular tome scattered throughout to explain the world. And, even more recently is Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin, wherein a mother details the events of the story in letters to her husband. The latter works brilliantly – it is one of the few books written this century that has genuinely scared me, and was the first book since I was a teenager to give me nightmares. However, this seemed to open the floodgates, and there are now books written as series of emails and social media posts, I’ve read a short story that was made up of Twitter posts (with an accurate character limit!), and I have even read a short story made up of text messages only, with all the infuriating abbreviations. This is the modern epistolary writing style. A novel I was asked to beta read was written like this (I won’t tell you where she got the idea from). It started with a blog entry, then a different character’s journal, then a letter between them (explaining why letters were sent instead of emails or the like), and then it was emails, texts, social media posts, more letters, blog entries, some extracts from web pages and books – it was quite well done style wise… just a shame the story was almost non-existent. I think she fell in love with style over content. Some advantages of an epistolary story include: more than one first person PoV character without confusing the reader is possible; info-dumps can be introduced organically; it can show more of the characters’ inner feelings; can show setting and time-frame without being explicit; the story can feel more personal. Some disadvantages of an epistolary story can include: passages being drawn out too long; too much irrelevant detail (as can happen in letters); may have an issue seeming natural (because people who write have prior knowledge that does not need to be spelt out); the story can feel disjointed. But the biggest disadvantage is it is difficult making each section by a different person feel like they are by different people. You can avoid it like Shriver in having one narrator writing letters, but otherwise, the style of writing, words and phrases used, etc. need to be unique for each individual narrator. It is hard enough in dialogue, let alone in the written word. One obvious thing is one person constantly misspells certain words, but that is really done to death. You do need to find a way to differentiate those doing the writing, though. Two other little things. First, epistolary stories really do not work in non-linear narratives. It is hard enough for a reader to keep track of who is writing what without messing up the timeline as well. An extension here is that if quoting from a make-believe book that was written in the future (comparative to the story), then the incidents should still be in order. Second, do not use real books. For that matter, do not use real people as the writers except if they have been dead long enough. Partial epistolary stories are perfectly acceptable, and can add depth to your writing, but the above still holds true and, to add to the degree of difficulty, the epistolary works should have a different voice to the surrounding prose, so it does not seem that the actual writer (you) is actually writing the letters. I do think this can be worth exploring. I have seen epistolary writing in horror, science fiction, romance, contemporary mainstream and even urban fantasy. It can be used in many different genres. Give it a go. What have you got to lose? |
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