Next time I'll italicize think to emphasize an opinion and how it seems to me. Trust me when I say, when speaking on a topic I'm an expert on, I'll be sure to list my credentials in vivid detail.
You "show" when Certainly not evidence of incompetence but quotation-less dialogues give meaning in 'The Road', could actually hear two people talking in completely silent environment. It surely made me think that I could have avoided using quotation marks in some of my stories. Anyway coming back to the debate I would also say that as a reader I enjoy much more if the writer lets me know the story is moving to the past or in the character's mind without any visual trickery like italics.
I agree. Though I wouldn't go as far as to call it visual trickery, I prefer it when thoughts aren't italicized. Of course, this is just one reader's opinion.
i am a constant reader of well known and well respected, award-winning contemporary novelists' works and i don't think i've seen any of them using italics for past events, which is what this thread is supposed to be discussing... that said, i do see jeffery deaver and michael connelly using them for thoughts... but not james lee burke, jonathan kellerman, richard north patterson, or the late great, greatly lamented lawrence sanders and too many others to list... so i'd have to say it's not the norm, though some famous bestselling novelists do do it and can get away with it... but it still makes no sense to me for new and unknown fiction writers to buck the norm... 'nuff said...
Yes, but we're not all Great, and in particular we don't all have such an intense distilled Great that it shines in the first paragraph or page, the paragraph or page that is likely the only thing that any agent will read if they find flaws. The vast majority of us are probably just Good, or Amusing, and so we have to compete with the hordes of other Good or Amusing authors. > Authors can and should make every conceivable effort to produce a work > both technically and artfully sound. In the end, however, I think art > takes precedence over format. Or it should, anyway. I'm not a > contributing editor so clearly I'm not an authority on this issue. But that assumes that there aren't a tremendous number of competing submissions that excel in _both_ art and format. If there are, the agent/reader/publisher have no obligation to even consider the others. I think that sometimes we're affected by the fact that in our early years, many of us associated writing with the educational system. So there's an idea that people who read our writing are supposed to be fair, to look for the good as well as the bad, to be looking out for our interests. (And to read to the end of the piece. ) But those things are not included among an agent or publisher's responsibilities. Their job is to find something that they can publish and sell. I'm not saying that agents are evil--once an agent has formed a relationship with an author, I'm sure that there's more of a focus on that author's good. But I suspect that an agent that takes on a lot of rough-diamond authors with a lot of rough-diamond books that will take months, and hundreds of hours of the agent's time, to become salable, is likely to be an agent who's shortly out of business. There's no shortage of submissions. I strongly suspect that there's no shortage of very good submissions. If an agent has thirty submissions that are perfectly formatted and so good that it breaks the agent's heart to know that they have to reject twenty-eight of them, why would they also consider works by authors that clearly haven't done their homework about formatting? What else have those authors not done their homework about? How professional will they be? Will they respect deadlines? Is their failure to follow standards due to ignorance of those standards or a stubborn refusal to accept them, a refusal that will take months of wrangling to deal with? An employer rarely takes on an employee knowing that he'll have to spend a ton of time trying to convince said employee to cut his hair and change his clothing style and get the profanity out of his speech and do his share of the boring work. He'll take the one that's already appropriately dressed, articulate with a G-rated vocabulary, and manages to sound eager to do his share of the Xeroxing. The first one might have ended up being a genius who would have been the president of the company in six years. No one will ever know. Yes, that slightly mis-formatted manuscript with a slightly mis-formatted query letter might go on to be a runaway best-seller. But on its face, in the few minutes that the agent or reader has to consider it before he goes on to the next envelope from the teetering stack on the desk, it's probably no _more_ likely to do so than the thirty manuscripts that show that the authors have done their homework. There's nothing inherently artistic about flaws and failure to follow standards.
Please do. That way, those who follow threads like this one will be able to judge whether what you think is a valid representation of what they should expect to encounter in trying to get their works published or simply a reflection of what you feel, without basis in experience or fact.
