Essentially I have a character that has a voice inside their head that is kind of a person. (explanations below) and the voice speaks to the MC at times of doubt. Like making a decision or in danger (self preservation). How do I write this? It's third person limited. I have figured out that my MC internal dialog will be written in first person with italics as to what they think. I have been using brackets for the voice in head, but is that sufficient? How do I play out a dialog between internal voice and MC? BTW at first he talks aloud and then learns to internalize the talking! This voice is a main role. View more as a dissociation identity that manifest at rare times. Example is as follows: {Listen to me speak. You can't ignore me I'm in your head!} "Regular characters speaking. *explanation of the voice * essentially the voice lives inside his mind and manifest as a different person. This voice physically changes the MC when manifesting. (like Dr jekyll Mr Hyde). He can see the voice later but at first the MC can't, only hear. They conflict a lot as this is science fantasy so yeah! Any help or guidance would be greatly helpful and appreciated. Thank you for your time!
You've been peeking at my WIP, haven't you? Or listening in on my internal dialogues (insert animated GIF of Gollum arguing with himself)... I would say just make it look different from external dialogue—maybe lose the parentheses, it looks a little over the top. Maybe use a different font? Or italics or something? Make sure to also differentiate the voices just by what they say and the emotional tone, you know? So even if you weren't making them look different the reader could tell who's speaking.
Thanks, they definitely have very different perspective and personalities but with three people talking it's like... Okay is this too tasking? (MC, internal voice, other character). I never thought of the other font. That would be perfect for a sinister creepy voice thing... Which I am kind of going for! And I did see the other post! I was looking specifically for like a voice that manifest to a person the MC can actually see but of course no one else can. And this voice can eventually take over yet still keep their voice.
Oh, if you saw my entry in the Workshop, yeah that's the same story, but it's changed quite a bit, and that section didn't include the internal voice. I'm still deciding if the voice remains only a voice or shows itself more fully. I'm leaning toward just a voice with maybe a vague pseudo-visual impression of what it might look like.
I understand that feeling. I debated too, but that voice, at least to me, is a key fundamental element of the story and it is a running theme. I like the darkness of it all. It may not work the same way for your story, but it's almost mandatory for me. I really appreciate your help and your thread was helpful but I saw you were on the fence. I'm just trying to decipher how to write it... But changing the text will definitely help. I was trying to do a big overwhelming argument scene that involved 5 people speaking (including MC and internal voice). And the other people do have unique voices, but the internal is hard to figure out, especially if the others can't hear it.
I don't think you need to do anything special, I mean not with the part about the voice; but let the response from the character themselves written in italics is a good idea. Spoiler: book that has a similar situation If it would help, check out the chaos of standing still by jessica brody, in which the mc has a dead friend that talks to her constantly, well kinda. edited,
Does the voice have a name? That would help keep it separated from all the external characters. Especially if the name is fundamentally different from normal people names. But yeah, I know scenes with many characters are really hard to write if they re all talking. Even if they're all just external. Maybe there's a different way the internal voice speaks to him. I mean, is it articulate ind intelligent, or could it maybe be a bit animalistic or childlike or something? If it's communicating from the deep unconscious, there;'s a translation problem—the unconscious communicates more through imagery than words, like it does in dreams. The words in dreams are usually garbled or strange and the meaning comes across more through imagery and through interpretation of what happened. I like the way in Andre Norton's sci-fi stories with telepathic animals the animals communicate with the human protag in simple statements, like intelligent children or someone who isn't familiar with the language, something like this: "Others approach. We must go. Must not be discovered."
"Are you using dialog tags? asked RZ. "I would probably just..." "Why would you ask that?" interrupted the voice. "Obviously not, if he needs brackets." "We don't know that. He might be looking for even more clarification," said RZ. "Who are you talking to?" asked Xoic. "Oh, sorry. I was just thinking outloud." Dude, shut up. You're going to get us locked up again! The voice just laughed. "It's hardly my fault if you can't remember not to talk to your imaginary friend in public, besides, that place was fun. We should get locked up again." Imaginary friend? Is that what we're calling you these days? "Hey! I can use that word. You can't use that word." demanded the voice. Okay, gees. Sorry. "So anyway, yeah," RZ continued after a glaring pause, "I would mostly rely on dialog tags."
