Transcript inside story

[i_would]

I'm working on a story that includes quite some transcripts. And I'm wondering how to handle them nicely. I'm now putting it all in italics, but I'm not sure whether that's the way to go.

A bit more details about my story: it's in the first person, the narrator is a police investigator who as part of the investigation gets to watch videoed interviews. The content of these videos is of course important to the story, and is basically given as transcript of the dialogue.

Such dialogue I have more often seen done in italic, to make it obvious that the narrator is listening to it, and not actively participating.

However not only are these transcripts quite long at times (over 1,000 words), they also include observations by the narrator on how things are said ('she exclaimed'), and longer descriptions of facial expressions and other body language.

I have the problem that now it becomes a pretty big blob of italics. I've considered making these observations regular font, but they are quite integral to the video watching part itself.

Below (in italics) a fragment of this transcript.

“You would've considered it all to be a totally absurd dream.”

“It's all a blur, it's so unbelievable, it can't have happened. I'd never do such a thing, it just goes against my normal ways. And thinking of it, it somehow turns me on. It's just disgusting, but I can't help it. I mean I'm also a healthy woman, I have my sexual urges, but I wouldn't normally walk into a bar to hook up with some guy just for sex, let alone doing it with a whole room full of them.”

She sounded and looked a bit angry, frustrated maybe. As if her mind was fighting the feelings that came out of her body.

“The other people, were that all men, or also women?”

“Both. More men I guess, not sure. Memories are quite vague in that respect. I don't recall having sex with another woman, only men.” Ms Locatelli faintly smiled. “Lots of men.”

 

[SecondCircle]

I'm working on a story that includes quite some transcripts. And I'm wondering how to handle them nicely. I'm now putting it all in italics, but I'm not sure whether that's the way to go.

A bit more details about my story: it's in the first person, the narrator is a police investigator who as part of the investigation gets to watch videoed interviews. The content of these videos is of course important to the story, and is basically given as transcript of the dialogue.

Such dialogue I have more often seen done in italic, to make it obvious that the narrator is listening to it, and not actively participating.

However not only are these transcripts quite long at times (over 1,000 words), they also include observations by the narrator on how things are said ('she exclaimed'), and longer descriptions of facial expressions and other body language.

I have the problem that now it becomes a pretty big blob of italics. I've considered making these observations regular font, but they are quite integral to the video watching part itself.

Below (in italics) a fragment of this transcript.

“You would've considered it all to be a totally absurd dream.”

“It's all a blur, it's so unbelievable, it can't have happened. I'd never do such a thing, it just goes against my normal ways. And thinking of it, it somehow turns me on. It's just disgusting, but I can't help it. I mean I'm also a healthy woman, I have my sexual urges, but I wouldn't normally walk into a bar to hook up with some guy just for sex, let alone doing it with a whole room full of them.”

She sounded and looked a bit angry, frustrated maybe. As if her mind was fighting the feelings that came out of her body.

“The other people, were that all men, or also women?”

“Both. More men I guess, not sure. Memories are quite vague in that respect. I don't recall having sex with another woman, only men.” Ms Locatelli faintly smiled. “Lots of men.”

Someone definitely knows a better way here, but I'll roll my dice I guess.

From the snippet you gave, you seem like you're handling the dialogue pretty well without too much use of dialogue tags. I had no trouble really telling who's who. So maybe you're good with limited use of them. Then, perhaps only their dialogue could be in italics, while the observations from the detective's perspective be normal, such as the bit were he notices her looking angry or frustrated. In effect, possibly making those observations as his as only he could make them about what he's seeing the video.

Or maybe italics aren't even needed as long as the dialogue continues as clear as it is, and as long as the perspective is clean and apparent. I think given the scenario and the way it's written, the reader would have a good understanding of what's going on. Just as much as if he were a third party sitting with two people listening to them talk.

 

[SecondCircle]

And as far as the limited use of tags, you could use those little observations by the guy watching to help with that. Like...

He noticed the woman fidgeting, her eyes darting back and forth before she spoke again.

"Woman continues dialogue here."

...This limits the use of those tags if you needed to do so so that it doesn't distract the transcript in process. It also makes an observation of the guy watching from his perspective, and gives the reader an idea of the woman's actions visually. That would work for me as a reader.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I've never done that while writing fiction, but in my day job it comes up all the time. I don't know if the site mechanics can handle it, but I would indent the entire transcription block--even full justify and double indent, actually. That sets it apart from the rest of the text and minimizes confusion.

Before attempting anything out of the ordinary, however, you should PM Laurel and see if the site can do what you may be proposing.

 

[i_would]

And as far as the limited use of tags, you could use those little observations by the guy watching to help with that. Like...

The last paragraph of my snipped you see exactly that happening, an observation in between two parts of what the interviewee says. I'm trying to limit tags indeed, I really hate it when people write "he said", "she said" after pretty much every sentence, it's so distracting.

In this case it's really easy to avoid pretty much all tags as it's an interview: the interviewer usually asks short questions, the interviewee answers them in longer text.

I just wonder if it's not distracting to have those regular font observation snippets in between italic words. I'm not sure of it, and mostly I have no idea of any convention for such a situation.

Doing the whole transcript part in regular face I don't want to do - I think it's quite easy for the reader to forget the narrator is passively listening, rather than actively participating. The narrator himself is also doing interviews elsewhere in the story. He just can't do these interviews himself, as a male interviewing a female about what appears to be a group rape is just not realistic.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I do think you can use the blockquote tag. HTML doesn't work here in the forums, but they do over in the story section. Not all HTML tags are recognized.

