So Long a Letter

An Exercise for Getting Unstuck...

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Two stories in the story collection 12 Stories and Their Making, "Condolences to Every One of Us," by Allan Gurganus and "A Record as Long as Your Arm," by George Garrett, are written in the fashion of a letter, and yet read like fiction, evoking scene, character, physical and emotional movement, and dialogue told within the narrative.

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This reminds me of how Gotham's Writing Fiction text says that real-life dialogue needs to be cut and focused on some important points in the story; likewise, a short story written in the letter style must be focused on some important point to the story, perhaps even the dramatic question.

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The fact that the narrator is meant to be talking to one person throughout the story probably helps create this focus. The listener can be named, as in "Condolences," or can be implied, as in the novel Catcher in the Rye, in which Holden Caulfield is talking to a psychiatrist, but the reader doesn't know this during the novel. The POV is first person, but the second person feels of the reader becoming the "you" is much like the second person.

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The Exercise

Write a letter, perhaps from one of the characters in the story you're working on that is written to one listener, whether that listener is implied or named, and whether they are a character in the story or not. Make the letter focus on some important element in your story that needs to be explained—both in this letter and in the bigger story. (You may or may not decide to use the letter or ideas from it in your story revision.

*So Long a Letter is the name of a short and powerful novel by Senegalese writer Mariama Ba.