I have a quotation question?

[Jezebel_in_Hell]

What is the best way or correct way to write a thought?

“I wonder if he will come,” she thought.

or

‘I wonder if he will come,’ she thought.

 

[3113]

What is the best way or correct way to write a thought?

“I wonder if he will come,” she thought.

or

‘I wonder if he will come,’ she thought.

I wonder if he will come? she thought.

You don't use either quote marks or single quotes. Quote marks imply she's speaking aloud.

 

[damppanties]

I wonder if he will come? she thought.

You don't use either quote marks or single quotes. Quote marks imply she's speaking aloud.

I've seen single quotes used for thoughts too.

 

[Jezebel_in_Hell]

Thank you.

 

[TE999]

What is the best way or correct way to write a thought?

“I wonder if he will come,” she thought.

or

‘I wonder if he will come,’ she thought.

Italics are best to differentiate thought from speaking, thus:

Alice paced impatiently on the porch waiting for Jim.

I wonder if he will come?

Then his car rolled in the driveway.

"I thought you'd never get here."

"Sorry I'm late."

 

[sr71plt]

If you wish to follow U.S. publishing industry standards, this is what the highest-level U.S. publishing authority, the Chicago Manual of Style, edition 15, has to say about rendering thoughts:

"Unspoken discourse. Thought, imagined dialogue, and other interior discourse may be enclosed in [double] quoting marks or, not, according the the context or the writer's preference." (11.47)

Examples given:

"I don't care if we have offended Morgenstern," thought Vera. "Besides," she told herself, "they're all fools."

Why, we wondered, did we choose this route?

Two points:

1. In American publishing, the first level of quotations is always double. So, your second example won't fly in American publishing. (Chicago 11.33)

2. Dropped from Chicago 15, but an option in earlier editions of Chicago, was the use of italics for thoughts:

I don't care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they're all fools.

I find the use of italics the clearest and many American publishers still allow that, in spite of the most recent Chicago ruling that drops it as an option.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The following is posted on a competing website,the "Nifty Erotic Stories Archive" d I have always found both highly entertaining and informative - the hallmark of go instruction. (The hallmark of a website that provides very limited formating options are the irritating * symbols indicating missing italic codes, however.)

http://nifty.org/nifty/information/dialog-lesson

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 14:28:37 -0500 (EST)
From: Felix Lance Falkon <falkon@netaxs.com>
Subject: "A Dialog & Writing Lesson" MMM, anal, humor (fwd)

"A Dialog & Writing Lesson" M/M/M, anal sex, an erotic
lecture on erotic writing

=================================================================
The author permits any kind of archiving, posting, reposting,
and reproduction in fixed form or otherwise, free or for profit,
of this story. Copyright (C) 2000 by Felix Lance Falkon,
falkon@netaxs.com. This work is unsuitable for minors. Standard
warnings: slippery when wet, this end up, for external use only.
Comments invited. You may rewrite this, but if you do, please
replace my name with yours and send me a copy of your version.
=================================================================
(The ** starts emphasis [underline/italics]; * ends emphasis.)
----------------------------------------------------------------

A DIALOG & WRITING LESSON
(revised & expanded version of 2000 Jan 30)

by Felix Lance Falkon

Morganstern, now on his back, looked up at Jon, the lithe
young stud who was just starting his first impaling thrust. But
with no more than an inch of himself inside Morganstern, who was
the bigger, more muscular of the two naked young writers, Jon
stopped and held himself perfectly still. Morganstern asked,
"What's the matter?" "Short fuze, real short." "You afraid
you'll go off too soon?" "Sure am," said Jon.

"May I make a few suggestions?" asked Morganstern as he felt
Jon cautiously ease himself deeper.

"Go ahead," said Jon with a jerk of his head that swung his
blond hair clear of his eyes. "Suggest away."

"Don't put your reply in the **same* paragraph as my
question, the way you did in the first paragraph of this story.
Instead, start a new paragraph with **every* change in who's
talking, as I'm doing now."

"Uh -- why?"

Morganstern felt his abdominal muscles contract into a taut,
concave ripple as he curled his hips up to meet the next impaling
thrust. He took a deep breath, tightened the layer of muscle that
swept across his broad chest, then said, "It makes it **lots*
easier for the reader to tell who's saying what. It's like . . .
like in that first paragraph, the reader's not **quite* sure who
said, `Afraid I'll shoot too soon.' Also, you'll have shorter
paragraphs, which are easier to read than screens or pages full
of uninterrupted columns of type. Newspapermen call writing such
long paragraphs `tombstoning,' because the results look like grey
tombstones: boring and uninviting.

