The Lost Art Of Writing Letters

Greetings, and welcome back to the blog.

To start off, I should probably address the fact that I didn't post last week. To be completely honest, I simply forgot... It happens too I suppose. But given the fact that it was liberation day in The Netherlands last week, let's simply say I took a small holiday break.
Now that I'm back though, I did have a good think about some topics to discuss. I think that not writing every week certainly gives me some more time to come up with interesting topics, and I think today's topic is actually quite an interesting one, both for me personally as well as for the broader craft of writing.

I'm talking about letters, written monologues that serve to express thoughts and feelings to a certain recipient. And the reason I thought this was an interesting topic to touch on was because I came across the concepts of letters in multiple different ways, which made me think about its purpose and the emotional nature of them.
I read Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" recently, and you might or might not know, letters are quite a powerful part of this novel. They give us a slice of perspective from the characters that matter. In doing so, we get an insight into who these people are and what their relationship and mindset is with the main character. Personally, I thought these letters enhanced the reading experience by a lot. They did something to me that immediately made the novel seem so personal, as if you were truly living along with the characters.

In this blogpost, I'll first go over the nature of writing letters, what it was and where it's at, both from a literary perspective as well as from a more human, communication-oriented perspective. Then I'll discuss the power of letters in literary works specifically, while maybe sharing a little sneak peak of the current project I'm working on. Without further ado, let's get into it:

Digital Letters

Letters aren't what they used to be. This is a fact, unambiguous. The digitalisation of all our communication made letters essentially unnecessary. Sending a letter takes time, it takes money to stamp it and to pay for the delivery service. And additionally, it's always a bit of a gamble whether or not the letter will arrive. For the sole purpose of communication, letters are outdated. Instead, it's much quicker and easier to shoot a text, email, or hop on a call.
I feel like the only use of letters is still in the aesthetics and atmosphere of them. The idea that you'll be sending and receiving a letter, and the accompanying uncertainty is what makes it a bit more magical. But apart from this, people have kind of lost their voice in this type of communication. And it doesn't only go for physical communication, not at all. Think about it, when is the last time you send someone a letter-like monologue anywhere?

When you think about letters though, I bet the idea of an emotional landscape emerges. Because that's what most of us associate with letters, heartfelt thoughts. Particularly this aspect is what makes letters so interesting in literary works. They lean into emotion hard, whether that is a character writing someone a letter, or reading one from another character they care about.
And though I can't give you an exact insight of how many novels use letters, I do feel like I have come across it a fair few times, and I think that contrary to the real-life progressions, letter appearances haven't decreased much in these literary works.

But how do these connect? I feel like as a writer, there is a certain overlap between them. At least, in what I've noticed from my own life. I have been writing physical letters occasionally, and I have been writing them for the purpose of fiction as well. And though the voices, tones, and urgency of these letters differ significantly, I do think that monologuing is a skill just like any other, a skill where practice ultimately builds proficiency.

The Power Of Fictional Letters

Whenever I see a letter format being used in any literary work, I immediately get a little more invested. It adds something to the atmosphere and gives the reader some more layers to the characters on the pages.
I summarised a few key observations and thoughts that I think are the most interesting consequences and strengths of letter writing in a fictious setting. So let's just get into it shall we?

Deepening Characters

Writing letters in the voice of your characters does multiple things. Firstly, it gives you a better way to explore your character as a writer. You can think about what they would say, what they would feel, and importantly, what they would deem important to mention in any sort of letter. You have an opportunity to crawl into their skin and really talk as them, which, if you have a good character concept, is going to absolutely strengthen them on paper.
Secondly, it helps your readers get more involved with the character as well. It allows readers to read in the voice of your character and connect to what they're saying and feeling. This helps with immersion and conveying what kind of character you made to the readers. To summarise, it basically helps deepen your character, both as a writer and as a reader.
Finally, it also helps deepen your characters in terms of their dynamics. The beautiful thing about letters is that you can write directly from your characters, which takes away a lot of the "rules" that come with the writer's perspective. This allows you to explicitly state and describe relationships between characters, which again deepens the characters and their interaction with each other and the environment.

Fresh Perspective

The thing about letters is that they are very free. You can have your main character write a letter or read a letter from another character. This can result in all sorts of different perspectives, both literally in terms of what your writing POV is as well as more dynamically between what character's insights you're reading about. This can build a contrast, which can give new perspectives or simply offer a fresh take from the form you're using otherwise.
Another thing about this is that it can help make the setting you're writing about more dimensional rather than lineair. If you're describing everything from one character, it's sometimes hard to portray certain events or characters in a different light than what your main character thinks. Writing these letters from different characters for example helps offer new dimensions in that way, which can create significantly more depth to the world of your story.

Emotional Resonance

Finally, letters automatically put a real emphasis on emotion. After all, your characters are writing letters for a reason. And the fact that this emotion is wrapped in a letter can make the emotions and feelings so much more raw and powerful.
I touched earlier on the fact that letters can kind of go around the typical "rules", and with emotion, this is specifically interesting. Namely, as a writer you're always supposed to do "show don't tell", but obviously your characters don't obey these rules. This allows you to basically do the opposite, tell. And sometimes this contrast of what is described in a letter versus how the emotions turn out in the rest of the story can bring a lot of power to your narrative. Your characters are fully feeling and putting their emotions out onto paper, which is an amazing excuse to roll with this descriptive emotion and let the pages unfold as your characters are feeling them.

Closing Thoughts

To still give you that little sneak peak I was talking about, I'm currently working on a projects where letters form the backbone of the entire narrative. I think it can be great, especially diving into the skin of this character and writing the character's emotions as they are experiencing them brings such a personal quality to the work. At least, that's what I'm thinking so far. It's still far from being done, but the letters did feel like a great way to bring everything together, simply because of the power they hold.

If you couldn't tell yet, I think letters are a great method to apply in writing. And hopefully, I at least made you curious about including or excluding letters into your writing. As always, if you have any thoughts, ideas, criticism maybe, I'd love to hear from you through my contact page.
And with that, I'll leave you to it again, time for you to now write some letters.

So stay creative, stay curious, and never stop exploring.