Scripting an epistolary (an exchange of letters) story

Yeah, you are overthinking it. Two friends who just like letters is justification enough. My wife has a friend who writes her letters. No email, no FB, just letters. Or go back to any time before the mid 90's. In the "letters" challenge I just placed 2 of my entries in earlier times when people wrote letters and one story was written as an exchange of letters between friends.

In today's day and age the letter writing (with the exception of some of the old timers - more likely the ladies), you don't see that anymore. Everything is TEXT, E-Mail, FB, Twitter, etc... Kind of sad in a way, but I have to admit I'm the same way. Most of my letters are E-Mail. I share no personal info on FB that I feel is no one else's business. I use Twitter like maybe once every two months if it's lucky. I do TEXT, but not in letter form.

Yes, it is very sad that letter-writing has become a thing of the past. I came across a box letters the other day that my mother had saved many years ago. A box of printed emails just wouldn't have had the same effect, if they had even been kept. But, yet, most of my communication is electronic now for many reasons. Even my old ex-mother-in-law sends more emails than actual letters .

Have the reason there in your own mind, if you need to, but unless that reason advances the plot, or explains a character's motivations, leave the explanation out of the story. As a reader, i'd be MUCH more forgiving of unexplained resort to letter-writing than an explanation that screams "I wanted to write an epistolary story, but the only way I could justify it was by sending one of the characters on a 6-month assignment to the Australia outback where there is no internet or cell service."

I'm with CK here, it's much easier to set the story in a time before modern communications technology.

The thing to remember is that people are basically the same regardless of when they lived - a cursory study of history reveals that, so the time difference between now and 20 years ago is insignificant if the subject matter is the people themselves and what they do.

It's quite easy to provide an early clue as to the approximate time a story is set - the clothing styles, vehicles, modes of speech, or architecture all can be used. I think it's important to do this early on in a piece, because it helps the reader set the scene, and stops them thinking "Why can't he use a mobile phone/motor car/gun" when this would be the obvious thing to do should it be set now. The reader makes the initial assumption that a story is set now and needs clues to tell her that it isn't.

When writing future-set stories there's usually an early mention of space travel or something like that to help. When writing in alternate universes where magic is commonplace the same thing applies, so historically set pieces will benefit from this clue in the same way.

Here I disagree. In general, background info which does not or need not advance the plot or directly influence or explain character motives will IMO often enhance a story and make it richer, *provided* that the story is not overwhelmed, and particularly that the background is not presented in a huge lump or "Infodump". (Of course that means that a long story can tolerate more background than a shorter one could.) GoodGulf has been adept in presenting background info in many stories, including his "County line" series. It may well be that NJR has encountered too many unskilled writers who dump background info into a story in undigestible lumps.

All that said, if you want the story to be modern, why not use email? I agree that a mix of FB, twitter, email and other media might well be too confusing. But particularly for long and private communications, basic email is more attractive anyway, and many people choose not to use social media in any case. (I do not, for one, and I am hardly digitally challenged.)

Epistolary stories can be great fun. My "Red Letters" is on this site. A favorite of mine is _Freedom and Necessity_ a novel set in the 1850s (mostly). that has four main writers, and several less frequent ones, and you have to watch who is writing to who, because some people want to conceal or distort some facts from particular others, and some are more careful observers than others. Another fun one was _Sorcery and Cecilia_ a sort of magical version of a Jane Austen novel. Yet another was "Computers DEon't Argue" in which many of the letters are computer-generated, although printed on paper, as it was a pre-internet story.

I do think that some indication of why the characters are exchanging communications is desirable, but why they choose a particular format, unless it is a plot point, need not be gone into in detail, in my view.

I look foreward to seeing this, and if you want a beta reader, let me know.

I have no objection to details which makes a story richer, or those that (once an author has the background in mind) come out naturally in the telling of the story. I do that all the time myself. What distracts from the story is otherwise unrelated detail that is grafted onto a story (in lump sum or in pieces), in this case which would be obvious as having the sole purpose of justifying the author's choice of narrative methods. There should be some other reason for providing the info to the reader -understanding the character, understanding the setting, understanding the events. If the story-telling method needs justification that is outside the story (including everything done to make it richer), then choose a different story-telling method.

A lot of the suggestions made on this threads give perfectly plausible reasons why letters might be written rather, than some other form of communication, and those reasons might well be part of good story. If I understand his post, though, GG seems already to have conceived of a story. To append one of these reasons after the fact would likely be a mistake. And hence my earlier advice - "Just write the damned letters."

Tell your readers the characters are Amish. Problem solved in one sentence.

If that doesn't work for you, then I agree with some of the other posts: no explanation is necessary - some people just prefer to write traditional letters, rather than use electronic communication. No further explanation is needed. The reader will just accept it, and move on with the story.

In my last (unsuccessful) entry to a competition I used the epistolary style, but to speed things up I had one writing by snail mail and the other replying by telegram, (anyone remember those?).

A point to remember is that this was set in the days before 1st and 2nd class mail, when one could post a letter quite late at night and always expect the mail to be delivered the following day. Now, no matter how many stamps you put on the envelope, you cannot guarantee a following day delivery.

If you set your exchange of letters in either the pre-war or immediately post war period, prompt replies will be quite realistic.

Even during the war with the distraction of the Luftwaffe, the trains and mail tended to run on time.

I still write letters to friends occasionally. Why? Because I enjoy writing them. I will write them over the course of a couple of days...picking the letter back up and adding news and information, as and when I think of it.

Maybe I'm simple (actually, no maybe about it) but if a story was written in letter form I would just accept it. It honestly wouldn't occur to me to question why it wasn't emailed etc.

So i agree with Rick (hmm, don't I always? Lol.)...just write the damn letters!