First off, italics for thoughts aren't 'cheap'. They may not be to your taste but there are too many excellent writers who use the convention to continue to claim italics are unskilled or cheap. It's a choice, a preference and you need not fall on one side or the other of that choice. Calling it cheap or messy implies an unfounded bias. The cart wheels creaked obscenely as I headed to the sanitary department. I wished it would be quieter; the noise felt out of place among the quiet hum of the lights and made me feel even more uncomfortable. Getting the tissues took less than 5 minutes, and I even found a 3-pack that was on sale. See, I could be responsible with my money. This is fine if it's the narrator talking to the reader rather than a direct thought. And there's nothing wrong with that style. I still hadn’t seen anyone, even an employee, and that bothered me. Maybe I should have checked the weather before I left. Nah, Casper would call me if something came up. A quick glance reassured me that I didn’t have any missed phone calls, and my heart slowed a beat. Here you've varied a tad from telling the reader but it still reads OK. You don't have to use italics and you don't have to use a tag. You could write the whole narration like this and it wouldn't be a problem at all. The narrator tells us what happened with her commentary. If on the other hand, you wanted the reader to know that was a direct thought, italics gives a different effect to the passage. I still hadn’t seen anyone, even an employee, and that bothered me. Maybe I should have checked the weather before I left. Nah, Casper would call me if something came up. A quick glance reassured me that I didn’t have any missed phone calls, and my heart slowed a beat. Consider the two different effects. Both are acceptable. In one passage the first person narrator includes a lot of commentary with the narration. In the other, the narration is interrupted with direct thoughts.
I base my writing from my favorite author Sherrilyn Kenyon, almost all of her first person thoughts are in Italics. If you have a writer who uses italics in alternate forms, I will gladly read there book and post whether I am wrong or not. with proof. No judgment, just to decipher differential authors and their writing styles
I'm not sure what you are asking. I use italics for internal monologue. I think both options, using them or not, are equally viable.
I'd say so, but rendering in present tense the two sentences where the character is obviously thinking thoughts, would nail it, IMHO.
Code: [quote] words [/quote] Also, if you click on the icon that looks like a weird flag (next to the save draft icon of a floppy) you get these options: Code: [QUOTE][/QUOTE] [SPOILER][/SPOILER] [CODE][/code ] If you find the one single quote when you post the thread it's because somewhere you've missed one or more closing tags: Code: [/quote]
To get a name in the quote you add ="name". Code: [quote="name"] text [/quote] To get one person's quote inside of another's: Code: [QUOTE="Nicole"][QUOTE="Ginger"] Ginger's text [/quote] Nicole's text [/quote] That said, it was hard to read your reply so I fixed it up for my aging brain to digest: Fair enough. The italics would have made it clear it was a direct thought within the narration. If you are going for narration with direct thoughts, adding tags here makes the direct thoughts a continuation of narration: I still hadn’t seen anyone, even an employee, and that bothered me. Maybe I should have checked the weather before I left. Nah, Casper would call me if something came up, I thought. A quick glance reassured me that I didn’t have any missed phone calls, and my heart slowed a beat. You'd have to rewrite the passage to make it clear that was a direct thought inside of narration if you didn't use the italics. Unless of course, the narrator was telling us (past tense) what she thought. It comes down to choosing the voice of your narrator, either all narration, narration with commentary, or narration with direct thoughts. Italics gives you more flexibility in your narrator's voice.
I dont see why you couldnt just include them with normal text instead, but it could work if done right and not used too often. I do like it when writers use italics for speech that you know is different. For example in Robin Hobbs Assasin's Apprentice, she uses italics when the guy speaks to his wolf through his special power called the Wit.
As has been mentioned several times, italics for unheard dialogue are a standard in the industry. Everyone from David Eddings to Anne McCaffrey uses them.
By the way, if anyone has read this far in the post, it bears mentioning that the standard when writing translated text is to put it in <> brackets. This is for when a character is speaking another language and the author wants the reader to be able to understand the text. <Fortunately the human's cannot understand our language.> Kruge said to his first officer Moq. (Edited for the correct spelling of Kruge)
You don't need "thought to myself", "thought to himself", "thought", quotes, or italics. You can choose to use them (though don't use the "to myself" or "to himself"; unless you story has telepathy, who else is he going to be thinking to?) but you don't need them. Example: First person: I stared through the door. Frozen. Dumbfounded. How the hell could this happen? Then I realized. James. It was James. That self-important little weasel... My phone rang, and I snapped out of my stupor. I fumbled with the buttons and held it to my ear. "What?" Third person: Paul stared through the door. Frozen. Dumbfounded. How the hell could this happen? Then he realized. James. It was James. That self-important little weasel... Paul's phone rang, and he snapped out of his stupor. He fumbled with the buttons and held it to his ear. "What?"
Everyone has their own take on this but I ALWAYS use italics when I'm portraying.... Internal thoughts writing (like my character writing in his journal,) direct passages of written work (like lines from a book or poem,) the regular way for emphasis (like you'd use bold or underline) Italics for thoughts don't take up space like quotation marks do, so it's a smoother transition, visually, and (at least for me,) having no signifying, visual way to tell which part is the narration and which part is internal thoughts is simply too confusing. The only way the use of italics would be different (besides the above reasons,) is if you're writing a screenplay or skit, something for on-stage use often itialics are in brackets and are used to signify your physical cues. Short answer: Yes, yes you should.
