My own preference is not to use italics for thoughts. Without being pejorative about it, I just don't see it as necessary. In my current project, there are many occurrences of POV characters having thoughts, and I think I make it perfectly clear that they are thoughts without using either italics or thought tags (when the time comes, I'll see if my beta readers agree ). Now, that said, my characters' thoughts come in short bursts - no long mental soliloquies. And, faced with @plothog's situation, where a character is thinking thoughts that are not his own - whether through possession, delusions or whatever - I might very well conclude that italics are the way to go. I don't happen to think relying on the examples of great works of the past is particularly helpful, here. Charles Dickens didn't have a laptop with WORD and a gazillion different fonts, each available in standard, italics or bold. The advent of desktop publishing means that the writer can now do way more (and much more easily) than even the printing house could do back in the day. In a process (i.e. traditional publishing) that sometimes seems like trying to drive a toaster through a car wash, formatting the manuscript has become one more variable. Would a publisher reject a perfectly good novel because thoughts were italicized? I sincerely doubt it, but the truth is I don't know how much it would matter one way or the other. My preference is to submit as clean a manuscript as possible, and if one day an editor says to me, "Hey, man, great story, but you have to italicize those thought passages!" then I will. We now return you to our regularly scheduled kerfuffle.
That's very interesting. I just saw this post and felt I did want to respond to it. I found The Sound and the Fury hellish hard to read—the nadir of my high school English experience—because I really struggled to keep track of who was saying what, and who was thinking what, and what time frame was in play at a given moment. Interesting to know that Faulkner felt the same way about his own work, and would certainly have used 'fancy fontery' if it had been available at the time. And no doubt, this book would have been much easier to follow. I'd say go with what works best for you and your readership.
@plothog mentioned it, but no one answered it. What if the thoughts aren't the character's own, or the character is possessed or under mind control (oh, the joys of Fantasy!) Example from my own work: "The New Order is your friend. The New Order is here to release you from your bonds." would be the mind control/torture/possession speaking, not the character. Is that alright? EDIT: EdfromNY answered, but there's an example.
I prefer to put invading thoughts on a new line, like I would if it was a line of dialogue. Also the first time it happens I'd give a bit more indication as to what is happening, so that readers realise you're using an italics equals invading thoughts convention. That's not hard to do though, because a character is likely to have some sort of reaction to someone elses thoughts in their head.
This is the second to last chapter of my book, in the climax. This is like the fourtyith time we've seen that line. But yeah. I'm going back and forth on the new line part, given how often it happens for me.
uh...what's the 'joke'? i know the song 'tumbin' tumbleweeds,' am familiar with roy rogers' rendition of it, and have a cd of the 'sons of the pioneers' [believe it or not] version, but don't see any joke here... what am i missing?
@mammamaia I tried to explain but couldn't so I looked it up. I knew someone must have articulated it... this is from the Symbolism section of the Tumbleweed Wiki: 'The tumbleweed's association with the Western film has led to a highly symbolic meaning in visual media. It has come to represent locations that are desolate, dry, and often humorless, with few or no occupants. A common use is when characters encounter a long abandoned or dismal-looking place: a tumbleweed will be seen rolling past, often accompanied by the sound of a dry, hollow wind. This is sometimes used, for comic effect, in locations where tumbleweeds are not expected. (One example is in the opening credits of the film The Big Lebowski.) Tumbleweeds can also be shown to punctuate a bad joke or a character otherwise making an absurd declaration, with the plant rolling past in the background and the wind effect emphasizing the awkward silence, similar to the sound of crickets.' That is what I was grasping for.
Lol, it was in response to the awkwardness of the few posts that directly preceded it and the silence that invariably follows such an exchange.
I've seen quotes used for thoughts in some (IMO) impeccable old novels, so I can't agree that it's flat-out wrong.
Can you list some examples? To me, it's fairly clear that quotes for thoughts is wrong. If you did use quotes, you'd need to include a tag each time because it would be hard to tell whether the character is saying that bit or thinking it.
Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that I like it--I prefer my thoughts without quotes, without italics, and without attribution. But I know I saw it recently, I think in Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar, which, irritatingly, I can't find right now. I believe that it was in a sequence where the protagonist was arguing with himself, which one could see as an exception. If I find the book, I'll come back with examples.
When I was searching through style guides when this thread started, while I found several that recommended or at least accepted italics for internal dialogue, they were consistent in stating that using quotations was confusing as the reader would think the words were spoken aloud. When you add the tag, he or she thought, I can see that clarifies the intent, but it's even less acceptable as far as conventions go. Just sayin' ...
I think I said it before, but this is a long thread and it's probably buried. MS Word makes it easy: use styles. Call a character style "thoughts" and, anytime you have a character thinking, use that style. Make it in italics or however you want while you write. That way, whenever you find out how a publisher or an agent wants thoughts represented--whether in Roman type, italics, underlining, or fancy red font with a line of ants for a border--you can format it in a second. Everyone's happy. The only problem is if you can't use any typeface to represent thoughts, you have to make those thoughts obvious in another way. And "he/she thought" isn't always best. On a side note, thoughts are really only needed in extreme circumstances. Unless in special situations like a psychic conversation or some such, the character who's thinking is the POV character. You're already in his or her head. Just integrate the thoughts into the exposition. Show vs. tell aside, why say "I love this car! he thought" when you can say "He loved this car"?
Not using internal dialogue because one can express what one wants to say some other way is a limitation I find troublesome. Here's a excerpt from my novel where your suggestion wouldn't work: “Calm down, Brin. Think it through.” I stared at the place I’d set my trap, the empty place. “There is—” an explanation. I stopped talking aloud and glanced around in all directions. If Founders were here, if one of them took the trap, they could be waiting, watching. I needed to get out of there. My protag talks to herself all the time. Here she suddenly realized she needed to shut up. It's boring to say something like, I realized I needed to shut up.
But the italics aren't needed there. You could remove them, change absolutely nothing else, and it would work just as well. (Better, IMO, but I know you're not going to agree with me on that. )
But what if he actually thinks the way he speaks: Ah shore do love dat car! You're not going to write : He loves his car, but always thinks of it as 'dat car' and would probably have said he 'shore' does love it. That's where italics for thoughts really come into their own—as Tom Wolfe realised when he wrote The Right Stuff. That novel makes extensive and effective use of italics for thoughts which are expressed in the thinker's own voice. (And hey. The book got published—fancy that.) Just another way you can use italics for thoughts. It's perfectly fine if you want to find another, more traditional way to express these thoughts. If you hate italics for thoughts, don't use them. If you feel they debase the art of writing, well, fair enough. But I don't think it's fair to present something as a 'rule' when it's merely a preference—and both rules and preferences do change. It's a new dawn.... I've never told people they SHOULD use italics for thoughts. But my contention is there is nothing wrong with using italics for thoughts either, and people need to get over it. Published authors do use them, and lots of folks read their books. Heck, they even made a hit movie out of The Right Stuff. And that wasn't yesterday, was it? So this isn't even a brand-new issue.
