Below is an example chapter from my latest book How to Write Dialogue: The Very Basics and More. Throughout, this book identifies practical techniques and provides clear examples to show readers each technique in action. My goal from the beginning was to create a concise teaching tool that would help aspiring writers craft solid, well-written dialogue as quickly as possible.
Characters Talking to Themselves Using Italics
Real people talk to themselves and so do characters. Sometimes a character will answer himself, sometimes he won’t. Sometimes a character will use her voice while discussing things with herself, sometimes only her mind.
When you depict a character talking aloud to himself/herself, you are, essentially, writing conventional dialogue, whether your character is alone in a room shouting (“I hate this apartment! I hate everything about it!”) or on a noisy subway muttering too quietly for others to hear (“I wish that creepy dude would stop staring at me…”).
In situations like these, if you place quotation marks around the spoken words and use an appropriate dialogue tag, your readers will understand what is happening.
Let’s look at some examples.
EXAMPLE (1)
“I hate this apartment! I hate everything about it!” Jack shouted at the clogged sink.
EXAMPLE (2)
“I wish that creepy dude would stop staring at me…,” Susan muttered to herself as the subway train clunked, hummed, and squealed its way through a turn.
If, on the other hand, your character begins a silent, one-sided conversation, you may want to use italics to prevent confusion.
EXAMPLE (3)
“No, no, this club will do. I like the music they’re playing. Great choice.” And if we’re lucky, we won’t get stabbed on the dance floor.
In EXAMPLE (3), italics show where a character begins talking to herself, but only in her head, silently. Notice how three dialogue sentences of spoken words (conventional dialogue, using standard text and quotation marks) precede her silent words with herself, yet you can easily tell the two different types of communication apart.
In the next example, you will see the tag “she thought” following a silent, italicized apology. I’ll explain why afterward.
EXAMPLE (4)
Sorry, my friend, she thought as she beckoned the glowing clouds nearer and prepared to float away.
Here, the character was directing her unspoken words at another person. But, because she never says those words aloud, they remain a thought she only shares with herself. Therefore, “she thought” is an appropriate dialogue tag, especially since “she said” would suggest words said aloud.
Because italics stand out, like an Elvis costume at a wake, it’s generally a good idea to limit how often you use them. This is true whether we’re talking about narration, conventional dialogue, or a character’s thoughts. Therefore, I recommend using italics a couple of times early in your story to teach your readers that you will occasionally use italics to highlight when characters are talking to themselves. After that, only use italics when you need to prevent confusion or need to draw attention to something special your characters are saying silently in their heads.
Take a look at these next examples where some thoughts are in italics and others are in standard text.
EXAMPLE (5)
“You betcha,” I answered nervously.
Marcie and her entourage of popular girls huddled closer and giggled in response.
You betcha? Did I really just say that? Ugh.
EXAMPLE (6)
“Oh, it's you. I never imagined we'd—” My shoe snagged coming down the stairs and I nearly fell on top of him.
What had gotten into me? Now I couldn’t even walk around him? Really? How embarrassing!
In both examples above, italics were applied selectively to emphasize each character’s utter embarrassment. You could use a similar strategy to spotlight a character’s surprise, confusion, anger, even a sudden realization (Oh no! The baby is home alone!). The key is to reserve the italics for the thoughts that are standing out from all the others inside a character’s mind.
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