Your thoughts on thoughts?

merper · Aug 4, 2006

Most books I've read have lines where you can hear various characters' thoughts. I've seen it done many differnt ways. Sometimes, in quotes like the character said it, except followed by "he thought" instead of "he said."
Other times people will just write it like a normal sentence ex. The cat is in the hat, he thought. But I've always assumed that the most common and implicit way to express a thought is through italics. For example, if we are in 3rd person POV focused on this one character and we see:

The cat is in the hat.

I, at least, assume that the POV char just said that in his head. Is this the standard convention?

The reason I'm so concerned is because my WIP revolves around a majority of the characters being able to hear thoughts. In certain cases they have conversations through thought. So far I've been using the italics version, simply as a way to distinguish visually between thought and speech, because numerous scenes involve them interacting with normal people. Here's an example I made up to demonstrate:

"Hands in the air," the guard said, advancing on Mike gun drawn . Mike could hear him chanting in his head: Don't do anything stupid. Don't do anything stupid. God, please just do what I say.

How do you want to play this? Mike thought, shifting his eyes so he could see Julie.

Oh let him have his fun, Julie thought, a smile dancing on her lips. Don't want to give the old man a heart attack. We'll just knock him out when he isn't looking.

"All right, officer," Mike said, raising his arms. "Just don't hurt me."

Does something like that read as natural? If I put it in quotes or just use it without the italics, it would seem very hard to figure out which was thought and which was someone actually speaking, which would greatly hinder the reading of the action scenes.

cree · Aug 4, 2006

Yes, it works.

Becky Writes · Aug 4, 2006

That's how I do it.

blacbird · Aug 4, 2006

I think the passage shown works pretty well, but I'm not sure I'd want to read long stretches of this technique. In small doses at the right parts of the story it might be very effective. It could also drift dangerously into the show vs. tell controversy.

caw.

stephblake24 · Aug 4, 2006

Looks good to me. I have seen it in italics and not, but for your purposes, I would use the italics to set it off from "out loud" conversations.

FloVoyager · Aug 4, 2006

How do you want to play this? Mike thought, shifting his eyes so he could see Julie.

Oh let him have his fun, Julie thought, a smile dancing on her lips. Don't want to give the old man a heart attack. We'll just knock him out when he isn't looking.

"All right, officer," Mike said, raising his arms. "Just don't hurt me."

Well, it works well enough as is, but I think I might be inclined to use both quotation marks and italics when characters are actually speaking to each other this way.

Edited to add:

Like this:

"How do you want to play this?" Mike thought, shifting his eyes so he could see Julie.

"Oh let him have his fun," Julie thought, a smile dancing on her lips. "Don't want to give the old man a heart attack. We'll just knock him out when he isn't looking."

"All right, officer," Mike said, raising his arms. "Just don't hurt me."

The punctuation is in italics too, with this method.

blacbird · Aug 4, 2006

SF legend A. E. Van Vogt wrote a famous novel centering around thought communication, called Slan. You might find it worth a look.

caw.

merper · Aug 4, 2006

Thanks for all the input. Blackbird, I'll look for that book next time I'm at the library.

One follow up, based on something someone brought up about not wanting to read large blocks like this. I was debating whether the characters should talk to each other completely in thought when in private or force them to speak out loud just so it seems familiar to the reader. I can justify doing it either way, but I would much prefer doing the former. I suppose the answer will be something along the lines of write a first draft and see if it works, which is what I'm currently doing, but does anyone have any advance thoughts? - in a manner of speaking

Forbidden Snowflake · Aug 4, 2006

I don't use quotation marks, I tend to use italics when I don't specify that someone is talking.

Marc was looking out of the window. Bloody awful weather!

But, when I write: Marc was looking out of the window. Bloody awful weather, he thought.

Then I don't tend to capitalize. Don't know if that's good though.

Alan Yee · Aug 4, 2006

Thanks, this is very useful for my WIP. My demons tend to have some telepathic connections between people they are close to, so I was wondering how I would format it. I was trying to decide how to format the scene where the two brothers are bound and gagged but have a telepathic conversation on what happened in the years since they've last seen each other. The characters also talk, though they generally go telepathic in private or for long distance messages.

