Andrew

I take your point about the deep intellectual stuff. There is a real danger that it will lose a lot if you try and convert it to a form of dialogue.

I think you're right when you talk about mix and matching the style to get the feel or the effect you are looking for. Just knowing that there is more than one way of representing those internal thoughts is the starting point for choosing the best approach.

And if what you are doing isn't working, try something different.

Regards

John

Is it not the job of the narrator in third person prose to describe the thoughts and feelings of a character?

I may be being a bit thick, but I wouldn't describe that as dialogue, surely it's just narrative.

I assume that dialogue is something that the narrator chooses for us to hear.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but those are my thoughts.

Darryl





<Added>

Ooops, crossed purposes. I should have read the previous comments with my brain switched on.

I personally wouldn't use internal dialogue. Maybe it's because it's not a tool that's often used in the fiction I tend to read.

To me, it often has a contrived feeling. Almost like a character in a play speaking to themselves in an empty room to convey thoughts.


Only a personal opinion.

Darryl

I haven't read all the previous comments, so apologies if I'm repeating what someone else has said.

Basically, dialogue should DO something. For example:

- introduce a character's character
- tell us something about the plot
- show us how two or more characters interact
- be funny/sad/moving, for a reason
- convince the reader that something important is happening
- sound like real-life dialogue but be much better. It should sound like the dialogue we hear in our heads but aren't articulate enough to actually speak out loud
- be distinctive, i.e. good dialogue should sound unique to each character and therefore shouldn't need too many identifiers
- express its meaning within the structure of its words, rather than rely on exclamation marks, capital letters, etc

It shouldn't:

- copy real-life dialogue which is often boring, repetitive and illogical
- have all characters sounding the same
- tell us things we already know or don't need to know

For me, a reference for good dialogue is what you find in the best sitcoms, where characters sound normal and natural but actually say things that hit home, i.e. make you laugh. In (I think) the first episode of Frasier, in the first exchange between Frasier and Niles, they are arguing and Frasier snaps, "Niles, do you ever have an unexpressed thought?" and Niles replies, "I'm having one now." This is funny in itself, but also shows us their characters and how they interact. It sounds natural but is actually much too neat and funny to come across in real life (well, people do occasionally say things like this, but not as a matter of course).

Finally, I think dialogue is an art that really needs to be developed. You have to keep honing and cutting and choosing words carefully until what's left is the distilled spirit of your story.

Helps to avoid ambiguity
i.e.: The office possesses a little-used storeroom.
(How would the meaning of the sentence change if the hyphen was removed?)

Currently the storeroom is not used often, remove the hypen and it may be little in size, but used frequently.

Damn it! I woke up at 2.30 this morning thinking about this, trying to work out the reasons how and why.

Generally, I write internal dialogue as narrative because it's so interwoven with the feelings of the POV character it would feel clumsy to separate them.
However, I do use a different technique when the thoughts are something the character would like to say out loud but feels constrained not to. In this case, I use italics as in the following extract from one of my novels. Most of this is what Aisla (the POV character) is thinking, so it's in normal font, but the last line is one she would have spoken aloud if she wasn't worried about losing her new job as a chauffeur so it's in italics.

It was so long since Ailsa had been this way she had forgotten that it was possibly the most tortuous eight miles of road in existence – which, presumably was why Hugh had decided to come here, so he could check out how she handled a whole range of driving in the one journey. She had done fine in a busy city centre and on the motorway. Now how about eight miles of narrow country lane that turned her arms to spaghetti. How long, she wondered, had it taken his sadistic brain to come up with this one.
“It’s a very pretty route isn’t it, Hugh.”
“Mmm, it is,” he agreed. “But I would have gone up to Ambleside and round the top of the lake. It’s a much easier drive.”
Bastard!

(In an ideal world the word Bastard! would be in italics but I can't work out how to do it here. Can someone enlighten me?) This probably renders everything I've just said as gibberish. Ho Hum!
Dee.

No Dee, it's OK as it is, it reads as you intended.

Thanks Becca,

I still don't know how to use bold/italics/underlining on here - or am I seeing it differently because I posted it?
Dee

Dee, it would be OK in italics or non italics, as it is without italics it works fine. I don't know how to do the fancy stuff either on these postings.

It works fine because it's got a line of its own.

Thanks again, Becca,
The point I was trying to make, I think, was that one word in italics can say more and have a greater impact than a paragraph of narrative.
Cheers,
Dee.

Hi

I don't know if this is going to help but if you want text to appear as bold text you need to use some HTML markers to enclose the words you want to appear as bold.

So to have a word appear in bold you need to type in the dialogue box an opening square bracket [, the letter b, a closing square bracket ], the text you want in bold, followed by a second opening square bracket [, a forward slash /, a letter b, a closing square bracket ].

It's set out on the left of this box as I type, but it won't be there when you come to read this gibbersish that I have typed.

The same sort of thing applies for italics and underlined.

This is as clear as mud, isn't it!

Go on. tell me. I can take it!!

John

Does anyone have any view and tips on unspoken internal dialogue...the words that are thought but not spoken within the character's head?

Dee - now I feel guilty because my question got up in the middle of the night thinking about it - somehow though I also feel honoured

Andrew )


it says how to do Bold and Italic on the left of the editing box when you type a comment

[ b ] Bold text [ /b ]
[ i ] Italic text [ /i ]
Bold text
Italic text
[u] Underlined text [/u]

Quotation box

<Added>

got you up - it was meant to read

<Added>

of course I missed out the you so i could demonstrate how to do a bold italic underlined

you

hmmm

no, it's perfectly straightforward, John
I think.
[u] well, let's see what it looks like. [/u]
Dee.

Oh well, most of it worked.
Thanks.

Ohh gee! I don't think I've ever honoured anyone before. But fret not, Andrew. I woke up but I didn't get up. There's a limit to what I'll do for my craft.

OK, I've been hogging this thread tonight so I'll shut up now.
G'night.