Below are some rules I have adopted as my own standard for punctuating/formatting speech and thought. I had never had problems with this while writing shorter stories, but with this book (now around 100K words), I have too much variety of narrative style to handle organically.
- Direct speech = ” ”
(Speech occurring at the time of the narrative)
This is actually opposite to the standard British style of using ‘ ‘, and more in line with North American style, but I don’t like the use of ‘ being the same as apostrophes, especially as it result in nasty sentences like:
> ‘Those sweets are the kids’.’
> ‘It’s Al’s.’. - Quotations = ‘ ‘
(When a character says or remembers what another character said)
Worth noting that if you use ‘ ‘ rather than ” ” for direct speech, then this rule is reversed. - General thoughts = standard font
(Thoughts/opinions ascribed to a character, but not presented as ‘direct thoughts’)
By ‘general thoughts’, I am meaning things like:
> Tom thought she looked tired.
> She looked tired, Tom thought.
But not:
> She looks tired, Tom thought. - Direct thoughts = italic font
(Basically, direct speech, but in a character’s head)
This is where it gets tricky. By ‘direct thoughts’, I mean things like:
> She looks tired, Tom thought.
In this case, the narrative aim is to have the thought appear directly as if thought by the character, rather than the narrator reporting it. I have toyed with: i) getting rid of these entirely in favour of always using ‘general thoughts’–but there are times when direct thought feels right; ii) using standard font instead, but then you really can’t use present tense–it just looks like a mistake.
Here’s a little article about it. - Memory sections/flashbacks = italic font
(Whole sections of the story that appear as memories ascribed to one character)
Here’s the reason I had to think about this whole thing more formulaically. I have one chapter where various things the character does evoke memories. The structure is like: A, B, A, B…, where A=a section at the time of the story and B=a memory section. However, each of these sections includes multiple paragraphs, so I couldn’t just say ‘He thought: ‘ or ‘He remembered a time when…”.
I have found places that say that italics are not the way to present flashbacks, and I can’t say that I disagree. But for what I’m writing now, it seems the most appropriate. That said, I agree with this piece, which says use of flashbacks is something to be avoided when possible! So, the next thing I do: no flashbacks!
Tris Matthews 