"Indenting **every* paragraph makes a story much easier to
read. And since that's the way almost all printed fiction is
done, it's what the reader expects. Don't distract the reader
from what you and I are doing and saying Right Now.

"And if you're preparing a story you're going to post on a
newsgroup or transmit by e-mail, put a blank line after each
paragraph, limit line length to about 65 or 70 characters and
spaces, and indent each paragraph five spaces instead of using
the `tab' key. Do **not* make the right margin straight -- that
is, do not `right justify' a text file; leave the right margin
ragged the way I'm doing here." Morganstern felt Jon thrust
himself in another inch, and met that thrust with another wiggle
and squirm as he felt Jon push even harder in response.

"Okay; what else?" asked Jon.

"When you ask a question in dialog, put the question mark or
exclamation point at the end, **inside* the quote marks, without
putting a comma there too."

"Oh." Jon took a deep breath, went in deeper. "And -- did
you say you had more suggestions?" he asked.

"Yup. When you have a bit of dialog that **doesn't* end with
a question mark or exclamation point, and **is* followed by `he
said' -- or `he asked' or `he replied' or a phrase like that --
then use a comma -- **inside* the quotation marks -- like this,"
said Morganstern. "Use a period just before the closing quote
marks when you don't have a `he said' -- or `asked' or the like
following the quote marks -- like this." Morganstern squirmed
again. "If you begin a sentence with `he said' or a similar word,
put a comma right after the last word before the quote marks, and
then capitalize the first word **after* the quote marks."

Jon began a more vigorous thrust. "I think I understand."

"Three more things: Don't feel that you have to reach for
substitutes for `said' in speech tags. Using `observed' or
`expounded' or `intoned' is far more distracting than the simple
`he said,' which is almost invisible to the reader. Those fancy
substitutes distract the reader from what's being said inside the
quotation marks. Of course, the verb in a speech tag has to be
one that makes sense: you can't `squirm' a sentence; you can't
hiss, `Take that!'

"With questions, use `he asked.' Use `whispered' or
`growled' or verbs like those **very* sparingly. Use them only
when you're giving the reader additional information that the
context doesn't already make clear.

"An example: ` "Good morning," snarled Kurt.' In this case,
the **way* Kurt spoke doesn't match the words Kurt used. Here,
you have to use `snarled' to make the reader aware of that
mismatch.

"And the other two things?" asked Jon. He was breathing
harder now, and pulling back between strokes.

"One way to break up the monotony of `he said' `he said' `he
said' is to leave off the speech tag entirely -- but only when
it's perfectly obvious who's speaking. With just the two of us,
and you asking questions and me answering them, we can leave out
`Jon said' and `Morganstern said' and go for several paragraphs
without confusing the reader. With ordinary conversation and only
two speakers, you should identify who's talking about every third
paragraph. And always make it clear which `he' you mean,
**especially* if you have three male speakers going at it.

"Then, if one of us talks for more than one paragraph at a
time -- as I'm doing right now -- leave off the end-of-paragraph
quote marks until the **last* paragraph of that multi-paragraph
speech," Morganstern said as he tightened his arms around Jon's
chest, locking their naked bodies together. "But you still need
opening quotes at the **start* of every paragraph of that speech,
like this.

"Another way to break up the monotony of `he said' is what
I'm doing right here." Morganstern felt Jon's muscles tighten,
felt him drive in hard. "In the same paragraph with a within-
quotes speech, end the quoted part with a period -- or a full
stop if you are a Briton -- and then put in something like my
feeling you tighten up as you sink yourself hilt-deep into me.
This can advance the plot at the same time that the writer
establishes who is saying the words inside the quote marks. But
again: readers just don't notice the `he said' as long as what
he's saying is **interesting."*

"Yeah? Lemme get this straight. When you interrupt the
quoted part, and you want to use a verb that is **not* a synonym
or substitute for `said,' you end what's inside the quotes with
a period, and start what follows the quote with a capital
letter." Jon stopped his next stroke in mid-thrust. "And with
questions and question marks, do them like this?" He grinned down
at Morganstern. "But if you **are* using `he said' or `he asked'
right after some stuff in quotes, then you **don't* to put a
capital letter on the `he' -- right?" he asked.