I will check that book out for sure!! Thanks for the reference. Weirdly enough at first the voice is known as... 'Voice' but it does have a name as it manifest. As I said they're like a Dr jekyll Mr Hyde so they don't talk much until the story progresses. I'd say the voice is a bit of a rude, blunt person. Mostly negative except self preservation. I laughed when I saw this. I just don't want it to feel too cluttered. I have eliminated many of the scenes that contain this because I don't want to over write and have people potentially struggle with having many characters arguing and that internal voice, named 'Voice' as well. They all do speak differently!! It's just like quotes quotes and more quotes!
Thanks. We try. I mean I try. Sorry. Anyway, that's my point. Dialog just looks that way. Books with a lot of dialog have a lot of quotes. I think it's going to look more convoluted if you throw unconventional stuff in there like brackets. To a publisher or reader, it might even come off as sophomoric. Trust your readers. If you draw lines on the page, they'll be able to see them. They're used to it. That's just how it's done. As someone who's easily distracted while reading, I appreciate what you're wanting to offer the reader, but seriously, I would stick to convention. Find books with ensemble casts for examples. It comes to mind, but I'm sure there are plenty of books with six characters in one scene that don't involve a fifty hour commitment. Three characters happens all the time though, so find that and do a little brushing up. Like I said, people are used to it. You might never have noticed just how many times a chapter contains the phrase "he said." It seems maddeningly excessive when you're writing, but you fly through quotation marks, dialog tags and multiple character conversations as easily as you do a period or comma when you're reading. Now having said all that, I have an somewhat contradictory caveat. If you are writing in an unconventional style, like first person present tense (Chuck Palahniuk) or using a ton of sentence fragments, you know, not strange ideas, but abnormal style, then as jarring as it would be at first, one might expect unconventional punctuation as well. If you're going to use brackets though, [use these.] I don't remember what {these} are called, but it's even more distracting. No one's used to seeing those at all. They feel like an interjection from the author or an annotation or something. They're actually almost exclusively used for coding, I think.
I'm running into a similar problem in my story. I intend to have quite a bit of telepathic dialogue in my story. As of right now I am using <these> as placeholders until I can decide how best to represent telepathy. I tried looking around the internet to see if there was any standard convention, but I couldn't really find one. Especially since I don't want to overuse italics.
I've read a book where a disembodied voice was represented by a scratchy (still legible) font. Can't remember which book it was, but it worked. A similar thing here might work?
Others have brought it up, but I also think that a different font could be an idea. Just choose one that doesn’t stand out all too much from the rest of the text or is too hard to read.
Hi, there! Sorry to come late to the party. But I actually just finished the first draft of a novel written in the first person, about a character who experiences vocal auditory hallucinations. I specify that it's the first draft so it's clear that nobody else has read it yet to tell me it makes sense. But I was mindful of this problem, and I feel like natural solutions arose as I went. I used italics for the main character's thoughts--that was a given. I thought for a long time that once the character realizes the voices are hallucinatory, I'd italicize them as well, to show that they had shifted categories to become part of the character's thoughts. But I actually wound up leaving them written with quotes, the same as any other audible dialogue, because I feel like it actually highlights the fact that they're hallucinatory, since the reader is acutely aware that they're not real, while still registering as "sound" for the MC. But the reader still has to have enough information to make educated guesses, otherwise it turns to mud. The trick, in my case, was mostly the content of the lines. Sort of like what Xoic was saying. In scenes when they had dialogue wedged between multiple (real) characters, I made sure that their lines commented on what was going on in the conversation--the role of hecklers. Another good trick was to give them their own lines of thought to follow. If they had interaction with the main character alone just before a scene of multiple speakers, I'd have them carry their focus into the new conversation. Something they were ridiculing the MC for, or something they were trying to get him to do. There are authors who don't even use speech tags, but the speakers are clear to the reader because the characters come through what's being said. So if you imbue the voices with enough character, the reader should have no problem following who's talking--real or imaginary. The [straight brackets] are also a solution. I'd be hesitant to use any different fonts, because that could easily feel gimmicky or be visually distracting when you're going for an aural effect. But it's all case by case; see what works for your story.