But I have seen indented paragraphs in stories on Lit.

<blockquote> text </blockquote>

 

[i_would]

I do think you can use the blockquote tag. HTML doesn't work here in the forums, but they do over in the story section. Not all HTML tags are recognized.

But I have seen indented paragraphs in stories on Lit.

<blockquote> text </blockquote>

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know that. I only know <i> and <b> to work in a story (and will add those myself as service to Laurel who has enough to do already).

 

[SecondCircle]

I do think you can use the blockquote tag. HTML doesn't work here in the forums, but they do over in the story section. Not all HTML tags are recognized.

But I have seen indented paragraphs in stories on Lit.

<blockquote> text </blockquote>

Huh. I didn't know this. I thought when anything was submitted to Lit, the indents were done away with. At least, that was my experience with it. Guess it's something you really gotta hash out with the editor in this case.

If it's possible though, that would certainly be the way to go.

 

[SecondCircle]

The last paragraph of my snipped you see exactly that happening, an observation in between two parts of what the interviewee says. I'm trying to limit tags indeed, I really hate it when people write "he said", "she said" after pretty much every sentence, it's so distracting.

In this case it's really easy to avoid pretty much all tags as it's an interview: the interviewer usually asks short questions, the interviewee answers them in longer text.

I just wonder if it's not distracting to have those regular font observation snippets in between italic words. I'm not sure of it, and mostly I have no idea of any convention for such a situation.

Doing the whole transcript part in regular face I don't want to do - I think it's quite easy for the reader to forget the narrator is passively listening, rather than actively participating. The narrator himself is also doing interviews elsewhere in the story. He just can't do these interviews himself, as a male interviewing a female about what appears to be a group rape is just not realistic.

I think you're on the right track, and I can see from what you've said that all normal text probably wouldn't work quite as well. I don't think half and half would be confusing though. If you can get the block quote thing to work, that would be awesome.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

To be sure about the <blockquote> I would PM Laurel before submitting, just so you're not disappointed when it posts. I think a question like that she would be glad to answer promptly.

 

[SecondCircle]

To be sure about the <blockquote> I would PM Laurel before submitting, just so you're not disappointed when it posts. I think a question like that she would be glad to answer promptly.

Yup. Be cool to hear if it works, I'd be interested in using it.

 

[sr71plt]

Transcripts are rendered in blockquotes, but it's not an integral transcript if it has asides in it. To properly render it, you'd need to put the parts that are from the transcript in blockquotes but come out of them for the aside comments. And not in italics, especially if it's a big block of writing.

If you simply have to include the aside comments in one long rendering, the proper way of doing that is to put the comments in straight brakets: [comment]. That's the standard indication for an embedded comment on the material.

 

[i_would]

I've never done that while writing fiction, but in my day job it comes up all the time. I don't know if the site mechanics can handle it, but I would indent the entire transcription block--even full justify and double indent, actually. That sets it apart from the rest of the text and minimizes confusion.

If I had an e-mail message or letter to transcribe in the story, I'd use this method. I think that's even quite common, indeed the <blockquote> tag's behaviour indicates this already.

However my transcripts are interspersed with comments from the narrator, and then it's getting messy if you would indent things. Really hard to keep it all separate. The conversation itself goes between quotation marks (it's conversation after all).

I think I'll have to stick to the italics method, but change the narrator's comments to regular font.

I do have a Facebook chat log, where the indentation method may work well. As it's a chat log, it's written without quotation marks, and I[nitial]: in front of every line.

 

[SecondCircle]

Transcripts are rendered in blockquotes, but it's not an integral transcript if it has asides in it. To properly render it, you'd need to put the parts that are from the transcript in blockquotes but come out of them for the aside comments. And not in italics, especially if it's a big block of writing.

If you simply have to include the aside comments in one long rendering, the proper way of doing that is to put the comments in straight brakets: [comment]. That's the standard indication for an embedded comment on the material.

In your time here, have you done block quotes? Like is it possible? Zeb said so, but I was just wondering if it does work.

 

[sr71plt]

In your time here, have you done block quotes? Like is it possible? Zeb said so, but I was just wondering if it does work.

No, I haven't, but that was mostly because I didn't know the Web site accepted them when I was thinking of using them. I found simpler workarounds. I use them in mainstream short story writing, though, so can't see why they wouldn't work fine here.

 

[SecondCircle]

No, I haven't, but that was mostly because I didn't know the Web site accepted them when I was thinking of using them. I found simpler workarounds. I use them in mainstream short story writing, though, so can't see why they wouldn't work fine here.

I didn't know they accepted them either. It's rare that any idea takes me there, I just assumed that since Lit does away with any other indent, it wouldn't be possible. Til Zeb pointed out the block quote trick.

 

[49greg]

And as far as the limited use of tags, you could use those little observations by the guy watching to help with that. Like...

He noticed the woman fidgeting, her eyes darting back and forth before she spoke again.

"Woman continues dialogue here."

...This limits the use of those tags if you needed to do so so that it doesn't distract the transcript in process. It also makes an observation of the guy watching from his perspective, and gives the reader an idea of the woman's actions visually. That would work for me as a reader.

And if the observations are in regular type that would break up the blocks of italics. Or did someone already say that?

 

[SecondCircle]

And if the observations are in regular type that would break up the blocks of italics. Or did someone already say that?

I... think so but either way that's a good observation. It'd clarify what exactly was going on in that text.