How to present psychic conversations in prose.

So long as I know clearly from the outset that all characters converse this way, why not use normal font?

After all I do read and 'hear' it all as 'conversation'- no?

So long as I know clearly from the outset that all characters converse this way, why not use normal font?

After all I do read and 'hear' it all as 'conversation'- no?

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Unless you also have normal speech and need to differentiate it?

I have a WIP with a kind of telepathy but mostly normal speech and they do have to be differentiated. I have been using double quotes for normal speech, and 'Italics within single quotes like this for thought communication'. I think I have also used italics for direct thought. I've only had one reader so far (and far from published) so I have no idea if this is acceptable or a dog's breakfast.

I just recalled a book by John Wyndam with telepathy published decades ago. I think it was called "Chocky". I wonder how they did it back then.

I'm currently reading the Penric and Desdemona books by Bujold. There are two different types of psychic voices in play.

With one, the main character is host to a demon. Both his personal thoughts (either to himself or mentally conversational with the demon) and the demon's dialogue (internal to him) are both indicated by italics, and the dialogue tags make it clear as to whether it's him or her who is speaking internally. When the demon uses his mouth to speak, however, it has normal quotation marks, and either his reaction, the words themselves, or the dialogue tags make it clear who's responsible for the conversation. On occasion, it's purposely vague-- especially when he himself can't tell which of them voiced a thought.

With the other type, it's a voice that has a layer of compulsion to it. The usage of that voice is within quotes as normal, because it's spoken aloud, but it's bolded.

Just food for thought:

Once, many years (lordy... decades actually) ago, I wrote a story where the MC had a conversation with a ghost. The character would speak normally, but the spirit would respond by sending a mental image (a barking dog when it didn't like what the MC said), a temperature change (cold for no, warm for yes), or an affected mood the MC would experience (anxiety, joy, etc.).

This is a moot point though since your characters would communicate words... but does the person receiving them hear words via a cochlear implant?

Have a look at how Stephen King handles it. The Shining is the main one that springs to mind but there's a few of his books that have a similar sort of thing going on.

Sorry I don't have a copy of The Shining to give an example. I've always found the way that Stephen King differentiates between psychic thoughts/conversation/premonitions and spoken dialogue to be very clear and never confusing. However you do it, you want to be sure that the reader knows if words are actually spoken or if they're perceived psychically.

One of Anne McCaffrey's series dealt with psychically gifted characters and telepathy and other forms of unusual communication were indicated by <Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet> to immediately differentiate from spoken communication. Something to distinguish it from normal conversation is probably a good visual shorthand.

Italics, with or without quote marks, is pretty standard from what I have seen. I used italics without quotes for the POV character because it is really just a kind of directed thinking.

Thomas Vail said:

One of Anne McCaffrey's series dealt with psychically gifted characters and telepathy and other forms of unusual communication were indicated by <Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet> to immediately differentiate from spoken communication. Something to distinguish it from normal conversation is probably a good visual shorthand.

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That was how Applegate designated alien "thought-speak" in her Animorphs series, too... which caused some issues in fanfic when websites omitted mentally-transmitted dialog because HTML uses those markings and it confused web browsers. (Not an issue with e-readers, but it might be something to consider.)

I've also seen colons or semicolons used to demarcate mental communications, as well as parentheses and brackets. In my own unpublished writing, I use an equal sign, =, at the start and end of a mental communication, because it scans easily for editing purposes as both different from spoken words marked by " and more than just ordinary text. If I ever publish, that's something I'd probably hash out with the editor/publisher. (It would probably be a fairly easy fix, with blanket search/replace, as I don't use = anywhere else.)

And italics work, too, if it's clear from context, though long stretches of italics can be off-putting to some readers.

(As for using just a single quote, ', that might cause some confusion; I've read British books that used ' instead of " for normal dialog.)

Here's a thought throwing a spanner in the works - what happens when it is turned into an audio book?
I've been listening to audio books a lot lately, and I miss the visual cues you get on a page, like when someone else is talking or distinguishing dialogue from narration. The person doing the reading out loud - a good one will do different voices, but I've heard too many that don't make it clear. They don't even pause to indicate it's a new scene.
Using visual queues to differentiate telepathic dialogue works well on the page, but yet another issue in spoken books.

That would be something quite well handled by some manner of minor audio effect.

I used just italics for thoughts, italics with single quotes for telepathic speech and double quotes for normal speech. So far, no complaints.
I also made sure each character has its own specific speech pattern, and the dialogue is properly tagged when there's a chance of confusion. This should make the job of the narrator easier if it ever gets turned into an audiobook. .