Blog - The Rogue MFA

Bri CastelliniApril 23, 2026

5 Epistolary Elements That Unlock Your Character’s Voice

When lacking primary source documents for clarity… create your own!

I love epistolary novels so much I wrote my undergraduate thesis on them. While the spirit hasn’t moved me to do a fully epistolary story in years, the unique opportunity for character-development via their primary source documents remains a vital part of my writing process (and my reading preferences). Sometimes, these elements make it into the final draft. Sometimes, they remain as brainstorming content in the background that I might trot out eventually as bonus content.

Regardless, including epistolary elements in character design is more than a gimmick.

First, some questions to ask yourself

What primary source documents does my character create most often?
1. Are they a list-maker or a sporadic out-of-context sentence recorder? Do they write letters longhand, or uphold a years-long email correspondence with a friend? Do they prefer email or Slack/Microsoft Teams for work communication?
Do they use proper punctuation in texts, or slang and abbreviations and emojis?
1. For my historical baddies- what’s their handwriting like? Sloppy and rushed, elegant and measured? Do they use a fun sign-off when sending letters, or stick to a classic “Yours”?
How might I contrast what they say/record in private versus what they’re thinking?
1. And, even better, what they say/commit to writing that others will see versus what’s kept private? Much character can be found in the contrasts!

Next, some epistolary prompts

Journals, diaries, or private blogs
1. A classic for a reason! These can be an unfiltered goldmine of insights about your character, their thought process, what they feel is useful to record, and how they’re feeling in the moment. The trouble is that most adults don’t keep these, certainly not in contemporary, so your prompt may be- if they kept a journal, what would they be talking about in it?
Recent text history
1. Think back to the character interview prompts we talked about earlier in the month, and your character’s community in particular. What are the last 2 or 3 text conversations they’ve had? Are they purely practical, like letting a neighbor know they accepted a package for them, or a thread that’s just “Happy Birthday! // Thank You!” twice a year with no messages in between? Do they have a group thread where they share their Wordle results? Is their mom texting them incessantly, to crickets?
Lists
1. What’s on their grocery list, or daily to-do list? What calendar events appear in a typical week? Are they hyper-specific about their lists, naming quantities/brands/flavors, or do they make do with “milk & breakfast stuff”? Do they have a bucket list, or New Years Resolutions they’re working through? Do they actually follow these lists, or just make them to feel in control and then forget all about them?
Calendar/Daily Planner
1. Are they so anal about their calendar they even schedule in bathroom breaks, or is this more a place to generally remind themselves when they’re meant to be somewhere? Do they meal plan and have what they’re eating listed here? Are there recurring reminders of some kind (“Tuesday- Take Out Trash”)? Is it color-coded?
Goodreads/Letterboxd
1. What are their recent reads & watches (or favorite reads/watches of all time) and, if they’re inclined to share this sort of thing, what were their reviews? What media are they consuming, and is it because they sought it out or because someone recommended it to them/dragged them to something?
  1. Side note: if you’re writing a male character whose favorite book is Infinite Jest or whose favorite movie is Fight Club, I do consider that a red flag

If there’s a place for this in your final manuscript, great! I’m always going to be in favor of epistolary flavor. But even if there’s not a natural place in your writing style to slot in a letter, crafting these documents as a brainstorming exercise will tell you so much about your character, their voice, their priorities, and their point of view, all of which are things you’ll need to figure out anyways.

Want a full template with even more unique prompts for character development? Our paid subscribers at Substack get all of our templates included – past and future!

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Kelly ChastainApril 16, 2026

Why Your Characters Feel Flat and How to Fix It

And how to Frankenstein them all together to, hopefully, better outcomes. Or not.

Some of my favorite stories have the most vivid and complicated characters, and I’m guessing yours do too. When a character is so singular, we can’t help but fall in love. Last week, Bri set us up with a character interview. And today, I’m going to show you a few pillars of character development that will help you turn your red-headed orphan into Anne of Green Gables.

AKA – WHY are we filling out that character interview in the first place?

Establish Your Character’s Credibility

Credibility helps your readers understand what’s normal for this character, the world they live in, and how they navigate it. This is why stereotypes are so powerful. Right or wrong, they become a shorthand for what we expect from a certain type of person.

For example: The owner of an international big box store vs. the owner of a Mom & Pop general store in a farming community of 1,000 people. Same type of job, radically different type of person. Establishing a type is simply a building block that you can use to carve your unique character out of.

Ways to establish credibility:

What’s appropriate for this character? And by that, I mean – what’s a reasonable expectation for this type of character?
What’s the social/biological breakdown? Gender, race, class, age – all the ways humans discriminate against one another. Ew, gross, but also important to know because…
- If you leave these details out, the story will be slow to take off because readers, right or wrong, can’t get a grasp on who this person is supposed to be or how they’re supposed to act.
- Establish this early, so you can immediately correct the record for how this character acts, and then uphold or subvert expectations.

Establish Your Character’s Purpose

Understanding the reason this character is in the narrative gives us something to hope for, and helps establish the direction the story might go. All of this props up the reader’s expectations, which you can immediately subvert or not.