"Exactly." Now Morganstern felt Jon thrust even harder with
his next stroke, felt a bit of rotary motion as well. "And just
like this," he said as he grinned back up at Jon.

"And I even noticed how you're using single quotes inside
the double-quote marks without your telling me."

"Actually, I'd rather use `` and '' for opening and closing
quotes, but I haven't found anyone else who likes them, even
though they are standard keyboard characters doubled. Using
anything **not* on a standard keyboard in e-mailed or news-group
stories -- like using `smart quotes' or any of the **typesetting*
double-quote codes -- is a real pain for readers whose equipment
doesn't fit yours just right."

"Well," said Jon, "I still say this a really weird time t'
make with a grammar lesson -- but yeah, my equipment fits into
yours real nice and tight."

Morganstern felt a grin spread across his own face. "Well,
the grammar lesson's keeping you cooled down, isn't it? A lusty
young colt like you will usually go off too soon when he climbs
onto a big, hunky muscle-stud like me; and you've been riding me
for -- Hey! Slow **down!* You're getting there too soon!"

"Yeah -- I -- noticed. Talk -- t' me -- about -- something
-- else -- quick," Jon panted as he slowed almost to a stop.

"Lemme see -- you got **me* going too -- there's, yeah,
emphasis: since plain-text e-mail doesn't have underlining or
italics, I use ** to begin emphasized words and * to end that
emphasis. I do the same for a character's unspoken thoughts."

Morganstern silently told himself, **Now we're both cooling
down.* Aloud, he said, "The reader can convert those asterisks to
his own word-processor's codes for underlining or italics, or
just leave them in the file that way.

"There **are* other ways to emphasize in text. One is simply
to capitalize the Initial Letters of the words you want to
emphasize. For even greater emphasis, since ordinary e-mail
doesn't support bold-face or bold-face-italic type, capitalize
the WHOLE word. Beyond that, you can (on **very* special
occasions) do T*H*I*S. Although _some_ people like to emphasize
with a single underline before and after an emphasized word, I
think the ** and * work better, especially if you use lots of
dashes for punctuation. Watch out for the difference between the
dash -- which pushes phrases apart -- and the well-placed
hyphen, which pulls words together into compounds like
`plain-text' and `e-mail' and even `well-placed.'

Jon asked, "What about those -- what do you call 'em --
three dots?"

"They're called an ellipsis. You can use one instead of a
dash. Most readers will see the dash as showing an abrupt change
in what you're saying, or -- at the end of a word -- that you've
suddenly stopped. The ellipsis . . ." His voice trailed off, then
re-started. "The ellipsis originally meant there was something
missing, and still does in scholarly writing. Now, in fiction, it
also implies that you **gradually* stopped, either in the middle
of a sentence . . . or at the end of a complete one. . . ."
Morganstern wet his lips. "Note: complete sentences, period
**plus* three dots. Incomplete ones, just . . .

"All too many writers have the bad habit of reaching for
substitutes for words they've already used. A very perceptive
science-fiction writer once wrote, `English has no synonyms; it
has a great many words that mean **almost* the same thing.' But
Mark Twain wrote, `The difference between the right word and the
almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the
lightning bug.' He also wrote, `Use the **right* word, not its
second cousin.' Or to paraphrase Samuel Taylor Coleridge, `Good
writing is the right words in the right order.' "

"Some writers -- present company excepted, of course -- will
invent several different ways to identify someone in a story, and
then -- for no other reason than avoid using the **same* words
for the **same* thing -- such a writer might call you `Jon,' and
in your next appearance, `the lithe-bodied youth,' then `the
lusty writer.' Next, he might use your last name alone, then `the
naked young man mounted on Morganstern's magnificently muscled
physique,' and then `the blond studling,' and finally back to
`Jon,' leaving the reader unsure if the writer has one character
on stage, or six."

Jon snickered, then said, " `Magnificently muscled' indeed!"

"Well, I **am.* I worked hard to get these muscles, and I'm
not letting the reader forget them."

"I know, I know. And since muscle-hunks like you happen t'
turn me on --"

"I noticed **that* already."

"-- but conceited ones don't, and --"

"You wouldn't want me to **lie* about my magnificent
musculature, would you?"

