Writing a Story in the Form of a Diary
A story written entirely in the form of a diary is sometimes attempted. And closely allied to this is the story written as a series of letters.
Both methods are popular with amateurs. Most people regard a diary as the simplest type of writing, requiring neither style nor sequence, nor even the thinnest thread of connection running through the whole, unless the author so desires. Moreover, though every one does not feel competent to write a book or even a short story, we all feel competent to keep a diary—most of us have kept one at some time in our career. What can be easier therefore than to write a story in diary form? And we proceed to write our story as we wrote our own diary, with this difference that we put into the fiction diary the sort of happenings we used to deplore the lack of, when we wrote down our own daily experiences.
Until we have given some study to the subject we do not recognise that, while a series of somewhat disconnected sentences and brief entries may be very useful as records for future reference, likewise may be moderately serviceable as safety-valves for overwrought, self-centred temperaments, they are seldom of interest to any one save the writer, and if put forward as recreational reading, may easily prove uninteresting in the extreme, even with the addition of a love episode! A story in diary form needs to be written by an experienced pen if it is to resemble a genuine diary, and yet hold the reader's interest throughout, and culminate in a good climax.
A Story told in Letters
A story told in a series of letters can easily be the dullest thing imaginable. What is an excellent letter seldom makes an excellent chapter in a novel. A letter, if it is to seem a real letter, should be discursive; and this is the very thing the amateur needs to guard against when writing a story, if that story is to show force and action; he is prone to be too discursive as it is. In any case, unless it is remarkably well done, the reader chafes at the delay inevitably caused by the irrelevant small talk that is the hallmark of most letters.
Some writers have managed to handle the "letter-form" in an interesting manner, by relying on descriptive narrative, rather than any striking plot, to hold the reader. The Lady of the Decoration by Frances Little, is a good example.
The Introduction of Dialect
Dialect should be approached with caution. It is so easy to be tedious and unintelligible in this direction.
Remember that you are writing in what is almost a fresh language to most people, when you employ a dialect that is purely local; hence you are imposing an extra mental strain on the reader; and in order to compensate for the additional demand you make on his brain, you must give him something above the average in interest. No one, in these days of hustle, is going to take the trouble to wade through a species of unknown tongue, and wrestle with weird spelling and unfamiliar idiom, unless there is something remarkably worth while to be got out of it. And for one who will spare the time to fathom the mysteries of the dialect, there are thousands who will give it up.