Writing internal dialogue? (or maybe not)

[AlexBailey]

Writing internal dialogue? (Or not.)

I'm wrestling with how to write internal dialogue. The examples I've liked so far would make several line breaks in the short paragraph below:

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The kitchen opened and voices came out of the house. (SHIT! I’m going to get caught! Who’s here? No one was supposed to be home for several more hours!) I slipped down low next to the side of the pool so I could spy on them without being in full view. (Had they seen me?) Thankfully the pool was fenced, and not fully visible from the back door. Whoever it was, if they stayed on the patio I might not be discovered.

---


Should I break the action from the ID?

Do italics work better? (Is there a way to do italics on the forum?)

Should I avoid it?

Is it breaking the 4th wall?

Is it abusive to the readers? (I winced)



Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You're narrating first person (which means your narration is your narrator's thoughts in the first place), but your narrator is talking to himself, which makes it a peculiar effect.

I'd lose the explicit internal dialogue, if I was was writing such a scene. Unless your narrator has voices in his head, which is almost how this reads...

 

[UsuallyPresent]

Taking electricblue's approach, one braindead-simple (I'm lazy) rewrite might look something like -

The kitchen opened and voices came out of the house. SHIT! I’m going to get caught! Who’s here? No one was supposed to be home for several more hours!

I slipped down low next to the side of the pool so I could spy on them without being in full view. Had they seen me?

Thankfully the pool was fenced, and not fully visible from the back door. Whoever it was, if they stayed on the patio I might not be discovered.

In the main lit site, italics can be generated by starting the section to italicize with < i > - just remove all spaces between the < and >. End the section with < / i >

On the boards, same thing except replace < with [ and > with ], again removing all spaces between the [ and the ]

So this should be italicized due to it being wrapped with [ i ] and [ / i ] when I type it in.

For bold, replace b's for i's. For underlining, u's for i's. Combinations need their own brackets, so this should be [ b ] bold [ u ] bold & underlined [ / b ] underlined [ / u ] and back to normal text.

Use the preview before submitting to doublecheck you got it right, either here or on the main lit site.

Hope this helps.

 

[AlexBailey]

Thanks UsuallyPresent and electricblue,

Okay, it makes sense that first person is the narrator's thoughts but with the part in the piece below that I italicized, I'm hoping got italics to work right, is an unvocalized present tense thought, separate from the past tense narration. Is it too confusing? Is there a better way to set it aside from the narrator's description of the action?

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The kitchen opened and voices came out of the house. SHIT! I’m going to get caught! Who’s here? No one was supposed to be home for several more hours!

---

How about doing it like this:

----

The kitchen opened and voices came out of the house.

"SHIT! I’m going to get caught! Who’s here?" I said to myself. No one was supposed to be home for several more hours.

---



I did the italics as UP said but it didn't work in the preview, maybe it will work in the post.

 

[KeithD]

Your example isn't sanctioned by U.S. Style (if you are writing in U.S. style), but it would be an understandable way to handle it for a Literotica story if you remained consistent.

U.S. Style (Chicago Manual of Style 16, 13.41) gives you two options: running it in roman font without quote marks ("You look great in that suit, Fred." What a bag of rags he's dragged in wearing, I thought. I guided him over to a gaggle of guys attached to beer cans.).

or in roman font, with double quotes around it. ("You look great in the suit, Fred," I told him as he walked into the party. "What a bag of rags he's dragged in wearing," I thought, as I guided him over to a gaggle of guys attached to beer cans.)

What some publishers use that U.S. Style doesn't sanction, but that I think is quite clear, are italics: ("You look great in that suit, Fred." What a bag of rags he's dragged in wearing, I thought. I guided him over to a gaggle of guys attached to beer cans.)

Looks to me like your clearest approach would be one of the two not sanctioned by U.S. Style, but I think would be fine for Lit. as long as you were consistent. Either in parentheses, as you give (but I don't remember seeing used before) or italics. If you chose to remain within sanctioned style, I'd add slugs more often (I thought) to keep the reader grounded.

To use italics, you need to manually add <I> to the beginning of what you want italicized and </I> to the end. (note that that's different from using italics here on the discussion board. The board uses straight brackets: [ ])

 

[JamesMiehoff]

It is probably not sanctioned by the Chicago Book of Style, but I tend to use single quotes when delimiting the voices in my character's head.

"You look great in that suit, Fred." 'What a bag of rags he's dragged in wearing', I thought. I guided him over to a gaggle of guys attached to beer cans.​

James

 

[KeithD]

That would fly with British style. Not with U.S. style. Double quotes is always, always, always the first level of quotes in U.S. Style--for any and all usages.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm hoping got italics to work right[/i], is an unvocalized present tense thought, separate from the past tense narration. Is it too confusing? Is there a better way to set it aside from the narrator's description of the action?

Of the choices, I'd be inclined to use italics - but remember, not all reading devices support italics, html can go badly wrong if there's a mistake in the code, and Lit page breaks (which you can't predict) can also glitch the code. If you go that route, I agree with KeithD's suggestion to speech slug those thoughts to avoid confusion.

My concern here though, isn't the technicalities of showing the thoughts, but what the approach is doing to the narrative. It reads like some weird schizophrenic conversation going on in his head, and as I say earlier, it's a bit odd to my eye. That's probably more my eye, keep that in mind .

Well - there's an example of glitched code already. I have no idea why some of that's gone bold - there's nothing showing in the draft version, and the italics went wrong, too… Playing around with the draft - it's a missing ] - so I've left it out to illustrate how easily html can go wrong.

 

[Hypoxia]

My concern here though, isn't the technicalities of showing the thoughts, but what the approach is doing to the narrative. It reads like some weird schizophrenic conversation going on in his head, and as I say earlier, it's a bit odd to my eye. That's probably more my eye, keep that in mind .

Font changes do break readers' short attention spans. Italics demand our focus. Look at ME, everyone! Sad. So, should I slow down and read this bit or just skip over it? Decisions, decisions...

I try to minimize mixed inner-outer speech. Nothing much more than:

"Hi Jack!" she smiled. What a spaz, she thought.​

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I do a lot of internal dialog and I don't think I do anything specific to show that it's internal dialog. Maybe my writing is confusing?

A couple of examples of mine
I sit up on the side of my bed and stretch. It's chilly today. It's going to be winter before I know it...snow on the ground...and I'll have to do everything alone if I want to survive.
Do I even want to survive now?

I fell asleep in my clothes last night, even my hoodie, so I decide to not change anything. I do scrounge up some cleanish socks and put them on. We really need to do laundry soon. We? More like I need to do laundry soon.

My MC does a whole lot of internalizing and if I did that in italics I think half the story would be written that way.

 

[KeithD]

Your use of internal dialogue looks fine to me.

 

[AlexBailey]

Thanks everyone!

I'm going in for another rewrite, for the internal dialogue part.

I'm writing in past tense, first person. I have parts of my story where secondary characters are telling long, complex stories while interacting during the telling with other characters.

When I started my story I just started. No plan, no idea of how far it would go or what all it would cover, I just let it pour out. I had no idea how ambitious the undertaking could be. I didn't understand how much difference there could be between writing in first or third person or how important it is to keep track of tense.

I've gained a new appreciation for authors. This is a great learning process. I'm sure it would be more effective for me to sign up for a community college writing class but that just does not fit my schedule. Thanks again, for all of your time and thought.

-Alex