I have been meaning for a while to start a thread about novels written in the epistolary form: reading them, writing them, love them, hate them….

I suppose I’m curious to know what people think because my first novel was in this form. Despite the temptation to include some snippets of narrative (which would have made the story-telling so much easier in places), having begun I stuck religiously to the format, building up the story exclusively using letters and e-mails, plus various other ‘documents’ presented to the reader – such as minutes of meetings, newspaper reports, diary extracts and excerpts from Hansard.

There are heaps of advantages for the writer. It’s actually, in some ways, a very easy way into composing a novel-length story, for a beginner, as I was. For a start: no dialogue! I find dialogue terribly difficult, and here I was, writing a book which contained not a single word of it – yippee! Also: no headaches about viewpoint. No need to choose whether to go for first person, third person, omniscient, etc, nor whether and how to switch viewpoint within a scene. It just is what it is: a series of first person accounts, in the voices of the characters. They each get to have their own say about what is happening, in their own words. It is, for the writer, a head-hopper’s charter.

The other thing is that you write it all in manageable chunks. The letters or other materials are like little self-contained building bricks, which you write individually, and then construct into a whole. It makes editing very easy, because you can insert additional bricks – or take some out - without there being any knitted-together narrative which begins to unravel as soon as you try to slip in some extra stitches.

There is an additional benefit, in a humorous book that you get the fun of showing an event from more than one viewpoint sequentially – milking the comedic potential of misunderstandings. Mind you, if you overdo this (as I fear I may have done in one or two places) the story starts to feel repetitive!

Less mechanically speaking, and more profoundly, I loved writing an epistolary book because it meant I could stand above it all. I could dip into different perspectives, but ultimately did not have to pitch my lot in with any one character, who had to be identified with more than another. It’s as if you are playing a game, standing above the pages with the reader, showing her various mini-texts and suggesting she forms her own view on them – without being obliged to take a view yourself. You can engage briefly with a character, but then stand back and laugh at them. Very meta-textual, very post-modern! It has made me wonder why there isn’t more of a trend towards this style of narrative construction.

What about as a reader? Personally I love reading epistolary novels. (Well, I would, wouldn’t I, or I wouldn’t have chosen this form myself!) They are slightly harder work at the beginning, I think, because there isn’t a linear story which the author leads you through. You have to look at the documents, and then build the story, to some extent, yourself, triangulating events and piecing together characters and relationships from the various sources out before you.

What do people think? Has anyone else written in this format, and if so what were your experiences of it? Do you like reading epistolary books? Are there any in particular you’d recommend? (Lady Susan? Salmon Fishing....? The Screwtape Letters?) Or do they irritate the hell out of you? Block engagement by being too fragmentary? Make it all too much like hard work?

Rosy

I think, like everything, epistolary novels are good if done well. I haven't read that many, but I loathed The Colour Purple

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Um . . . Didn't mean to post that.

Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela is epistolary, and is the most tedious book I've ever had the misfortune to read.

I think it's slightly old-fashioned, isn't it? But nowadays with emails, I should imagine it's a form that will grow in popularity again, cos if you look at emails as letters, more people are writing them than ever before.

Half of my current novel is written as a series of diary entries. I never thought I'd do that, but it works (I think). It's a similar method, and like you, I love the manageability of it. Not to mention the way the word count creeps up just by writing the date.

I really like it if done well. Lovecraft does it well and I enjoyed the epistolary parts of Dracula too. It can add real depth to a story.

JB

My WIP features a correspondence that hinges on mistaken identity, but I've written lots of narrative (in 1st and 3rd person) around the letters. Basically, I just don't think that I'd be able to sustain a purely epistolary novel. More to the point, I don't think I'd particularly enjoy reading one...

That said, I recently finished reading/reviewing "Four Letter Word", which is a colleciton of love letters written by over 40 of the world's top authors (Margaret Atwood to Leonard Cohen, young voices as well as old). It's fascinating to see how different writers interpreted the traditional love letter - there were emails, letters to deceased parents, misdirected epistles, rants and apologies and confessions etc. - and very easy to dip in and out of (incidentally, I attended a reading at Foyle's last week which featured four of the contributors - Hari Kunzru, Lionel Shriver, Gautam Malkani and Michel Faber - and it was very cool to hear the words being brought to life by the authors).

