An epistolary is a story or novel that is written through the lens of documents, such as journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, and the like. The idea is to give the reader a sense of realism through the eyes of the individual. A narrator is rarely used.
Some of my favorite stories have been centered around letters written back and forth or from the perspective of journal entries.
A lot of popular authors have experimented with epistolaries in the past, and many have become classics. It’s all about how you connect to your reader and whether you can get them to care about the characters.
Of course, that’s true regardless of what style or prose you use.
Why Write an Epistolary Story?
An epistolary novel or story offers a few benefits that are somewhat separate from a traditional novel. For instance, they usually offer a high degree of intimacy between the readers and the characters. After all, they are reading diary entries, personal correspondence, and getting insight into personal thoughts and feelings.
Epistolaries also allow for writing multiple points of view without the risk of confusing the readers. This is done through obvious shifts between characters, dates before paragraphs, and other tools and layouts corresponding with various types of mediums.
The plot and character development come strictly from the interactions and deliveries of the documents, pages, or files.
Instead of a narrator describing scenes, the delivery is from a character’s perspective. That means it could be incomplete. When was the last time you described an entire location when writing in your journal, in an email, or through text messages?
In any case, writing an epistolary story can break up the monotony of writing if you find yourself in a rut. It’s a great exercise in your flexibility as a writer and can open all kinds of possibilities down the road.
How Do You Write an Epistolary Story?
Perhaps the most difficult part of writing an epistolary story is keeping it natural. No one who writes an email tells the person reading it that it’s an email. However, you need to offer enough information to keep readers invested in the character and plot development.
So, how do you go about writing an epistolary story?
Writing an Epistolary Story
- Pick Your Medium
Are you using journal entries, newspaper clippings, emails, text messages, handwritten letters, news broadcasts, or a combination?
- Decide on the Perspective
Is this from a single point of view (journal entries), correspondence (letters and messages), or multiple characters?
- Keep it Natural
Authenticity is key to engaging your audience. Keep the flow as natural as possible regarding the medium.
- Give Each Voice a Unique Quality
Separate each character and interaction with a unique voice. You don’t want to confuse the reader, especially with multiple characters.
- Drive the Plot Forward
Every interaction has to drive the plot along without feeling like fluff or filler. What would keep you reading someone’s diary?
Step 1: Picking Your Medium
Epistolaries can use a wide range of mediums, especially today in the age of technology. As long as you’re able to tell an engaging tale from one interaction to the next, the format is completely up to you and the timeline. I mean, few people write letters by hand nowadays.
Some mediums that might make a great epistolary story include:
- handwritten letters
- journal entries
- emails
- text messages
- social media comments
- newspaper articles
- news broadcasts
- personal log entries
- documents of any kind
- or a mixture of the above
In college, I read an epistolary story from a student written from the perspective of a naval officer through duty logs.
When mixing mediums, make sure they are logical and propel the story forward. You might not want to mix in too many mediums to reduce confusion. However, you don’t strictly have to stick with a single format.
Ask yourself, “Does this document make sense and is relevant to the story?”
Step 2: Using Perspectives
Just like any other novel, an epistolary can have quite a few perspectives on the plot as it unfolds. You can use a single perspective through journal entries, or involve two or more characters through letters, emails, or social media posts.
Something else you’ll need to consider is that most of these interactions are going to be from a first-person point of view. In reality, how often have you sent an email written in the third-person?
When writing epistolary stories, you’ll use first-person POVs more often, using the individual’s mannerisms and character traits. You could include second-person in the form of something like an ad on social media that is relevant to drive the story forward. But even then, it’s from the perspective of the company.
Step 3: Keeping the Epistolary Natural
As I pointed out earlier, a great epistolary has a natural flow. That means you’ll need to reel back on the narration and let the characters tell the story. This also means that each character shows their flaws and strengths through written dialogue and interaction.
Writing an epistolary story is similar to writing lines of dialogue. That means it’ll often be incomplete, grammatically incorrect, and sometimes sloppy. Even if you use email as a medium, not everyone writes with a spellchecker or Grammarly running. Perhaps that could be a distinction between two characters.
Another aspect of delivering authenticity is displaying the medium that is being used. It not only helps with clearing confusion as to what the reader is experiencing, but it also gives the layout a realistic presence in the mind’s eye.
For instance, formatting an email section of the story would include the to, from, and subject lines before the paragraph. If you’re writing something based in the 1800s to early 1900s, telegrams often used shortened texts. That was mostly to save on money, as each character often came at a price.
The point is that you want to keep the layout and flow as natural as possible. Make readers feel like they are actually reading those entries or listening to broadcasts. This means doing a bit of research on those mediums, but the trade-off is a realistic and authentic storyline.
Step 4: Voicing Each Character or Interaction
Now comes the fun part. Each interaction needs to have a separate voice and mentality. It’s akin to how you would write dialogue in your prose novels. Each interaction is governed by the way an individual character writes or speaks.
Essentially, you need the character’s personality, behaviors, and traits to come through in the text.
For example, journal entries or letters will have a more relaxed and personal flow. An email might seem more professional. Not to mention that word choices can easily show emotions depending on the interaction.
