There is a part of my current novel that is a lot of inner monologue/thoughts of one person, and I'm aware that it (even though it isn't more than a few pages in total, divided into several occasions) could be a little heavy to read, not to mention that it kind of stops the "action" while they take place. I'm thinking about changing them from monologue (or whatever I should call it) in third person to some kind of diary/journal-entries in first person, to read easier, and to place these separately between scenes instead. Would that be a good idea? Question number two (and this maybe should be posted in the grammar section, but I hope it's ok to include it here): Should the journal entries be in italics?
Journal entries are never a good idea unless your character is a 13 year old girl. Keep the internal monologue as internal monologue, and if you feel that it's too slow-paced or disruptive, then work on those problems by editing the text and/or changing its location. And neither thoughts nor journal entries should be italicised in your manuscript. If you want to do it for the sake of clarity while you're writing, that's fine, but when you submit the manuscript they should be in a normal font.
If you are going to insert journal entries, format them as block quotes. See He said, she said - Mechanics of Dialogue for an explanation of block quotes.
If anything, a diary entry stops the action even more than a monologue, which can be woven into action, so it goes thought, action, thought, action. Otherwise you get, action, thoughtthoughtthoughtthought, action...
melzaar: I actually thought about writing these parts separately from the actual scene in which they now appear. Arron: actually the girl WAS a teen when the diary was written, but do you think it's still a bad idea? Cogito: I'm not sure I understand what you mean, I'll have to go and check the link you posted. Thanks.
Ok, I'll do that/keep it as I alreay have it. This was a thought that came to my mind when thinking about that part, but I wasn't sure it was a good idea. Thanks Katica.
Inner anything in fiction only works if it's relevant and makes sense. If your character family was murdered by clowns, and a car full of 20 clowns drives by, it's contrived for your character to not think about stuff. Likewise, if some asks 'how are you' and your character goes on a 2 page long inner monologue about the history of their life, before saying 'I'm fine, thanks for asking' then it's also contrived. Basically, capture the truth of the moment (minus all the irrelevant 'I'm breathing' stuff), and you can't go wrong. Adding even more distance and filters between the reader and character by adding in diary entries is a mistake, plain and simple (despite being seen in published works).
