A story told entirely through documents like letters, emails, texts, or diary entries instead of traditional narration.
Epistolary fiction is built from fictional documents - letters, journal entries, emails, text messages, news clippings, blog posts, or any combination of these. Instead of a narrator describing events directly, the reader pieces the story together from these fragments. The format creates an automatic sense of intimacy because every document has a specific author writing for a specific audience, which means every word carries subtext about the writer's biases and blind spots.
The epistolary form hands you a built-in excuse for voice-driven writing. Each document has its own author with their own agenda, so you get to practice writing distinct character voices without needing elaborate scene-setting. It also trains you to think about what characters choose to reveal and conceal, which is a skill that transfers to all your fiction.
Told through diary entries, letters, newspaper clippings, and a ship's log - the fragmented format amplifies the horror because no single character has the full picture.
Celie's letters to God give the novel its raw, intimate voice and let the reader watch her sense of self evolve over decades.
Uses instant messages, military files, interviews, and surveillance transcripts to tell a sci-fi story in a wildly inventive visual format.
Give each document-writer a distinct vocabulary, sentence length, and set of verbal habits. Read each voice aloud to check.
Ask yourself: would this person really put this in a letter or text? If not, find another document type or character to convey the info.
Date-stamp your documents and keep a master timeline so readers can track when things happened.
Write a scene using only three text messages and two diary entries from two different characters who just had a huge argument. Let the reader figure out what happened without either character stating it directly. Focus on what each character leaves unsaid.