Individuality is key in any prose story or novel. But it’s exceptionally vital in an epistolary story as there is no narrator to describe emotions, inner thoughts, or scenes. It’s all done from the perspective of an individual, and not everyone sees or experiences things the same way.
Step 5: Driving the Plot Forward
Each segment of the epistolary layout needs to drive the plot forward. Like any other prose novel, you need to avoid filler and fluff if it’s not pertinent to the plot.
Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t add segments for comedic effect or to slow the pace of the story. But you don’t want too many interactions that feel random or disconnected from what’s going on.
If you want to get real creative, you can include various mediums to drive the plot forward. For instance, perhaps there is a news broadcast or article that discusses the overall arching plot based on the interactions of the characters.
Two guys having a conversation over text messages about robbing a convenience store. Then, jump to a news broadcast about how the robbery was foiled.
There are all kinds of ways you can drive a plot forward with a single medium or with multiple. You’re only limited by your imagination and how well you engage the readers.
Well, that and what makes sense for the plot to move forward.
Mixing In the Epistolary with Regular Novels
Is it possible to include elements of the epistolary story in a regular novel? Absolutely. In fact, a lot of authors include things like newspaper clippings, articles, letters, and even emails to accentuate the flow.
In one of my short stories, the ending is the actual newspaper article of the Roswell, New Mexico crash incident involving UFOs, as well as an article introducing the idea of a chupacabra.
You can use certain formats in between chapters, as their own chapter, as an introduction to a new part, and so much more.
However, you still want to make the transition natural and obvious. If you start interjecting mediums in the middle of a page without context, it might get confusing for the reader. As with all prose, the story needs to be comprehensible and engaging.
Could you alternate chapters between regular prose and epistolary layout? Yes, but then you have to ask yourself why you’re doing that. Is it to highlight heavy plot points through narrative exposition while having letters going back and forth between characters? What would the purpose be of the documents existing outside of a narrative layout?
Have a purpose of why you would want to mix epistolary components in a narration. Otherwise, it might seem like a forced expression without having context or realism.
Examples of Epistolary Stories
There are a lot of examples of epistolary novels and stories. And I bet a lot of folks don’t know how some extremely popular movies and such got their start. Some of these use a series of mediums to tell a story; quite effectively, I might add.
Some examples I can think of off the top of my head include:
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
In Frankenstein, the novel is nestled between letters and correspondence between characters to build the plot. The end result is a book that has had a multitude of film adaptations throughout the years, showing how effective epistolary novels are, even in the early 1800s.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Dracula, published toward the end of the 1800s, is a collection of documents ranging from personal diaries and journals to phonographic notes of patients. Bram Stoker did an amazing job of including a variety of media to break down the story of the infamous vampire.
Stephen King’s Jerusalem’s Lot
Jerusalem’s Lot, a short story in the novel Night Shift, is told through various correspondences, notes, and journal entries taking place as the protagonist slips into madness. On a side note, Night Shift is one of my favorite Stephen King books. There are a lot of great stories in it.
Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla
In the 1880s, Guy de Maupassant published “The Horla,” a story comprised of journal entries about a man who is convinced he and his home are possessed by an invisible spirit. I read this short story recently in the Horror Classics book I bought at Barnes & Noble.
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
In The Color Purple, we follow the story through a series of written personal letters between the protagonist’s sister and God. It is also the basis for the award-winning movie of the same name. I remember when the movie came out in 1985 with an all-star cast.
Epistolary FAQ
Technically, there are three styles of epistolary stories. They are monophonic (a single perspective), dialogic (two people interacting), and polyphonic (three or more perspectives). The one that works best depends on the author and the story itself. What type makes more sense for what you want to convey?
While Samuel Richardson popularized the epistolary style in 1740, you can go all the way back to 1 BCE with the Roman poet Ovid. However, contemporary folk might point out Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne in 1669 with his story, The Letters of a Portuguese Nun being among the first actual uses of epistolary storytelling.
Being able to deliver realism through dialogue, a lack of narration, and a restriction to specific perspectives are among the top documented disadvantages. Essentially, you need a plausible and realistic reason why someone is documenting something.
That is a difficult question to answer, actually. Remember, a good book is subjective. But if we’re talking about books that have had an impact over the ages through a myriad of media, it would be a toss-up between Frankenstein and Dracula. Both books still hold a strong presence in society today more than 200 and 130 years since publishing, respectively.
Writing an epistolary novel is akin to writing pure dialogue. The trick is to express the tension and plot within the writing from a certain person’s perspective. In a narration, the storyteller has more control over what is conveyed to the reader. I don’t think one is more difficult than the other. It all comes down to the story you want to write and which you feel comfortable writing.
Do You Have Plans for an Epistolary Story?
I thoroughly enjoy reading stories with an epistolary style to them. It’s kind of like taking a peek into someone’s personal life and being nosy, while offering a bit of detective work to understand what is going on.
Let’s say you find your great-great-grandmother’s diary. Would you read it, or toss it aside? It would be an insight into your family and the life she was living all those years ago.
Of course, most epistolary stories you read are fictional tales. But the same intimacy applies when reading through entries and personal thoughts.
I plan on writing a few epistolary stories as soon as I have time. In fact, I have one planned for the anthology I’m working on that happens between the books Kingmaker and Fury.
What are you writing?
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