Queries about dialogue - Writers Forum

Schumi · 12-05-2005, 08:43 AM

Hi everyone,

I enjoy writing the dialogue for my novel, and there have been times where it has written itself. But there are a few things I'm a bit unsure about. Firstly, when a character emphasise a word. For example, a character could say "There's no way I'm doing that". If he was to emphasis the word 'no', would you write it as 'NO' or something different? I've noticed that on TV subtitles, they use a different colour for the text to emphasise the word.

Also, if a character were to say something to herself i.e. "I can't believe I'm doing this", how should it be written? Again, TV subtitles put this in brackets for some reason.

Any help would be great. Thanks.

Stewart · 12-05-2005, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schumi

If he was to emphasis the word 'no', would you write it as 'NO' or something different?

The common method is to italicise. All capitals everytime you want to emphasise something becomes tiring and all that will happen is the effect will be lost.

"There's no way I'm going back there," she said.

Quote:

if a character were to say something to herself i.e. "I can't believe I'm doing this", how should it be written?

This is a matter of personal preference. There are some who would italicise it; some who put it in quotation marks. Personally, I prefer to do nothing about it.

i.e.

It's up to me to save the world, he thought.

"It's up to me to save the world," he thought.

It's up to me to save the world, he thought.

There's no right or wrong. It's about literary style.

BauB · 12-05-2005, 03:25 PM

Pertaining to thoughts, I like the italicize method. After reading Dune, it just seems natural that thoughts are italicized.

But, as Connor stated, it's all personal preference; I've seen it several different ways.

Anarkos · 12-05-2005, 03:25 PM

Ideally, of course, you shouldn't need to emphasise the word with italics. The emphasis should be fairly clear from the context.

suzakugaiden · 12-05-2005, 06:56 PM

All caps would have an entirely different effect.

Anyway, italics are better for emphasizing rhythm. Certain stresses and accents that can't be infered from meaning because they're more vocal tics and not really meaning or tone related.

mammamaia · 12-07-2005, 02:56 PM

italics are the usual way of emphasizing a word... but in a ms, you are never to use the italics themselves, but only underline the word/s... this is a standard of ms format...

as for interior dialog/thoughts, they can NOT properly be put in "" since only spoken dialog goes in quotation marks... nothing need be done to indicate the character is thinking, if written well, but some writers choose to use italics... i find it annoying to read, myself...