Dealing with Internal Dialogue

[Devor]

The thing which makes this ridiculous is that it now has little-to-nothing to do with actual writing skills or content. It's now on par with proofreading.

It's unrealistic to expect every quote everywhere to be clearly a thought, so you can use italics or a dialogue tag, he thought. If a publisher has a preference, they can tell you that in their guidelines or change it.

I think, if your story uses it extensively, italics seems less clunky than the tags.

If you're doing it poorly, it doesn't matter how you do it.

 

[Steerpike]

I know of at least a few editors and authors who feel it is the mark of an amateur and is not professional writing. Whether they can change it later isn't going to matter if you can't get a decent read from them because they see it an either stop reading or least read with a jaundiced eye.

Whether that is a substantial risk or not, I have no idea. I doubt it, but it pays to be aware of such things.

I agree that if you do it badly, it doesn't matter how it is done. Even if you use italics, I suppose one thing you could do is remove the italics and see if it remains clear. If there is something confusing about it without the italics, then the writing needs to be improved. Once you've done that, no harm in adding back the italics (barring the prejudiced editor mentioned above).

 

[studentofrhythm]

I've just joined and have found this thread informative, so thanks.

I avoided any hint of internal monologue in my novels for a while, after soaking in Icelandic sagas, but found it too limiting if I can't at least give some clues as to what my characters are thinking beyond facial expressions and body language. I still would like to practice writing in 3P objective style, but I don't know if it quite works for my current novel.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I do agree with the point that if you NEED the italics to make it clear that it is internal dialogue, then your writing simply isn't good enough and you need to revisit it.

I don't, mostly because I've never seen any evidence that readers in general prefer one over the other. Remember, there's no objective definition of "good writing." Assuming your goal is to be popular, it's all about what will please readers the most. And in general, I don't think most readers have a problem with italicized internal monologue.

Maybe professional editors have a bias against it, but without any specific reason why it's a bad idea to use it, it's tautological: Italicized monologue is bad because it's bad to write a character's thoughts as italicized monologue.

 

[Steerpike]

I don't, mostly because I've never seen any evidence that readers in general prefer one over the other. Remember, there's no objective definition of "good writing." Assuming your goal is to be popular, it's all about what will please readers the most. And in general, I don't think most readers have a problem with italicized internal monologue.

Maybe professional editors have a bias against it, but without any specific reason why it's a bad idea to use it, it's tautological: Italicized monologue is bad because it's bad to write a character's thoughts as italicized monologue.

I don't think it is bad, either. But given the obstacles writers already face in attracting editors and agents, I figure the more you do things the way an editor or agent like, the better off you are.

Personally, I don't use italics much because it just isn't my preference. But I think if you need italics, if by removing them your writing is unclear, that should be an indicator that there is another problem