Should I drop the quotation marks in a chapter that consists mostly on a character telling a story?
The structure looks like this:
Chapter 10
(...)
And so Cath began telling me her tale. Which turned out to be grimmer than I'd expected.
Chapter 11
"I've been suffering from migraines ever since high school. I'm not talking about those sissy tickling behind the eyes, but really strong hammerings—so strong, in fact, they sometimes make me want to split my head open and scoop out my brain...
(...)
"And that's when it came. It began as a tingle in my temples that grew stronger and stronger, until it became a tightening pain. Like the walls of my skull were closing in, squeezing my brain...
Chapter 11 consists mostly on Cath telling her story. The protagonist interrupts only occasionally:
I stared at Cath, astounded. "What happened then?"
(...)
I mulled this over. I'd never thought about nature that way. Imperfection. Was that the reason things like cancer, allergies, and other human afflictions existed? How about death?
Not sure whether I should remove the quotation marks or the parts where the protagonist interrupts.
What do author usually do in these cases? Which is more pleasant to the reader?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/16319. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
It doesn't matter if your book is 95% one person speaking. If your character is speaking aloud, and especially if you have a second person who interrupts even once a chapter, you must have punctuation indicating that someone is speaking.
Also, I very strongly recommend that you don't just present your story as a wall of 95% one person speaking aloud. If you want Cath to tell her story, make it from Cath's POV, and have her telling the reader instead. Then you can skip the punctuation, because she's writing to the audience, not speaking aloud.
If Cath is not your POV narrator, then break up her speech with stage business, action tags, and more interruptions from the other person.
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