Write a Letter

When will the United States Postal Service will go the way of the Pony Express?  It suffers from financial problems and needs creative thinking to drive it to the next level. Now we have email, texting and Twitter to communicate. Companies like United Parcel Service deliver packages.

Will we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions without cards? Thank you notes will arrive in email, even via text messages. Messages will sing in colors online.

Even though individuals might not exchange letters of length and substance, the epistolary form can survive in literature. Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Wallace Stegner, Stephen King embedded letters in the text. David Mitchell used the style in Cloud Atlas.

The epistolary story consists of letters written from one character to another or moves between characters.  The convention of the story may also include that of a monologue spoken aloud by one character to another.

The variations include the narrator speaking in intimate confessional to a friend or lover.  Or, he may present his case to a jury or a mob.  The narrator could pour out his heart in a love letter that he knows

(and we know) he will never send.

This style involves the opposite of what's employed in a story told to the reader.  The listener as well as the teller becomes involved in the action.  Readers become eavesdroppers with all the ambiguous intimacy that position entails.

Creative write:  Write a sketch based on the epistolary form.  

Choose one or create your own.

 l.  The narrator is concerned about the choice he made to sell property that had been in the family for  years.

2.  Develop four letters among two friends attempting to settle an argument.  First letter details the problem. The second responds to it. The third attempts reconciliation. The last letter puts it to rest or leaves it unresolved.