"-- and I can't tell if you're kidding when you say things
like that; and that makes it even funnier, even if you are being
serious; but if we start laughing while we're doing **this* --"
Jon thrust hard, squirmed, eased back, slowed almost to a stop.
"-- it'll be over much too soon. So -- let's get back t' the
writing lesson, before I -- you know."

"Just as bad as reaching too often for substitute words is
to begin a story with tiresomely detailed physical descriptions,
measurements, and past histories of all the principal characters
-- which is precisely what we did not do here. Instead, we
followed the ancient advice: start **in media res,* which is
Latin for `in the middle of things.' Homer did, some three
**thousand* years ago, beginning the **Iliad* with: `Sing,
Goddess, of the anger of Achilles, . . .' right smack in the
middle of the Trojan War. His words sing to us yet.

"Thus, we started **this* story, quite literally, during
your first thrust. Blocks of explanation, like these paragraphs,
are useful to cool someone down. But fiction works better if the
writer slips in background details and descriptions of the
principal characters a few words at a time, early in the action,
like the time you tossed your head to get your blond hair out
of your eyes. Break up lectures, if any, with action and dialog.
Here and there, the point-of-view character may be reminded of
something in his past by what's happening in the main plot."

"Like -- like maybe your very first -- you know . . ."

"Right." Morganstern took a deep breath, feeling his broad
chest expand, remembering, for a few seconds, the smell of the
gym down by the beach. He remembered the ache in his muscles
after a hard workout, remembered the first time he'd stayed
behind after the other bodybuilders left for the evening. He and
the gym's night manager had stripped down all the way, stiffened
themselves up, and then, on a bench in front of the biggest
mirror in the gym, . . .

Morganstern shook the memory away. "Yes, because a first
**any*thing is something that people, real and imaginary, **do*
remember. Even more so, the very **first* time you go all the
way, whether with a well-buffed hunk or a twenty-buck hustler,
leaves you changed, **deeply* changed. What's happened, what's
made you change is **important* to you -- which makes what
happened in that story important and interesting to the reader
as well.

"Now, **this* deep into a story really isn't the time to
stop for a static description of my electric-blue eyes; my curly
brown hair; even my winsome, snub-nosed face. The reader might
have decided, pages and pages ago, that I have aquiline features
and dark eyes and shoulder-length black hair, because I didn't
**show* the reader otherwise in the first few paragraphs, either
by having me **remember* how I look or by letting the reader
**see* those details through my eyes. And since you didn't have a
convenient mirror mounted on the ceiling for me -- and the
reader -- to look up at my reflection while you were busily . . .

"But you're right, of course: mentioning my `magnificently
muscled physique' **was* overdoing it, especially this far into
the story, and even more so if I hadn't already established in
the first few paragraphs that we're a couple of well-built studs.
After that, it can help the reader to **be* the point of view
character, to **be* in the middle of the erotically exciting
events --"

" `Erotically exciting'? Now I know you're kidding." Jon
carefully pulled back, slid in hilt-deep again.

"-- if I slip in an occasional reminder of our hunkiness. I
can mention the pressure of your warm, wide chest against
against my powerful thighs, because that's what's happening to
me **right now,* and --"

"Now you've done it!" Jon thrust faster, harder, faster
still.

"Can't -- you -- slow -- down?"

"Not now. Too hot. **Real* hot."

"I -- noticed," panted Morganstern, trying to meet every
impaling thrust.

Jon suddenly gasped aloud, rammed himself all the way in,
went rigid, and then slowly, slowly relaxed and started breathing
again. "I was going along okay, stretching it out just like you
told me to, until you reminded me just what we're doing, and what
your thighs feel like against my chest -- and then how deep I was
going, and -- and all of a sudden, I couldn't stop." He panted
for a moment, then said, "I bet you can't keep on with this
lesson if **you* get on top."

"I can so! Where's my shirt? I always carry a few extra in
my pocket. I'll put one on before we . . ."

"Don't worry -- I got a supply in my bureau. Let me see."
Jon straightened his arms, looked down between their still-linked
bodies, and said, "Yeah -- as long and thick as yours is, an
`extra large' oughta fit just right."

"That was deftly done," said Morganstern, as they uncoupled.

Jon rolled off and -- a moment later -- sat up. "Huh?"

"Without stopping to explain or to cite measurements, you
established that we're using protection and that I'm well-
equipped for our next round. You're letting the reader decide
just how long and thick and wide my `extra large' might be."

