Authors & Reviewers discussion

Authors...
When writing about your character thinking. How do you format this? Do you italicize? Do you write the words she thinks/he thinks? Or do you just let it work into the writing hoping your readers understand it's a thought?

Reviewers...
As a reader, how do you prefer thoughts to be formatted?

Marisa

I struggled with this in the second book I wrote. With the first it was told from the POV of the main character so I didn't have to specify what her thoughts were because the entire book was her thoughts. With the second there is a short part near the end where the one character has several different... personalities in his head at the same time. With those I did one it italics and one in bold. It just helps specify what is being thought and what is being said

I was taught (and this is what my agent tells me that most editors expect nowadays, which I know doesn't apply to you) that if you're writing in third person, it's just like SKN said--it's not necessary to use the phrase "he/she thought" because everything is the character's thoughts, so saying, "he/she thought" ends up being redundant. Third person POV is exactly like 1st person--it's just "he/she" instead of "I".

But if you have the character thinking in first person, (I statements, such as, "I hate this guy" or "I wish this guy would just shut up"), but the rest of the book is third person, then first person thought goes in italics. But again, it's not necessary to say "she thought". You'd only really need to say "she thought" if you're writing like in Omniscient POV, where you're writing from a removed perspective, a narrator telling what he sees the characters doing.

If that helps at all.

J.M. wrote: "I was taught (and this is what my agent tells me that most editors expect nowadays, which I know doesn't apply to you) that if you're writing in third person, it's just like SKN said--it's not nec..."

From what I have read of your novel you can manage this in a very exquisit way. The way you change from him to her in each chapter is simply amazing. I can't wait to read more!!!

María wrote: "From what I have read of your novel you can manage this in a very exquisit way. The way you change from him to her in each chapter is simply amazing. I can't wait to read more!!!"

I'm blushing. Thank you. I've had lots of teachers over the years. :)