Mods, please move if this is the wrong forum topic.) Okay, so imagine that I am trying to write a character who has a helpful alien voice in their head. Like Venom from the Spiderman world and I need to write the alien's thoughts and the main character's. How would you make the distinction in the text? Because my story is in FIRST person, is it's a little harder. (I can't change it. I'm too far in and I like it this way.) Because the English writing formatting gives us only Italics, Underline, and Bold. I don't want to use underline or bold. And there are going to be lengthy conversations with this alien character. So, what do you suggest? I was thinking maybe instead of quotes, we get a different marking. But I have read books where authors got too fancy and used - as quote marks and I chucked the book as soon as I realized that. Help.
In the Warcraft franchise's most recent novels, one of the main characters (Alleria Windrunner) is afflicted with void/shadow taint. This leads to her hearing constant whispers that seek to guide/influence her - the authors of the Warcraft novels handle shadow/void whispers in italics. Hope that helps or at least gives an example.
Yeah, I think italics are the standard way to go here. I think that's what John Scalzi did in his Old Man's War series for the MC's conversations with his AI implant, and it worked very well there.
Thank you. The issue is that the story is already in first person with internal dialogue of the POV being in italics. So, I was trying to think of something different, because the alien's voice is ALSO in first person.
If you're already using italics for internal thought, you could use "he said" dialog tags and quotes for the voice just like any other character, which is what I think @Friedrich Kugelschreiber meant. I can't imagine writing them both in first person would be anything but convoluted and confusing no matter how you format it.
If your main character, presented in First Person, is having a conversation with this alien character (inside the head or not) why not just dialogue tag the alien, same as you would if they were present in the scene? If the alien shows hesitation, or attempts to force an issue, or sounds sympathetic, or issues a challenge ...these can be presented as 'action beats.' How would you present a telephone conversation? It would be a similar sort of thing.
