On Writing & Storytelling: Well, It Looks as Though ‘Epistolary’ Style Might Work After All….

Late Morning, Tuesday, October 24, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hi, all. I hope you are doing well on this next-to-last Tuesday in October.

I have a lot of stuff to do today, some of it related to the novel, and some of it not, so this post is going to be brief.

Yesterday afternoon I started writing Chapter 12 as a modern epistolary chapter by presenting it as an exchange between two characters who are temporarily apart. One is in New York City; the other is in London. Because this chapter is set in the year 2000, I thought email would be a good substitute for either cell phone calls or “snail mail” letters, thus allowing me to use the Talking Head Avoidance Device while still channeling the epistolary style of having the characters communicate via the written word.

So far, I have (in rough draft form) one day’s worth of emails between my narrator/protagonist and the woman he has fallen in love with. I will be making corrections to that batch of emails before tackling the second day’s correspondence.

Well, as I said earlier, I have much to do and not a lot of time, so I’ll close this post here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.