As i told you, Rosy, i loved your book because for a reader like myself (ie attention span of a knat nowadays) i could almost dip in and out of your book like a magazine, reading a few complete letters and emails and then stopping again - oh please write another book like this

My current WIP involves some epistolary techniques and it is great for me - the narrative is 3rd person, so the epistolary parts are a great way of slipping into 1st person and really letting the MC's character shine through.

*Chuckling* - sorry, the word 'episiotomy' keeps running through my mind now...

x

I agree putting little bits of other stuff makes for great writing - WTLF has lots of scrapbook bits and it's wonderfully easy to do.

I really liked 'The Colour Purple' - but 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' depressed me horribly. Didn't like it much.

Jane Austen does epistolery well.

Oh, I forgot all about WNTTA Kevin. I thought that was great. Really.

As someone's (Saph?) already said I think they're great when done well, but I don't think many can do them well. That said, I've not read many of them either (I will try to read yours, Rosy.)

Lovecraft could do them and it worked well in Dracy and (sorry Saph) I thought the Color P. was great too. Each to their own of course.

I can see how

The other thing is that you write it all in manageable chunks.

and being able to stand above the work would appeal and be useful, though I'm not sure I'd want to write anything without dialogue - yet at least!

Nik

You make it sound so easy, Rosy - maybe I'll try it myself! Unlike you, though, I love writing dialogue - I find that the easiest bit and the bit I enjoy writing most, whereas I really struggle with descriptive bits.

As a reader, I really like the epistolary form. It's nice to read something that's broken up into small sections, as reading time is often quite fragmented. Also I like getting the same story from different perspectives.

There's a chicklit novel 'Lucy Talks' by Fiona Walker that's all letters and e-mails, and I really enjoyed that. Haven't got around to yours yet, but it's on my list.

I thought We Need To Talk About Kevin was brilliant. And Dracula, which JB mentioned, though it's only partly epistolary - that's such a great book.

Not only am I new to writing fiction, I'm also quite new to reading it. I hadn't actually heard of the epistolary form before (I'm still learning), and it sounds a lot different from the books I've read so far. I'm intriqued, and now I want to read some.

KHG

Oh, 'Dear Nobody', I LOVE that book.

Isn't it odd how many of them are letters to non-people (dead people, unborn babies, god etc)? Why d'you think people don't just write a diary?

Sally

PS Oh, and 'Anne Frank's Diary' of course.

Oh, I've just remembered one I loved when I was a kiddie. Dear Daddy Long Legs. Did anyone else read that?

I think people write to dead people or to unborn/lost babies or whatever because there's some emotion there to give the letters a focus, and it can be a way of coming to terms with loss.

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I mean, if I lost someone and was raging with grief, I'd be far more likely to write directly to them about it than to keep a diary.

Yes, Daddy Long Legs

I'd agree, it can work, but I suspect it's the kind of thing that looks easy and is very hard. You need to be very good at different voices, and at plotting. I wonder if it's particularly suited to comedy, though? Maybe because parody and pastiche are funny. But anything which exploits the gaps between how different people see things, and the reader's sense of something not being the whole, or the only, story, has a lot of potential both comic and tragic.

Emma

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about Kevin, and The Color Purple, both of which were brilliant. (And very much not comedy, Emma!) Must look at Lucy Talks, Sidewinder, thanks for mentioning that.

The other incidental problem with the format, I found (writing a story with a central romance) was that you can't very well have sex scenes in an epistolary novel! The two protagnoists in my book were both telling their tale mainly to a key confident(e), and they even got as far as decsribing snogging, but it stretched the bounds of credibility too much to imagine either would actually tell their friends about getting down and dirty. I kept putting it off because I couldn't decide what to do - and as a result my hero ends up terribly noble and self-denying! (Poor bloke.)

Rosy

Yes, I can imagine that. It's what you might call a built-in problem. Actually, I don't think I've done a manuscript report yet which didn't say at some point, 'You've got a built-in problem by choosing to do X'... Hm, I can feel a blog post coming on...

Emma