"Yeah?" Jon, now on his feet, pulled open the bureau's top
drawer and passed a foil-wrapped packet to Morganstern, who stood
up, stretched, then opened the packet. "I s'pose we could start
measuring each other -- chest, arms, waist -- then drop t' the
calves, work on up t' our thighs and -- you know. That could --
that would be more interesting than just saying how tall you
are and how big around the chest and, as you put it, how long and
how thick where it -- it counts." Jon grabbed a towel, peeled off
his protection, and wiped himself dry. "Like -- Hey! Like the
beginning of this story, where you established -- without ever
stopping what was going on, that you're bigger than me -- and a
real muscle-hunk at that -- but that I've got an okay body too."

"Another problem." Morganstern finished putting on the
`extra large' contents of the packet, then applied a dab of the
lubricant that Jon dug out of the drawer. "If you write that a
story-stud of yours has -- say -- ten-inches, some readers will
think this is exciting, but others will think your character is
laughably over-equipped. `What is all right for B, will quite
scandalize C, for C is so very particular.' "

"Again -- huh?"

"A Gilbert & Sullivan quote. From **The Yeomen of the
Guard,* I think." Morganstern gestured at the bed with a sweep of
his right hand. Jon stretched out on his back, tucked a pillow
behind his head, and spread his legs. Morganstern knelt between
Jon's thighs, leaned forward, found his target, thrust, and then
stopped an inch or so inside. "One writer likes his characters
to be kind of chubby and well-furred; another likes studs in
their twenties, with taut, sharply etched muscles they get from
working out at the gym." He eased an inch deeper, felt Jon
respond with a squirm and a squeeze.

"Got any Rules for which kind of characters t' use?"

"Nope. I really don't have any Rules for the writing game --
just lots of suggestions. You **can* write a story that's all
dialog, with no speech tags at all; you just have to realize that
when you do, that format will take some of the reader's attention
away from what's going on in the story.

"It helps to have the characters sound a bit different from
each other as they speak: I use long sentences with long words;
you speak more informally, with more slang, more elisions."

"Elisions?" asked Jon.

Morganstern wiggled his hips from side to side, then eased
deeper still. "Leaving out a part of a word, like s'pose for
suppose, or t' for to.

"Yeah? I notice that you stress a lot of words as you talk,
sorta like **this.* Makes you sound -- you know -- funny."

"It beats talking corn-pone hill-billy talk to show what I
mean. Somebody with a good ear can spot the difference between a
Kentucky accent and a Mississippi one, or even between Brooklyn
and Queens, but I'm not **that* good.

"Then there's what a story's about. Some readers want you
to get on with the Main Event, with just enough plot to get all
the characters into the same bed at the same time. Other readers
want more plot and dialog, less details and description. Still
others get excited by stories of bondage and humiliation, of
whipping and torture; a few even like stories of being eaten
alive -- or worse -- on stage." Morganstern slid a deeper into
Jon, pulled back, thrust again. Morganstern watched Jon grit his
teeth, felt Jon clamp down hard, felt and saw him relax with a
long sigh. Jon's eyes focused on Morganstern's, and the two men
grinned at each other.

Morganstern realized he was tensing up inside. He slowed
his stroke. "Some get turned on by characters who use all the
standard four-letter words, along with a few well-chosen five-
and six-letter ones. Others --"

"-- manage without any dirty words at all, like -- like
we've been doing --"

"-- which works as a demonstration, but does call attention
to **how* the story's told, instead of what it's **about.* And
while some people are really into incest or under-age characters;
others want to stay away from those areas which are, as the old
cliche has it, illegal, immoral, or fattening."

"More suggestions?" asked Jon.

"An important one: although Kipling wrote: `There are nine
and sixty ways, of constructing tribal lays, And every single
one of them is right,' I think that a very effective way to
construct a story is to pick the **right* point of view from
which you can best tell that story, and then put your reader
firmly into that point-of-view character -- seeing what that
character sees, feeling what the character feels, and thinking
and remembering and deciding as the character does those things.
In short, let the reader **be* that chosen character from one
end of that story to the other.

"The reader," said Morganstern, "will experience being
**in* the story if you -- the author -- avoid interrupting
the action to address the reader directly, if you avoid making
the reader jump into another character's head, and if you avoid
making him look down on the scene from a set of disembodied eyes
hovering over the action. Also, do not start the story with a
lecture, or biographies of the characters, or a descriptive
passage told from any point of view other than that of your
chosen character; don't delay getting the reader **into* the
story's point-of-view character and into the story itself."

