![]() She walked to the window and checked on her nephews. Shalah made two more folds in the nappie and placed it on the pile at the end of the ironing board. Then, as Rachel watches Shalah, a tag becomes necessary: In an early scene, in which Rachel and Shalah are together, Rachel’s thoughts are conveyed without any tags through four paragraphs. Here are some illustrations from Ellizabeth George’s mystery Deception on His Mind. Sometimes it is necessary to use “he thought,” or “she wondered” to avoid confusion, but such tags can be used sparingly. Using a different font would make things worse.Īs Suzanne points out, adding to himself to he thought is redundant. Some writers and writer’s guides do use or recommend italics to designate thoughts, but the device is distracting to many readers. When we see quotation marks, we have the expectation that a character is speaking the words aloud. Such a technique is confusing to the reader. Setting off a character’s thoughts in quotation marks is a definite no-no. That too may be disruptive.Īnyone who writes fiction wrestles with the problem of how to convey a character’s inner dialogue without distracting from the flow of the story. I have also tried putting the character’s thoughts in italics or some other font. (who else would he be talking to anyway?) It gets a bit tiresome to keep saying something like ‘he thought to himself’. What I am wondering is how to express my characters’ thoughts. ![]() ![]() I have written several books which are ‘dialogue driven’.
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