This thread is like the Energizer rabbit. If you do a survey of fiction on the shelves in the bookstore, the only conclusion you can draw is that plenty of authors do internal monologue with italics and plenty of them do it without. In other words, either approach works.
See, you say that. But I'm still waiting for someone to show us a book where the author doesn't use italics for internal monologue. We've named a bunch that do, and haven't seen anyone that doesn't. I even copy/pasted a section of New York Times best seller John Dies at the End. And I have a ton more examples. So until I see someone proves otherwise I'm just going to call it the industry standard.
.... buh?!!! Oh. OK, slightly reduced confusion as I re-read your post. I'm assuming that you don't mean Every book I've ever read or heard of has inner monologue and uses italics for it. and that you instead mean Every time I've encountered a book that includes inner monologue, that book used italics for that monologue. Yes? Because there are countless books that do not have inner-monologue-in-italics. So we're talking about how books that do use inner monologue, handle that inner monologue? Which leads us to the question of your definition of inner monologue. I realize that you will likely say it's not just your definition, it's a common and sensible definition. But without immediately veering off on that track, can you offer your definition?
I present an example of inner thoughts, though not inner monologue, from Robert Barnard's Death of a Mystery Writer. The original: "Bella!" said her mother, and folded her in her arms. Bella was in travelling gear, but managed to show no signs of travel; how could anyone contrive to look like an ice lettuce on a hot summer's day, her mother wondered? Her makeup was bright and unsmudged, her blouse looked as if it were straight from the shop hanger, there was not a bulge in her slacks. It was almost inhuman. "You look so lovely, my dear. I don't know how you do it." Above we have a thought tag. This wouldn't be necessary, IMO, if we had a consistent close third person POV, but this is the book that I proposed, just today, as an example of either head-hopping or third person omniscient. We don't have the stable point of view that would let us remove that thought tag. Just to be ultra-clear, I believe that with a stable point of view, the following would have worked fine: "Bella!" said her mother, and folded her in her arms. Bella was in travelling gear, but managed to show no signs of travel; how could anyone contrive to look like an ice lettuce on a hot summer's day? Her makeup was bright and unsmudged, her blouse looked as if it were straight from the shop hanger, there was not a bulge in her slacks. It was almost inhuman. "You look so lovely, my dear. I don't know how you do it." How would italics work with this? I suspect perhaps "Bella!" said her mother, and folded her in her arms. Bella was in travelling gear, but managed to show no signs of travel. How can anyone contrive to look like an ice lettuce on a hot summer's day? Her makeup was bright and unsmudged, her blouse looked as if it were straight from the shop hanger, there was not a bulge in her slacks. It's almost inhuman. "You look so lovely, my dear. I don't know how you do it." Is that how the italics-inclined would handle this paragraph? Would you like it better that way? It's not a trick question, at least not right now; I dislike the change, but I'm not prepared to pounce and say "AHA! You're wrong because--" I just...don't like it.
The first person nature of the work and the dialogue-like "Nah..." makes it extremely clear that the line about Caspar is the character's thought, with no thought tag or italics needed.
What about Ken Follett? Stephen King? Or Michael Crichton? I don't have any of their books handy, but I suspect none of them use italics for inner monologue/dialogue.
As we've mentioned here, not every author uses the inner monologue system. I can remember my Crichton very well, and it's system he never used. So he didn't put anything in italics. Yes I do mean that one. Sorry for the confusion, I'm burnt the fuck out reading journal papers. It's interesting stuff, but it takes a lot of focus. With this example I'm not sure italics are necessarily her inner monologue. This is just a close third examination of her thoughts. It's occurring to me as we explore the topic that perhaps the only way we have to distinguish the inner monologue is italics. Or to put it another way, the inner monologue should be italicized, otherwise it's easy to see it as just a collection of thoughts. Take the example from A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, which is riddled with italics (you'd hate it @ChickenFreak) Here Moore uses tags in some cases, which we've said is unnecessary, but it clear serves a purpose. But what I think is important here, and what I believe is our disconnect, is that the tone of those italics is entirely different from the tone of your example. I think it becomes clear that italics are set to denote specific thoughts, and it's up to the author to decide when to use them. Okay, back to Bruffee.
I've read books with internal monologue that doesn't have italics, or even necessarily have tags. One example is Joyce, from Ulysses: "Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of beauty and power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled by greed and misery." The last two sentences are Stephen's direct thoughts. They're presented without italics, and they're left untagged - the fact that the first is in first person tells the reader that they are direct thoughts.
So where does the narration end and the thought begin? I still hadn’t seen anyone, even an employee, and that bothered me. Maybe I should have checked the weather before I left. Nah, Casper would call me if something came up. A quick glance reassured me that I didn’t have any missed phone calls, and my heart slowed a beat. The sentence in blue could be a direct thought or narration. The sentence before, "and that bothered me," is narration. The last sentence is narration: "A quick glance reassured me." But, "Maybe I should have checked," could be either.
Whether it's word-for-word thought, it seems clear to me that it's the character's thought in the moment. So the ambiguity about whether they had that thought word for word really doesn't bother me. How many ways are there to express that particular doubt? Maybe I should have checked the weather before I left. Maybe I should've checked the weather before I left. Maybe I should've checked the weather. Maybe it would have been a good idea to check the weather. I should have checked the weather, maybe? Huh. The weather. Should've checked it. Ack! Forgot to check the weather! Does it matter? If it really does matter, I'd go with something like the last two, which seem pretty clearly literal thought. This is all making me think about the mental model that different people have about thoughts. I'll post that after I stew over it some more.