"Hey," Jon said, "I thought you said that if a quoted
paragraph doesn't end with a close-quote mark, then the following
paragraph is automatically being said by the speaker of the
preceding one. So -- why did you identify yourself as the speaker
again?"

"It's more important not to confuse the reader than it is to
depend on the reader noticing that missing close-quote mark. Now
-- where was I?"

"About four inches deep and counting." Jon squirmed up
against Jon's next impaling thrust. "A bit deeper, now."

"That too. Point of view -- a long story may be told better
as a series of shifts from one character to another -- but only
if there is a clear break -- always marked with extra blank
lines in manuscript, on screen, or printed on paper. Some
writers put a few asterisks across that space. The first
sentence following the break **must* put the reader firmly into
the next point-of-view character's head. I saw one story recently
in which the point of view shifted from one of the story's two
characters to the other with **every* paragraph. That's hard to
do well, but it's a very interesting way to tell a story: the
reader is alternating between those two characters as they
interact, physically and in the dialog. However, I still think
the most effective way to tell **almost* all stories is to tell
them from just one point of view, so the reader can really get
into that character's memory, and eyes, and ears --"

"-- and other appendages." Jon grabbed Morganstern's hips,
pulled in another half inch. "Then if I wanted the reader t'
watch us from above, t' watch your back muscles working, t' watch
your butt pumping, pulling back, thrusting again, then --"

"Well, you really can't do that and still hold *this* story
together. You **could* go back and rewrite the beginning so that
I look up at a mirror on the ceiling over the bed and watch you
humping away on top of my muscular self, but that's about it.
Having me remember **now* what I saw **then* doesn't work at all
-- you didn't **have* a mirror on the ceiling, because if you
**had,* I would have noticed it **then* -- and so would the
reader, who was being me at the time.

"A minor suggestion is to avoid having characters with
**names* that sound or look too much alike: `Joe' and `Moe,' for
example, or even `Danny' and `Dennis,' unless they happen to be
interchangeable twins and you want to emphasize how much alike
they are. With our names -- `Morganstern' has three syllables,
while `Jon' has one. Our names don't start with the same letter.
They don't even rhyme. So, there's less chance to confuse the
reader." Morganstern eased himself deeper. "There -- all the way
in. Are you still --"

"Billy!" yelped Jon.

" `Billy'? That would work -- two syllables, doesn't rhyme
with either --"

"I don't mean Billy, a two-syllable name that doesn't rhyme
with your name or mine; I mean Billy, my kid brother, who just
came in through the hall door I forgot t' lock."

Morganstern jerked his head around, looked back over his
shoulder, saw a sturdy young blond stride towards the bureau,
shedding clothes along the way. "Don't worry, dude," Billy said
as he finished stripping and reached into the bureau. "I'm at
that in-between age: old enough to vote, too young to buy beer,
so even though I look like a kid, I'm not jail-bait."

**So that's why Jon has that size on hand,* Morganstern told
himself as Billy stiffened up, rolled on an `extra large,' and
climbed onto the bed.

Jon said, "Billy, this is Morganstern. Morganstern, Billy."

"And," Billy said as he knelt astride Morganstern's thighs
and found his target, "since I've got you 'tween me and Jon,
this doesn't count as incest either." He slid himself half-way
into Morganstern, paused for Morganstern to catch his breath,
then completed his impaling thrust.

Morganstern felt a beardless chin snuggle against his neck,
caught a whiff of something spicy. "Smells good; what is it?" he
asked.

"Stuff I put on my hair," Billy said, tightening his grip on
Morganstern's chest.

Morganstern, now spitted to the hilt and stretched tight,
rammed himself all the way into Jon.

Jon gasped, then said, "Billy?"

"Yeah?"

"He's an `extra large' too."

"He is?" Billy pulled back a couple of inches, carefully
slid in again.~

"Sure am," said Morganstern. "Jon's a nice fit; good and
tight, and the way he's squirming now . . ."

"You'd squirm too," panted Jon, "if you had this muscle-stud
plugged into you."