I guess the italics work.

maestrowork · Aug 4, 2006

Thoughts are fine (italicize, please). But if you over use thoughts, it takes me out of the story because all those italics and "he thought/she thought." I'd rather you put the thoughts in as narrative.

drevil915 · Aug 4, 2006

I use thoughts whenever I think it's necessary. But don't use them if it's already clear what the character is thinking, either by dialog or action.

Bayou Bill · Aug 4, 2006

Using italics to indicate thought tends to be fairly common in sci/fi - fantasy, but occurs much less often in other genres. If in doubt, use italics since they are a WHOLE lot easier to delete than add.

However, do not, under punishment of spending the rest of your days re-writing your first story, use quotation marks to indicate thoughts. As their name implies, quotation marks indicate spoken words. If they are also used for thoughts, how is the poor reader to know which is what?

That said, it is more important to be consistent than it is to have a manuscript Strunk and White or the Chicago Manual of Style folks would laud for being "right.".

Bayou Bill

Thomma Lyn · Aug 4, 2006

I work thoughts in as narrative wherever possible (which I usually find to be possible), and I occasionally use "he thought", "she wondered" and the like. No italics.

BardSkye · Aug 4, 2006

There are several authors who use colons instead of quotation marks to indicate telepathic conversation. In that method, both thoughts and telepathic speech are presented in italics.

Example: John looked over at the girl. Is she telepathic?

:You bet,: she answered him.

katiemac · Aug 4, 2006

I'd agree that what you have, merper, works fine. I admit that when authors sometimes use quotes for thoughts, I get confused because I expect it to be spoken dialogue. Since you're dealing with a telepathic situation, italics would make the distinction that much easier for the reader, especially if they use that communication method frequently.

NightWynde · Aug 4, 2006

As it looks, it's fine, but over a novel it would become a visual aggravation. In order to avoid this, you may want to make a few rules regarding telepathic communication.

For example:

Telepathy can give the user a headache, therefore they only use it when absolutely necessary.

Telepaths can only communicate with one other telepath at a time, otherwise it becomes a jumble of "crossed wires" similar to when more than one person is speaking at a time.

In order to telepathically communicate (as opposed to just picking up any ol' random thought) a "channel" has to be agreed upon (similar to how radios work). This would work especially well if you have rankings within the demonic infrastructure and the higher levels have their own channels, while the lower levels have theirs.

Or whatever. I've found that if magic (in whatever form it takes) has certain limits within a book, movie, etc. then I'm more likely to believe in the probability of it. This is true no matter what the genre is. Could be just me though.

gp101 · Aug 5, 2006

As far as I know on using thoughts in prose, the thoughts are italicized if there is no tag:

Robin looked back at him. Did I really marry this clown?

But if there is a tag, then there are no italics, nor question mark:

Robin looked back at him. Did I really marry this clown, she thought.

I've seen Quotes instead of italics and don't know which is preferred by the industry; just know that my own eyes prefer italics. Course, I could be wrong about the whole thing, so better that you wait for the true connoseurs of grammar and style to chime in. Reph? Where are you, Reph? We need your two cents.

As for whole passages of internal thoughts for telepathic conversation? I've never read one (not usually used in the genres I read, so I'm clueless), but what if they just summarized each other's thoughts to the reader? Maybe less confusing? I don't know. Just a...thought.

MarkEsq · Aug 5, 2006

and in a manuscript?

Assuming I just use italics (not quotes) to indicate thoughts, how does this look on paper, in a manuscript? I had thought you underline for clarity instead of actually using italics. In other words, the underlining lets the editor/agent know you are italicizing the underlined words. Correct, or not?

ChaosTitan · Aug 5, 2006

MarkEsq said:
Assuming I just use italics (not quotes) to indicate thoughts, how does this look on paper, in a manuscript? I had thought you underline for clarity instead of actually using italics. In other words, the underlining lets the editor/agent know you are italicizing the underlined words. Correct, or not?

