Tips and tricks for Epistolary novel writing

Well I've never done it, so I won't say too much, but one thing to keep an eye on is to make sure it's realistic.

There's nothing worse than somebody describing conversations in great depth when you know they're probably writing about it a few days later, or for that matter describing another person's clothing/a building/the exact time something happened unless it fits with the character or it's important enough for them to remember it.

I find that when a writer starts to write out dialogue in a letter it just breaks the continuity, so even though the writing can be great, it won't fit in the context.

I think it can distance you from your audience too much unless you come up with a great reason to do it.

Better would be to have a first person character find or be mailed the letters. And then he can have reaction or obsess about things. Or in the case of documents - it can go the route of HoL (not telling you to copy, but it's a good example).

If you don't have a good reason - it's pointless to do it this way. Just like in all writing, everything needs to be justified.

On the one hand, I agree with you; very often, people just stick shit into their writing for the hell of it, or because it sounds cool. It can have no bearing on the story or the quality of the work.

But then, is the barrage of product descriptions in American Psycho REALLY justified to the extent that people here claim? Is McCarthy's pseudo-biblical tone REALLY justified in Blood Meridian? For that matter, is the broken English in Pygmy all that useful, or the reverse page numbering in Survivor?

Did Eliot's most famous work, The Wasteland, NEED to be so difficult? Did Pound's Cantos NEED to be so allusive? I don't know. Quite possibly, or they wouldn't have caused such controversy. But what separates TS Eliot from Bret Easton Ellis, and why are there so many apologies for Eliot's modernist techniques but so few for Ellis's (apart from the century that has passed since The Wasteland)?

Patrick Bateman is narcissistic, vain, and materialistic. Ellis makes that much clear, but like you're saying now, people question whether this book got a little word-y with tech speak and products (amongst other things) for the sake of self-indulgence...that it wasn't justified.

Take the Dorsia thing, for instance. He obsesses over getting into this place, and it's not because of the food or the atmosphere or any other number of the traditional reasons that one would want to dine there. He wants to be seen, and by extension of that, will garnish prestige amongst his peers.

As far as products are concerned--that intimate knowledge of high-end stereo equipment or Armani suits is classic materialism, yes, but so concentrated and germane to Bateman that this sense of materialism is one of his most prevalent character traits. Contrast that to how very little he thinks of people, or more specifically, human life, and I can see why Ellis felt justified in having the Bateman character go on long diatribes about clothes and restaurants and such. It shows just how removed the Bateman character really is when he can connect with a necktie or a CD player or a restaurant more than a person. Even the people that surround Bateman are accessories to a degree.

The connection that Bateman has with his material possessions is almost romanticized, considering how passionately he speaks of these things and his intimate knowledge of them. This, as a reader, sold me on Bateman's detachment and his various acts of violence that ensue throughout the novel.

If Ellis hadn't stressed the products and their apparent necessity, I think we'd be reading a completely different book.

But taking the topic at hand - I think doing an Epistolary Novel for no reason is going to do nothing but distance your audience. You have to come up with a reason for it.

It's amazing how often AP comes up around here. I reckon that around 5% of all threads mention it at least once.

That said, I'm starting to agree with you. I might even try re-reading it.

I decided to do it since it fit the story. A notebook, a dairy, and letters play major aspects in the story and if I'm able to tell the story form them, why not.

And I just wanted to do something different.

Try to make it not suck.

Seriously, though, my second thought is: Does all of the novel have to be in epistolary form? Jumping between epistolary form and first/third-person/omniscient narration could be a way to get around the limitations of the form. I think that this is a commonly-used tactic to make the author's task easier, and could be seen as a bit of a cop-out.

Of course, I have never written an epistolary novel, or any novel, so I'm basically talking out of my ass.

Good luck.

You could read The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. It is an epistolary novel, I just don't know if it fits your taste. And to keep things interesting, why don't you write it not in chronological order.