Questions concerning Speech

[Androxine Vortex]

Obviously when a character speaks it would go something like this: "Can you hand me that textbook on the desk?" or "Sure, I would love to go out later!" Simple right?

1)
Well what about when a character thinks his thoughts to himself? I think you are supposed to use Italics. But would you use quotes?
Let me know if this example would be correct...

He gazed into the dark path before him. I can't see a damn thing, Sam thought to himself.




2)
Also, what if a character speaks telepathically? I know in some books authors choose to BOLD the text to show the reader the speaker is speaking with his mind...

She took a step away from the altar and raised her arms above her head.
The ritual is finished!


In other books (mainly in the Warhamemr 40K novels) I have seen the author use plus-marks. So it would look something like this...

The shaman looked to the small child cowering in fear. He gave him a smile of comfort.
+Have no fear. No harm shall come to you.+
The child gave a slight nod.

(There would always be indentation when the + symbols were in use or if bold text was used, and the text was always on it's own line by itself)




3)
Also, what do you do when there are two characters having a conversation that goes back and forth a lot? Would it go like this...
"talking talking talking."
"blah blah blah."
"talking talking talking."
"blah blah blah?"
"talking talking talking!"

I know you can add action phrases to ease up on the dialogue but for this example, would it generally be set up like this? I'm pretty sure it would go, "talking talking talking." "blah blah blah." "talking talking talking." "blah blah blah."

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[Codey Amprim]

Alright, I'm going to try and help ya lol.

1) Yes, this is correct - or at least it's how I've always seen it and done it. Sometimes the writers don't even use italics, but that's rare.

2) This one is tricky and I've wondered it myself. I'm going to take an educated guess based on your examples and say the least you should do is indent it. Perhaps even italicize it. But I think indenting is the way to go.

3) @ conversations, the line after line method is how I've always seen normal conversation go. Occasionally you'll find a few rogue paragraphs that have more than one line of dialogue in them, but they aren't stand alone phrases. Not sure how that works. But here's how I do it:

"Say, this fellow wants to know how to properly construct dialogue," the old man said after a long inhale of his pipe.

"Splendid!" his guest exclaimed. "Then we should be the gents to show the lad how to do it."

"Indeed, my good sir, but knowing is only half the battle."

"Right you are, old chap!"


I think that once you've established who is talking in a one on one dialogue, the speech tags seem to become redundant, especially in longer conversations. Tags are nice, however, if you want to depict an action whilist your character is speaking. But that's common knowledge.

If something is going on, and a character says something that doesn't lead into conversation, then I believe it is okay to throw it into it's respective paragraph. You can't ever go wrong with the line by line, though!



Now I may not be completely right on any of these, for I do not claim to be; I'm just telling you how I would and do go about with such things.


Hope I helped!

 

[Chilari]

I thinl Codey's covered it, but I'd like to add that generally, people do more thank simply talk. When I'm talking to my mum in the kitchen, usually one of us at least is doing something - cooking, making tea, etc. I might turn off the radio to enable us to talk more easily. Even on a train, when there's not much to do, people might play with things in their hands, read a book, look out the window, wonder when the refreshment trolley is coming down, find they are mildly irritated by the guy tlaking loudly on his phone. And this happens while they're talking; and while they're talking they might posture with their hands, pause to consider an answer, point angrily at the other person's chest, etc to animate their speech.

So while you don't need to keep adding "he said" or "she asked" all the time - which many find annoying - you don't have to just have pages of dialogue with no action. You can break up long conversations with descriptions of actions, or what characters are thinking about each other or what they can do or hear beyond their own conversation.