Writing in the form of a diary

Recently I’ve been experimenting with writing stories in the form of a diary. At first I thought that it would be far easier than writing ordinary prose. I kept a regular diary for years as a teenager so I’m familiar with the style. All I’d have to do is write down what the characters would be thinking to themselves at the end of each day. No need for detailed description or long conversations between characters.

But as I’ve continued with my story I’ve noticed a few habits it’s easy to fall into whilst writing in the form of a diary. These habits damage the story and should be avoided.

When you’re writing in the form of a diary, your first instinct would be to make that diary as realistic as possible. This instinct should be ignored. Yes, realistic writing is good and makes the reader identify more with the character but real diaries are boring. Real life diaries like Anne Frank’s Diary are only interesting because we already know the outcome.

Unlike in a real diary, you still need to write detailed descriptions of where your characters go and conversations they have otherwise the reader will get bored of seeing nothing but the inside of your character’s brain. Your reader needs to identify with other characters as well as the one writing the diary if the story is going to be successful. Therefore, the peripheral characters need to be a much bigger presence in the diary than they normally would be in a real diary.

It’s not enough to say ‘I saw Dan today. He said I looked pretty’. This conversation needs to be described and put into dialogue otherwise Dan won’t have an actual presence in the story. He’ll just be a brief encounter your character felt like writing about rather than a character in his own right.

Timing can also be tricky when writing in diary form. I’d advise not to feature a diary entry from every single day of the week otherwise you’ll run out of things to write about and the reader will get bored of the banalities of your character’s day to day life.

Your writing style also needs to be slightly different to what it would be in your own diary. It should sound more like an ordinary first person narration rather than a brief catch up on what happened that day which is what real diaries actually are. I’m not saying every single diary entry should be as detailed as a first person narration, but some of them definitely should be. 

I’ve fallen into all of these traps myself whilst writing my story and fully intend to go back and fix them all. But hopefully, if any of you ever decide to write in the form of a diary – and it’s loads of fun so I would recommend it – you’ll be able to avoid them better than I did.

Thanks for reading.