Ways to establish purpose:

Determine what your character wants. Are they looking for love, or to cope with the suffocating small town life they’re living, or to help other people escape enemy occupied territory?
- When writers don’t establish what their characters want, they’ll wander the saggy middle of their novel with no idea of how to get to the end.
What’s the point of having this character in the narrative at all? Which, I admit, sounds a little existential, but understanding their role in your story also illuminates the kind of character they are or can be.
- Not everyone has MC energy and that’s a good thing.

Establish Your Character’s Complexity

Complexity is what makes us love a character, grip the pages with wide eyes as they make very out of character decisions, which reveals their ability to change and grow over the course of the story. While they don’t have to have the range of a yo-yo, they do need some flexibility in their decision making. It’s most fun when a character is downright confounding at times. When they spiral of their axis. When they finally do the thing they’ve been resisting, believe in themselves, or take the big risk.

Ways to establish complexity:

Determine your character’s values. They might hold onto certain rules about life right up until the thing or person they love most is threatened. Then it all goes out the window.
Determine your character’s beliefs. If they hold something to be incorruptible, and operate from that belief set, you open a whole host of opportunities for that belief system to fail or be abandoned. That makes them human and full of nuance.
Determine your character’s strengths. Are they a wizard with language but an absolute dunce when it comes to relationships?
- Where do they shine, and where does it makes sense that they should shine, but don’t?

Most readers aren’t looking for that perfect hero or heroine, but a real messy human in all their glory. Because at the end of the day, we’re all complex, nuanced, and hoping like hell we aren’t failing too badly. When we see that on the page, it reaffirms that we’re all in this together.

“Read” this post as a YouTube video instead, if you’re so inclined!

Bri CastelliniApril 9, 2026

7 Character Interview Prompts That Actually Reveal Something

Because readers crave truly unforgettable characters

For me, all stories are rooted in character. Even if the spark of my idea as captured by my Dump Doc is a situation or trope, it can’t become a novel for me until I personally fall in love with who’s in that situation or dragged through that trope kicking and screaming.

As a result, fleshing out characters is just as important to my writing process as the outline phase, which I’m on the record saying is what I consider my first draft. But most standard character design templates are either complicated for the sake of complexity, or too vague to function, and rarely get to the true core of who these people are and what makes them tick.

So we’ve designed our own! Paid subscribers to the Substack can get the download for our fillable Character Template at the bottom of this post, but for everyone else, I’ve picked my seven favorite prompts as a starting point.

Physical descriptions

Unless you’re writing sci-fi about brains in jars, your character has a physical form that will probably come up at some point. So what best describes their ~~horrible visage~~ ~~meat sack~~ basic aesthetic characteristics?

Prominent physical features. Does this character, like most romance heroes, have a twice-broken nose? Freckles? A dramatic scar over one eye? A centered front tooth like Tom Cruise? When people in your book describe your character to others… what do they focus on? What stands out and makes them unique, beyond that they have startling violet eyes, auburn hair, and an aquiline nose (no shade to romantasy heroines with these descriptions, I too imprinted early on Alanna the Lioness)?
Scents. As we walk you through in our Free Mini Course, you’ve got five senses, so use ‘em! What does your character smell like, naturally? What scents define them and their day to day lives? If they work at a cafe, they probably always smell faintly of coffee grounds and buttery pastry. If they’re outdoorsy, maybe they smell like freshly cut grass and sun-warmed skin. To build upon this scent-ual journey, what scents does your character favor in ways that other people can pick up? A fruity shampoo, Chanel No 5 they inherited from a beloved grandmother, fresh herbs from their medicinal lotion?

Background

From where did this person spring forth? What, and who, made them who they are today?

Parents. Are your characters’ parents still together, is one or both dead, was there a nasty divorce? Who is/was your character closest with, and why? Or did they not know their parents at all/lost them young, who did they latch onto like a duckling for mentorship and surrogate support?
Cliques. In school/as a child… how would their peers categorize them? Were they a jock or a nerd? A theater kid or a gleek? A goth or a burnout? And does that external categorization suit them because it’s a good shorthand… or because they carefully curated that perception for their own purposes?
First Rejection/Failure. Be this a rejection by a crush, disappointing their parents, failing a test, not making a sports team, or something more angsty… what would your character consider their first time wanting something and not getting it? And how did that rejection define failure for them as they grew up?

Community

Who are the people your character sees consistently? And are they adding something to the book… or do they simply exist? All characters, even side characters, should be narratively supporting (or impeding) the goals and/or desires of your protagonists.

Acquaintances. Who are the people orbiting your character in their day to day, and in what contexts? Who do they see the most and wish they saw the least, and vice versa, and why can they not course-correct the frequency in a more preferable manner?

Themes

What is this story ABOUT? And why is THIS the best character to explore that?

Spiraling. You character has some kind of goal or belief system at the start of the book that motivates their decisions. Taken to the extreme… what’s the worst possible result of not achieving that goal, or not fulfilling that belief? AKA… the stakes!

You might not have all the answers right away, and that’s ok! Characters evolve as you get into freaky little situations with them, but you need to have a sense of their essence before you can start plotting, and then that plotting can inform their essence right back. But having a character interview template that gets to the heart of how your character was formed pre-novel and what motivates their decision-making in the present will only deepen your relationship to them, give you prompts to explore when you’re blocked, and ensure that they’re well-rounded and containing of multitudes.

Get the complete fillable character interview template. Or become a paid subscriber to our Substack and all of our templates are included – past and future.

“Read” this post as a YouTube video instead, if you’re so inclined!