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Thinking what others will say: italics or?

MaeZe

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I'm sure there's someplace to look this one up but it's hard to find the right search term for something so specific, so forgive me. Brin is the first person narrator. I indicate her thoughts with present tense italics and narration with past tense regular font.

This is my paragraph:

The discontent still awaited, a quiet wave of echoes passing from villager to villager, “stupid Brin, putting everyone in danger with her insistence on filling in a bunch of maps." Each one that agreed would amplify the certainty of their convictions. The single opposing voice of my mother would merely silence them until she was out of their presence. Truth had little effect on certainty.​

In this case she's narrating but the mocking of other peoples' words creates a question for me. Are those thoughts or narration? Or maybe either is optional?

Thank you all advance.
 
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indianroads

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Someone smarter than I will know... but I’d lose the quotation marks and use italics.

You’ll use the quotation marks for other dialogue, using them for internal thoughts could be confusing.
 

dpaterso

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Seems like personal preference rather than a rule that would exist, in this case I lean towards italics (no pun) for those inner thoughts also.

-Derek
 

BethS

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The discontent still awaited, a quiet wave of echoes passing from villager to villager:Stupid Brin, putting everyone in danger with her insistence on filling in a bunch of maps." Each one that agreed would amplify the certainty of their convictions. The single opposing voice of my mother would merely silence them until she was out of their presence. Truth had little effect on certainty.​

Those ^^^ are the only changes I would suggest, personally. You don't need italics there. IMO, of course.

ETA: Huh. I seem to be running against the flow here. :greenie Italics instead of quotes would also work, of course. But just fwiw, when I've run across this sort of thing in a published work, I'm pretty sure I've seen quotes used more often than italics. Clearly there's no right or wrong, though.
 
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MythMonger

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Assuming that people are saying things your character can't hear, and that she's merely imagining the response:

The discontent still awaited, a quiet wave of echoes passing from villager to villager.

Stupid Brin, they might be saying, putting everyone in danger with her insistence on filling in a bunch of maps.

Each one that agreed would amplify the certainty of their convictions. The single opposing voice of my mother would merely silence them until she was out of their presence. Truth had little effect on certainty.​

I'm putting the thoughts in a different paragraph because of the tense change.
 

Bufty

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I have to agree with Beth's suggested tiny punctuation change, and can't see any necessity for italics. What is being narrated is perfectly clear without them.
 

MaeZe

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Someone smarter than I will know... but I’d lose the quotation marks and use italics.

You’ll use the quotation marks for other dialogue, using them for internal thoughts could be confusing.

Good point. I don't have quotes on any of the rest of the inner monologue. Maybe that is where I was getting hung up on this one. It'll be clear those are mocking thoughts, not her thoughts.
 

MaeZe

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Those ^^^ are the only changes I would suggest, personally. You don't need italics there. IMO, of course.

ETA: Huh. I seem to be running against the flow here. :greenie Italics instead of quotes would also work, of course. But just fwiw, when I've run across this sort of thing in a published work, I'm pretty sure I've seen quotes used more often than italics. Clearly there's no right or wrong, though.

Flow ... meh. The italics for inner thoughts argument will likely go on for another century. My preference is italics and I personally don't like deep third, seems to me to be just breaking first and third person rules. No matter. It's all good.

But I do like your punctuation and capitalization correction. Thanks.
 

MaeZe

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I have to agree with Beth's suggested tiny punctuation change, and can't see any necessity for italics. What is being narrated is perfectly clear without them.

That it's narration is probably why my brain is having an issue sorting this one.

It's resolved to lose the quotes and change the punctuation. Italics or not, I appreciate the input here. Gonna have to think some more about this one.