Underlining to suggest italics is a typesetter's tool. Some editors/agents still prefer this method. Others don't. My first three chapters don't use italics to indicate thoughts or telepathic communication, but later chapters do. If/when an agent asks for the entire thing, I plan to leave the italics there unless submission guidelines state otherwise.

How's that for a definitive answer?

maestrowork · Aug 5, 2006

gp101 said:
Robin looked back at him. Did I really marry this clown?

But if there is a tag, then there are no italics, nor question mark:

Robin looked back at him. Did I really marry this clown, she thought.

It's just a short passage, both are correct. However, if it's a longer passage, a large block of italics as well as "internal thoughts" is distracting. Try to incorporate into your POV narrative:

Robin looked back at him. Did she really marry this clown? She couldn't believe it. What a mistake.

merper · Aug 5, 2006

Thoughts are fine (italicize, please). But if you over use thoughts, it takes me out of the story because all those italics and "he thought/she thought." I'd rather you put the thoughts in as narrative.

The thing is though, these aren't inner monologues. They are, for the most part, dialog between two(or more) characters which serves to advance the plot, not long paragraphs where the MC has some sort of inner debate.

Telepathy can give the user a headache, therefore they only use it when absolutely necessary.

Telepaths can only communicate with one other telepath at a time, otherwise it becomes a jumble of "crossed wires" similar to when more than one person is speaking at a time.

In order to telepathically communicate (as opposed to just picking up any ol' random thought) a "channel" has to be agreed upon (similar to how radios work). This would work especially well if you have rankings within the demonic infrastructure and the higher levels have their own channels, while the lower levels have theirs.

Or whatever. I've found that if magic (in whatever form it takes) has certain limits within a book, movie, etc. then I'm more likely to believe in the probability of it. This is true no matter what the genre is. Could be just me though.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say telepathy can give users a headache. Do you mean seeing it as a plot tool gives people headaches or does seeing italics or "he thought/she thought" on paper give people headaches.

I can't use any of the rules you mentioned above, mainly because, this isn't so much telepathy(which I'm reading as a forced communication between two empowered people) as much as it is a passive ability to hear what people are thinking, but I do try to ground it in at least - some - science, if not down in the nits and grits of biology and physics, then at least logically. One of the main purposes of a SC is to do so.

I also try to pass off as much of the thought as narrative. Clearly if you can hear everyone's thoughts all the time, one hour of a group meeting with 5 people could fill 400 pages, so I absolutely have to do it.

Thanks for all the input, you've given me a lot of food for...thought.

New rule: Anyone new posts have to end with the word "thought".

NightWynde · Aug 5, 2006

merper said:
I'm not sure what you mean when you say telepathy can give users a headache. Do you mean seeing it as a plot tool gives people headaches or does seeing italics or "he thought/she thought" on paper give people headaches.

I can't use any of the rules you mentioned above, mainly because, this isn't so much telepathy(which I'm reading as a forced communication between two empowered people) as much as it is a passive ability to hear what people are thinking, but I do try to ground it in at least - some - science, if not down in the nits and grits of biology and physics, then at least logically. One of the main purposes of a SC is to do so.

I also try to pass off as much of the thought as narrative. Clearly if you can hear everyone's thoughts all the time, one hour of a group meeting with 5 people could fill 400 pages, so I absolutely have to do it.

Thanks for all the input, you've given me a lot of food for...thought.

New rule: Anyone new posts have to end with the word "thought".

I was just passing along some ideas that you could use in order to keep the italics to standard font ratio down to a minimum. Having the characters get a headache when they used their telepathy was just one way to achieve this. But, in the end, it's your story, these were just some..."thoughts."

Your thoughts on thoughts?

merper

cree

Becky Writes

Go Tarheels!

blacbird

stephblake24

FloVoyager

Will write for chocolate

blacbird

merper

Forbidden Snowflake

I'm quite put out.

Alan Yee

Still Here!

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray

drevil915

Bayou Bill

AW Ne'er-Do-Well

Thomma Lyn

Cat Wrangler

BardSkye

Barbershoppin' Harmony Whore

katiemac

Five by Five

NightWynde

gp101

MarkEsq

Clever title pending.

ChaosTitan

Around

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray

merper

NightWynde