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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/44171
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

For a few of my imaginary worlds, my characters write letters to each other. These letters are never intended to be surfaced in the main story, they are my exploration of the characters' feelings and motivation as events unfold around them. I find the letter writing to be hugely useful and helps me to solidify personalities and uncover inconsistencies in my plot. An acquaintance of mine suggested some of my characters could keep diaries, to achieve the same purpose. This advice is [not new](https://thewritepractice.com/diaries-letters/) and I agree that it would be hugely useful in much the same way.

Additionally, I use these letters (and potentially some diary entries) as my daily writing exercises to limber up my story-telling brain and get myself into this other world. There are some [great exercises](https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/345/29824) out there; the advantage to the letter/diary method is that it helps me to context-switch out of my workplace and immerse myself in a specific world before working on the main plot.

However, for my biggest and most fleshed-out story (the one which I want others to read and enjoy) the vast majority of my characters are illiterate. In fact, there are only about three (of many) who know how to write and only one of those three would be likely to keep a journal. The work is composed as a series of story-tellings - imagine the author has visited each character in turn and spent a couple nights transcribing their view of past events. Each chapter is a first-person spoken narrative of what happened.

I feel as though I'm out of options for exploring these characters in a more intimate fashion. It's not feasible to me that any of them would keep a diary or write letters. I don't want to write a train-of-thought for any of them as an exercise; because, that's essentially what the main body of work is already doing.

What other prosaic methods might I employ to explore my characters from their own point of view?

Original score: 10