: Re: How do I create dialog when the story is told in letters by the protagonist? I am writing a historical novel, and the gist of it that these will be letters found by ancestors in the 21st

@Pierce369

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The same way you would in any other novel.
Dialog in novels is inherently unrealistic. Real speech has far more 'Um's and 'Ah's, interjections, run-on sentences and pauses midway through sentences while the speaker rearranges what they are saying in their head. Dialog in books don't include those things, because they are unfun to read, and get in the way of telling the story.
The letters and journals that form epistolary novels (novels told through the medium of letters and journals rather than narrated) are also unrealistic, because perfect realism would interfere with the storytelling.
Typically, the beginning and end of each letter/journal entry will feel the most like real writing, but the middles will morph into a more standard first person narrator to help the reader get lost in the story.
For example, here are some passages from Dracula (which is epistolary)

Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most Western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.
We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called ‘paprika hendl,’ and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don’t know how I should be able to get on without it.

These are the first two paragraphs of the novel, and they feel very journal-like. They're very much summaries, with idle thoughts and notes to do things later. Compare them with another paragraph a few chapters later:

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation:—
‘Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!’ He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:—
‘Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!’ The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking; so to make sure, I said interrogatively :—
‘Count Dracula?’ He bowed in a courtly way as he replied:—
‘I am Dracula; and I bid you welcome, Mr Harker, to my house. Come in; the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.’

Which is basically indistinguishable from regular 1st person narration (plus 100 years of stylistic language shifts)

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