I’m trying to start a new writing project that I plan to do as serial fiction. The basic foundation of the story is that someone gets letters from someone from his past. The letters were written years ago, but he is only starting to get them now.
The problem I’m having is trying to come up with a plausible reason that he only gets, say, one letter a week, instead of a box of letters all at once (the “one letter a week” being integral to the serial part of the story). The letters will come from an unidentified person.
Anyone have any ideas as to how I could work the “letter per week” bit into the storyline while staying realistic? Of course, I could just ignore the question and shrug and say “Just because,” but I’d hate to do that.
(When I say the letters come from an unidentified person, I mean that they’re mailed by an unidentified person - the recipient will immediately know who actually wrote the letters.)
The only way I can see this working is the person would have to have hired someone to mail one a week during a certain time period. Or, maybe that person gave the letters to a relative with some type of cover story.
I agree, the relative angle would probably work best, but I think there would still be a question of why someone would tell someone else to only mail one a week instead of just “Please give these letters to X when Y event happens.”
I’m working without spell check so please forgive my mistakes.
Letters were sent to Generic Law Firm and the box holding the letters was misfiled. The insturctions about the letters was to send them once a week. Law Firm follows instructions even though letters were written X number of years ago.
If there are only 4 - 6 letters this may work, but for more than a few letters it is too much suspention of disbeliefe. Sometimes mail carriers don’t want to work and they bury the mail (or stuff it in a storage locker, or put it in metal barrols, etc). One of these “sites” is found, from X number of years ago. As it is being investiagated the mail is being sent. Due to some postal investigation reason such as Homeland security requires that we copy each “found” letter and we only have a small postal staff so it is taking time or each barrol has to be inventoried before the mail is sent out and they inventory one barrol at a time.
Letters were sent to address A, but the wrong address from recipiant (mailer transposed 2 numbers). People at address A. horded EVERYTHING. While the child of person at address A is cleaning the house after they (address A people) die, child finds letters. Since child is doing this on weekends (due to their other responsiblites) they only find one letter a week, so only mail one letter a week.
Sorry, but I can’t think of any more reasons right now.
You can mail a letter and write "Hold for Delivery on (insert date here) on the evelope. If the Post Office doesn’t mess up, the letters could be mailed all at one time, and be delivered on the hold dates.
All of these are great ideas, thanks. For purposes of the story, I need the person mailing the letters to be somehow involved in the entire situation, and eventually “unmasked”.
Would you buy this explanation? The letters will often contain some pretty emotionally heavy information. The only workaround to the “one letter per week” angle that I can think of at the moment (as far as why only one letter a week) is that the writer thought that the information would be too much to process at once, and therefore instructed the sender to mete them out over time. The sender arbitrarily decides on once a week.
Readers will put up with anything if the story’s good enough. But it is good to have a reason why these letters are being parceled out.
It’s hard to help with so little information at hand. It seems like the only way we can help is to work backwards and ask, why would someone send someone else a letter a week, letters that were written a long time ago.
For example: a man learns his lover is pregnant. He believes he won’t live long enough to help raise the child, so he writes letters to the adult child. The woman has the baby, gives it up, keeps track of the adoption, and at the proper time, starts sending letters.
Sender gives letters to an attorney. Attorney either mails them per instruction (for a fee) or gives them to “sender’s” will executor to be delivered, also per instruction. Are you looking for a mechanism to get the letters delivered or a reason for them to be delivered this way? Or am I missing something?
OK…I love mysteries and the only way this will work will be to have a subplot.
Good old John retires from the post office. His job was to sort through lost and damaged mail and try to find the recipient. Now that John has retired, the US Post has cutback and gave his job to overworked Betty who is none-to-thrilled to have this new position added to her duties. She takes one look at the stack of thousands of letters waiting for inspection and takes the top one off the stack. She forwards it, closes the door and locks it. Next week, she goes in and takes the next one off the stack. Etc. etc. etc.
It could be great comic relief to have Betty always trying to get to that damned room full of lost mail and never get there until a week passes.
If you like the post office idea see if you can dig up the Aussie movie Dead Letter Office which centers on a woman who gets a job there to track down her long lost father. A very nice little movie.
Or, Howabout the first letter introduces the weekly concept. Each one thereafter advances the main storyline. The weekly letter provides the episodic quality and the mystery of the sender is the subplot.
As time goes by, it’s revealed to the audience (and maybe the other characters) that the Mother is recovering memories from whatever neurological condition/problem or situation you want to give her. It could be recovery from an accident, or telepathic recovery from a comatose Mom.
Or the time lag involved in intergalactic transmissions (and the time for aliens to interpret her message.)
Mostly I think it depends on what kind of story you’re trying to tell.
