I got a new idea for a project. It's a five part fantasy novel series detailing the adventures a group of five characters takes across five different kingdoms. It's one that I'm both really excited about because it's inspired by video games. It has sidequests, character quest chains that progress with each chapter, mysteries, lore, an escort mission where the characters contemplate if the escortee is trying to get them killed. It also explores themes such as growth, the stages of grief, the cycle of revenge and how it makes everyone suffer, and family. The reason I'm hesitant is because: 1. They're journal novels. There won't be much action involved. The characters might describe some of their actions and some of their conversations, but it's mostly going to be observations and commentary on events as they unfold. I don't know if people will find it too riveting. 2. The conflict surrounding the story is honestly pretty simple. The characters journey from kingdom to kingdom, searching for a cure for one character's illness and the answers to another character's past, while also getting clues as to what really happened to the land as a whole. The conflict for one of the characters for the fifth book is the most interesting, but even then the story is pretty simple. It's more about the journey than the destination. If I do it right then it could be fun, though I'm still worried that no one would want to read it. That being said, does anyone have any tips on how to make a good epistolary novel? I have zero experience with this kind of storytelling, I just thought it'd be an interesting way to tell the tale of an adventure. Any tips would be much appreciated.
Does it need to be nothing but journal? Could it alternate, or maybe have a short journal entry at the beginning of each chapter or something? You can do it entirely through journal entries and still make the scenes and action impactful. You could have the style of writing change a bit when it gets to the parts that need to be more engaging (scene, as opposed to sequel). It could still be written journal-form, but I know in my journals I write very differently at different times, often depending on what I'm writing about and how clearly I want to get it across. At times it will be pretty shallow telling, and then when I get to things that I feel need to be explained in more detail I'll go into some much deeper showing. You could sort of transition between the two, something like this: Wed. Feb 7 Ascended to highest ledge before peak. Wide enough to walk on, in places much wider. Set up tents for final night's sleep before finishing tmmro. But disaster struck. Emiliano was getting mountain sickness. Nobody expected it of him—he's climbed higher and more often than all the rest of us. He took to his tent and tried some native remedies the guides knew about, but nothing was helping— It went from very abbreviated journaling to much more in-depth writing, and I think it feels motivated because things got more intense, it would be natural to want to capture it in more detail and with some feeling.
Yeah, you might have a problem with that. Writing one epistolary novel is difficult and requires a lot of creativity. A five part series sounds difficult, to say the least. I'd try writing a few chapters of the first one--if you haven't already--to see if it's even viable. And I would have somebody else read it sooner rather than later. The thing about epistolary is you often need several forms of letters to make it interesting, not just journal entries. I've seen a few use newspaper articles, personal correspondence, office memos, postcards, emails, fictional stories within stories, AND diaries just to keep it together.
Check out Steve Kluger. He writes a lot (all?) of epistolary. The Last Days of Summer is particularly good. https://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Summer-Steve-Kluger/dp/0380797631 Basically a young boy pesters his favorite baseball player with fan mail until the two of them strike up a correspondence. That's probably two thirds of the book. The rest is news reports, post cards, war reports (WWII is happening in the background), and other epistolary things. It's crazy short as each page is basically a short-ish letter. Maybe 30K words all in?
I'd recommend reading Dracula too. I think that novel works because it's about slow-building horror, not heart-pounding terror.
Yep, Dracula, too. I'll pore over my bookshelves later. Got another one or two in there, I think. Epistolary is awesome but its margin for effectiveness is narrow, narrative wise. There's got to a good reason for it and the story kind of has to be fitted around the format. Changes the decision making process a bit.
I suppose one thing I could do is, during something like an exposition scene or a character introduction scene, or say that I have a character sing a song or something where it wouldn't make sense to write it down, I could switch to a third person perspective.