That's very true! I never implied we were all Great, though. I merely mentioned that it's happened to the Greats before and could happen again if another Great comes along. I think it's good to keep the exceptions in mind. It keeps us hopeful! And what does a struggling writer have if not hope? I agree with just about everything you said, actually. If I was a contributing editor I would be offended by a slew of formatting errors (I believe I touched on this in my original post, come to think). Complete shirking of the rules is disrespectful and a waste of everyone's time. I worked as an editor (copy, not contributing) for a while. My first reaction to terrible pieces was "Who do you think you are, submitting something like this for publication?? How arrogant do you have to be??" But like I said, I was never a contributing editor so I'm no expert on why and how they pick their pieces. Keep in mind that my post was using this thread's specific question about italics as a reference point. If an editor rejects an otherwise solid piece merely because of one snafu with italics when all other formatting options are correct, I'm not sure that editor is benefiting the publication for which they work. Turning down a masterpiece because the author isn't good with commas seems like a waste (again, not implying there are many masterpieces, just using an exception as an example). I guess I'm just a crotchety bleeding heart. I mourn the pieces that suffer such fates even while I grind my teeth at their lack of grace. Ugh. Get it together, me.
I think I've seen it in print, and why not, in small bits anyway. It does have a certain effect to me, as if I'm taken more out of the story's time than if it was just in regular print, especially if it's done so that the author, who isn't a psychic and is thus unable to read my thoughts, thinks s/he's made it clear but actually it's getting all The Sound and the Fury, and I'm like, really, that's cute, you couldn't be any clearer there? Yeah, I'd rather take the italics, thanks. I haven't used them this way myself, though, and I agree that long chunks of italics put a strain on the eyes. Do you mean coup de grâce? Asking just in case, 'cause if you wish to educate people, you want to avoid mistakes in your own writing. This is particularly embarrassing when it happens in front of the pupils.
Thanks KaTrian, I stand corrected. I knew I should have checked that one. French is not one of my languages.
It happens, and like I said, it's even worse when it happens in class, you're there in front of the kids and mispronounce some word and a student corrects you. But it happens. Coup de gras... well, gras means fat/chubby, so it kind of changes the meaning
I think I disagree with you, especially about the commas. A writer that doesn't quite understand commas is a writer that has a lot of learning to do, and an agent and editor could quite reasonably be un-interested in waiting around while he does that learning. For the italics, it depends. The writer _might_ be writing so that the italics can simply be removed and no other changes will be required. Or he might not; he might have to add attributions and shuffle some words around, for every single thought. If rewriting will be required when the italics are removed, the writer might know how to do that, or he might not. He might be willing to do that, or he might not. A reader/agent/publisher who dislikes thoughts in italics would have to figure out those things. That's extra work, extra time, and he's got those thirty flawless manuscripts waiting for him to make a decision. I suspect that he's likely to drop this manuscript and move on. Now, it would have been nice if the agent/publisher had stated a position on thoughts-in-italics in his submission guidelines so that the writer had a clear guideline for what to do. (And if he did have that clear statement, and he was Against, then I have no sympathy whatsoever for any writer who nevertheless submits with thoughts-in-italics.) But I still haven't heard of any agent/publisher who _demands_ thoughts in italics and will reject a manuscript for the lack of them. Until I do, I consider it safest to always write so that the italics are not needed, and, when in doubt, to submit without the italics.
Yeah, my comma remark was more of an off-the-cuff example, tongue-in-cheek mention, etc.--if you don't know how to use a comma you probably shouldn't be submitting. Lol. Totally on point with you there. You're bringing up a lot of good points, ones I didn't mention in my original post but happen to agree with nonetheless. Forgive me, but I'm not sure what we're even trying to talk about any more. It's all been said over the course of the thread.
Well, I'm arguing against the idea that a reader of a submission will kindly overlook errors because he's willing to search for rough undeveloped geniuses. Many people seem to hold to that idea. It increasingly appears that you don't, so I'm probably debating with the wrong person.
XD I think there are exceptions to everything, but by and large editors are busy people with no time for messy shenanigans. If you want to get published, do your damn work. Lol! Hell, I've worked as an editor. I've seen and have no love for messy shenanigans. It's been nice talking to you, debate or no debate!
