• Basic Writing questions is not a crit forum. All crits belong in Share Your Work

Format Advice

Status
Not open for further replies.

CH1

AW Addict
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
267
Reaction score
51
Location
Ireland
I have an idea for a short story which involves only one character. The whole story will be written as his thoughts where he will be basically questioning his recent events, actions, sanity etc.
So my question is how do I write this to show that character is thinking rather than speaking

How long have I been here? or

"How long have I been here"? or

How long have I been here?

Remembering that he will answer his own questions in his mind as well, so that every word I write will be in the same format.
I would at this moment say that the whole story will be written like this with actions also been shown as thoughts.

Any help would be much appreciated and maybe I should check my own sanity:Shrug:
 
Last edited:

Captcha

Banned
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
4,456
Reaction score
637
If the whole story is being written like that, it would probably be best just to have it in plain font, without quotation marks or italics, in my opinion. Quotation marks would just be a weird little distraction at the start of each paragraph, and italics for an entire story would be distracting, to me.

I'd change my answer if you needed to offset the thoughts from actions, but if it's essentially one long interior monologue, I think plain type is fine.
 

DennisB

Banned
Joined
Jan 29, 2010
Messages
397
Reaction score
22
Location
Frankfort, Indiana
Here's a novel thought!
Write a couple of pages the way you guess it might work. Let it sit a couple of days, then look at it. If it seems to work, use it. If it doesn't, try something else.

Ultimately, there are no rules in fiction. It's all a matter of whether it works.
 

CH1

AW Addict
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
267
Reaction score
51
Location
Ireland
Thank you for your replies, your both right, I'm going to just write it now and see how it all ends up, thanks again
 
Status
Not open for further replies.