Morganstern felt Billy pull back and then ram himself in all
the way, heard Billy eagerly say, "Hey dude, that sounds great!
After we finish this round, let's swap around; me on the bottom;
Jon, you on top; Morganstern, you in the middle again. I gotta
find out how this big muscle-dude'll feel inside me."

"Before we do that," said Jon, breathing hard, "there's a
mirror I bought yesterday. Now that's there's three of us here,
we got enough guys to mount it on the ceiling, right over the
bed. Morganstern, if it'll keep you from going off too soon, how
'bout explaining t' Billy why we can't just look down on the
scene from up there."

"You **can* tell a story that way," said Morganstern, now
comfortably sandwiched between the blond brothers' warm, naked
bodies. "It's just -- usually -- more effective to pick one
point of view, and then let the reader **be* that character all
the way through a story to the end. And come on, why would
**any*body want to wiggle out from between you two hunky studs
and go flitting, like a bat, up amongst the cobwebs? Instead,
I've got Billy's chest against my back, and Jon squirming
underneath, and I'm feeling Billy inside me and feeling me
poking around inside Jon, and all three of us -- oops!"

Morganstern heard Jon ask, "You getting turned on?"

"Yeah." Morganstern felt himself fast coming to a boil as he
thrust harder, faster, harder still.

As Billy speeded his own stroke, he said into Morganstern's
ear, "I'll try and catch up."

Seconds later, Morganstern felt his muscles tighten. Another
stroke, and he went rigid. Billy thrust a few times more, then
went rigid too while he and Morganstern pumped themselves dry.

Still later: long, delicious minutes later, Morganstern
slowly relaxed, still catching his breath. "Convinced?"

"Convinced," said Jon, from under Morganstern.

"Beats cobwebs any day," said Billy, his sweat-damp body
relaxing on Morganstern's back. "You did seem to be laying it on
a bit thick -- `Morganstern heard this,' . . . `Morganstern felt
that,' . . . you know."

" `Merely corroborative detail, . . .' " said Morganstern.

Billy's voice joined Morganstern's. Together, they recited,
" `. . . intended to give artistic verisimilitude . . .' "

And Billy, alone, finished the quote: " `. . . to an
otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.' Poo-Bah, **The
Mikado,* words by Sir William Schwenk Gilbert of Gilbert &
Sullivan."

"If I laid it on thick enough for you to notice, then I laid
it on thick enough to distract the reader," Morganstern said.

"Come on, dude; you had to lay it on to make your point."
Billy sat up. "Here's a Rule for you: if you don't have copies
of a digital file on three separate disks, you might as well not
have any. That's because hard drives eventually crash. They're
convenient, but not for storing important stuff."

"That's a good one," said Morganstern, rolling off Jon and
sitting up himself. "Did you --"

"-- lose stuff? No, but I once got a real scare. The class
nerd saved my butt. Since then, he helps me with computer stuff,
and I coach him at the gym." Billy slid off the bed, stood up.
"I'll get the ladder; you two bring up the mirror. By the time
we get that thing up and mounted, we oughta be reloaded and
ready for another round. So: what tools do we need, Jon?"


=================================================================
The author permits any & all archiving, posting, reposting, and
reproduction in fixed form, free or for profit, of this story.
Copyright (C) 2000 by Felix Lance Falkon, falkon@netaxs.com. This
work is not suitable for minors.
=================================================================

------------END------------

 

[Guest]

What is the best way or correct way to write a thought?

“I wonder if he will come,” she thought.

or

‘I wonder if he will come,’ she thought.

I just hope they both get to come.

 

[michchick98]

What is the best way or correct way to write a thought?

“I wonder if he will come,” she thought.

or

‘I wonder if he will come,’ she thought.

In earlier stories I wrote, I used quotes for characters thinking to themselves, as your first example above shows.

As my writing progressed and I read more stories, I started using italics for thoughts and saved the double quotes for actual spoken dialogue.

The only time I've seen single quotes used is if someone is speaking and quoting someone else within their dialogue.

"John specifically told me 'I will take care if it' so I am going to let him," Mary said.

Not the best example, but you get the idea.

My editor found this site when I argued with her about the use of fiancé and fiancée (one is 'female' and the other is 'male') and I refer to it quite often. Here's the link that explains how to use quotation marks and punctuation:

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/quotation_marks.html

The advice already given here is good, also.

Hope this helps.

 

[Jezebel_in_Hell]

Thanks Michchick and everyone, I think I have an answer.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Thanks for the link, michchick