About Internal thoughts?

[erintesden]

I'm a bit curious about the way of writting and fomatting internal thoughts you use as writters, or those you prefer as readers.

Created a little poll so you can vote, and tell me, why do you prefer that method?

Considering theres kinda four possible options.

• Use italics for thoughts, so people will know instantly it's a thought and not dialogue or narration, without you having to use tags. Unless your story has an omniscient narrator, in which case you would be obligated to use tags to say who is thinking what. Example: I cant believe how stupid I am.
• Not using italics and simply use the tags all the time. So people will know that it's a thought. Example: I cant believe how stupid I am, thought Erin.
• Using a deep POV, so there's no need of using tags or italics, because obviously any thought will belong to the POV character. Example: I cant believe how stupid I am.
• You dont use internal thoughts AT ALL. Just indirect ones, through the narration. Example: Erin couldnt believe how stupid he was.
• Some people use '' too. Example: 'I cant believe how stupid I am,' Erin thought.

 

[Deleted member 29316]

Italics for me.

I use tagging sparingly, for I prefer the reader to figure it out, which is easy for my work because it's in 1st Person POV mostly.

 

[Razmatazz]

I don't know if you can nail this down so exactly honestly. I think it's like the PoV of a story in that the chosen 'style' is highly dependent on the story itself. My main story uses a 'deep' internal thinking voice and the others use the external, but no italics as it's done via narrator.

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

While Italics does it, I prefer just using 'Quotation Marks' because i'm lazy and its too grinding to edit here and there from my phone to the site.

 

[erintesden]

I don't know if you can nail this down so exactly honestly. I think it's like the PoV of a story in that the chosen 'style' is highly dependent on the story itself. My main story uses a 'deep' internal thinking voice and the others use the external, but no italics as it's done via narrator.

So must of the time you dont use internal thoughts in the strict sense. But simply leave the narrator explain what the character is thinking/feeling.

 

[Deleted member 45782]

Italics help but then sometimes I feel like I can get overboard, particularly if a character is primarily reflecting for a good chunk of a scene or chapter.

 

[Razmatazz]

So must of the time you dont use internal thoughts in the strict sense. But simply leave the narrator explain what the character is thinking/feeling.

Yeah, the story is literally just the MC mentally narrating their own life and describing the world and events around them in 'real-time'. So I don't even bother with italics as it's literally 100% internal dialogue. For my other stuff I just go with something like this. So external narration.

The girl sits down and thinks about what a jerk the man is

It really depends on what you want to achieve I think

 

[Kilolo]

it's just for nuance ,

you use italic when you want to voicing someone thought in a verbal sentence, using quote marks if the character is alone and not currently engaging in any conversation with anyone.
mostly just using deep POV for long monologue and explaining things tho. so I would say it's depending on the TPO.

 

[Deleted member 45782]

It really depends on what you want to achieve I think

True.