Character thoughts (italics? quotes? underlines?)

I agree with FennelGiraffe and with the idea that italicized lines should be short. The reason I think it's important to use italics with direct thought is because the tense can vary from the rest of the paragraph.

Here's an example:

His mother stood frozen, mouth gaping open. Then a tell-tale red built in her cheeks, and her shoulders began to shake. Lucas smothered his guffaws under clasped hands and cringed. Not grounded. Dead. I am so dead. Instead, there was a snort, then a chuckle. Then deep belly laughs. Lucas’s jaw dropped open, and for a moment he forgot his own amusement and just stared.

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Not just tense -- pov. In the middle of that paragraph I jumped from third person past tense to a sentence in first person present. It's entirely correct because it's a direct thought. But if it weren't called out as such, it would be a "bump" for a reader. Would they figure it out? Probably. But it would stop the flow while they figured out what happened and why.

scarletpeaches said:

My characters never think.

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Now, I don't care who you are, that shi7 is funny right there!

I write in third limited, so internal thought processes abound in my novel. BUT, when there is an actual internal monologue, I italicize those phrases. When they speak outloud to themselves, I use quotations and para breaks like in dialogue. Seems to work just fine, no confusion to my betas.

IdiotsRUs said:

Wouldn't that depend on how much thinking your character is doing?

Because a book with 20% italics is gonna be annoying to read. I'd definitely notice that!

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Such a book might be annoying in more ways than one.

I like italics for fairly short thoughts. The problem I have with them for longer thoughts comes when the thought includes some emphasized word, which is then put into normal print, and I just don't catch it.

For my critique group, I use italics. The only people that seem to mind haven't stayed with the group very long.

Hmmmm, I call out the thought dialog with "*"... But then I have a lot of telepathy going on between characters. Example *Yes I am speaking to you inside of your mind.* Seems like the other times when a character is thinking I'd say, "John peered into the darkness and thought to himself, where the hell are you?"

Interesting discussion.

Rob

bonitakale said:

Such a book might be annoying in more ways than one.

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There's a certain guilty-pleasure author that I have been known to enjoy who uses italics extensively for internal character thoughts. The character sits down or goes for a walk or whatever and has a good long italicized think about everything going on their life and how they feel about it. Yes, there is some action interspersed here and there, but there can be whole scenes that are basically just thinking.

I dislike this, not because it hurts my eyes (though I can sympathize with that), but because to me it feels like the gears are showing. There are more elegant and suspenseful ways to show how a character is developing. This can work OK if the reader is really, really in love with the character, but if not, it just makes a big long chunk that you know is going to be boring.

So I guess that's a long-winded way of delivering this tangential piece of advice: if you have lots and lots of direct thoughts that you are tempted to italicize, you might want to give some thought to whether that's really the most effective way to tell your story.

I'm not saying I believe this applies to anybody here...it's just what my brain spits out when this topic comes up, apparently.

I would say follow what is taught and most books say to do. In that case it's italize the words.

" " is dialog,
' ' is rarely used and mostly for apostrophes or quote within a quote.

I had the same issues when I wrote my first book and did research on the subject. None of the books I read on it ever said to use " or ' for thoughts.

Just my point of view is all.