Tag Archives: Diary entries

Epistolary Movies

Epistolary Movies – The term is based epistolary novels. This refers to a particular style of writing the screenplay. In this style the story is narrated as a series of letters or diary entries. In the modern day this could be a series of text, audio or video blogs.

Writers used this technique mainly to avoid a third person narrative in their scripts. This gives the opportunity for the writer to narrate the story in first person. Many popular movies have employed this technique either completely or in parts to make an effective screenplay. The recent movie The Lunchbox is an epistolary movie script where the main plot moves through the exchange of letters between the lead characters. James Cameron had used this in Avatar for narrating the incidents on the Pandora Island through the protagonist’s video blog. Ghajini is an example of epistolary script which is through a list of diary entries. In comparison to a character narrating it to the audience or another character this gives a more realistic and effective timeline jumps as it covers only highlights which are inherent nature of letters or diary entries.