Writing Epistolary Essays

For online ENGL 208

1. An epistolary essay is a personal essay (typically published in a public venue) that’s written in the form of a letter to somebody.

2. In other words, the epistolary essay is a literary device that allows the writer and the readers to focus on an explicit audience (the person to whom the letter is addressed, who probably won’t actually read this letter, because they might be dead) while secretly talking to a much broader, implicit audience (the actual readers of the published letter). explicit audience implicit audience

3. For readers, reading an epistolary essay is kind of like listening in on a conversation – you get to hear often intimate details of someone’s life; but there’s also a deeper point to it - something that extends beyond this particular situation.

4. You could think of managing two audiences in terms of the situation and the story , which we learned about in Unit 1. In an epistolary essay, the situation is what you are writing to the letter’s addressee (the explicit audience). The story is the deeper point about the situation that you are trying to make to the readers of the essay (the implicit audience).

5. Epistolary essays use traditional genre conventions for letter writing to indicate the explicit audience (they also sometimes do this through the title: “A Letter to X.”)

6. As with most epistolary essays, your essay will contain at least one story or anecdote – this might be a memory you have with the person, or it might be a significant event that has happened to you since you last spoke to the recipient of the letter that you really wish you could share with them.

7. Preparing to Write Epistolary Essays Decide on your audienc es : your implicit audience and your explicit audience. What can you say directly to the one that you want the other to overhear ? Identify your point: what do you want to say to your explicit audience (the person to whom the letter is addressed)? What story or anecdote (either a memory from your time with the person or a situation that you wish you could tell them about now) will you use? Then think about the “story” you’re trying to tell - what exactly do you want your implicit audience (the people who are actually reading your epistolary essay) to know, feel, or understand as a result of reading your letter? Think: what kind of “voice” do you want to use for your epistolary essay? Wistful? Blunt? Resentful? Forgiving?