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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34648
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This is an old thread from a user that, as best I can tell, does not hang around much any more. Nevertheless, I did think of something different to help in such a situation.

The OP had three types of "inner" dialog issues (bolding added):

> Yet, my protagonist’s **inner voice also comments during regular dialogue** , and if the inner voice is not tagged it could become very confusing, and if it is it would be different from **the rest of the scenes where an untagged inner voice is used**.
> 
> Yet, another complication is that **an external supernatural character also speaks to him in his head** and that needs tagging too.

There is certainly a lot of precedent to use or not use _italics_ for inner dialog, and whether one chooses to or not I believe is up to the writer. So I'm not here to advocate for one or the other.

But I do believe that one should be _consistent_ (i.e., either use italics and change the "rest of the scenes" to that or write the dialogue interruptions in a way that allows for non-italicizing while also avoiding confusion).

Using the OP's example, then either add italics:

> C1 said ”It is a beautiful day isn’t it?” while vaguely indicating the sky.   
>      _Pompous ass_! “Yes, it is a fine day for early spring” C2 amicably replied while debating the merits of stuffing him with his own umbrella. He smiled at him, pretending to watch the sky. _I hope you drown in a sudden outpour, you dimwit_. They stood on the entrance of ...

Or do not italicize, but even as I did above, properly break up the paragraphing to indicate the new speaker, so then the thoughts are separate from the C1 speaker entirely. (Really, the OP's example works fine for me, as long as the paragraph break occurs. Without that, it is hard to tell if "Pompous ass!" is from C1 or C2.)

> C1 said ”It is a beautiful day isn’t it?” while vaguely indicating the sky.   
>      Pompous ass! “Yes, it is a fine day for early spring” C2 amicably replied while debating the merits of stuffing him with his own umbrella. He smiled at him, pretending to watch the sky. I hope you drown in a sudden outpour, you dimwit. They stood on the entrance of ...

Yes suppose some type of delineation is wanted when mixed with direct speech only, but not italics (since "the rest" does not use it). If the interjections are kept to a minimum, then an emdash might work:

> C1 said ”It is a beautiful day isn’t it?” while vaguely indicating the sky.   
>      Pompous ass!—“Yes, it is a fine day for early spring” C2 amicably replied while debating the merits of stuffing him with his own umbrella. He smiled at him, pretending to watch the sky—I hope you drown in a sudden outpour, you dimwit. They stood on the entrance of ...

So with or without italics _can_ be made to handle the character's own inner voice. The writer needs to decide.

But what of the external voice, and especially if italics are desired for the character's own inner voice (since italics could be chosen for the external voice otherwise). What to do with a third, _specifically delineated_, mental voice?

This dilemma is that reminded me of a book series I read when I was in high school, [Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardians_of_the_Flame) series, in which the dragon Ellegon spoke telepathically to the characters. While I searched for an online example of what Rosenberg did, I could not find it, so my memory will have to serve at the moment, but he simply used an asterisk (\*) in place of the quote marks to indicate this mental speech. So adapting the OP's example, using three forms of delineation, it might be this:

> C1 said ”It is a beautiful day isn’t it?” while vaguely indicating the sky.  
>     _Pompous ass_! “Yes, it is a fine day for early spring” C2 amicably replied while debating the merits of stuffing him with his own umbrella. He smiled at him, pretending to watch the sky. _I hope you drown in a sudden outpour, you dimwit_.  
>     \*That wasn't nice to think!\* said the haunting voice of the mental intruder in C2's head, as they stood on the entrance of ...

So the point is that sometimes, writers can get away with making their own conventions for these things. As long as the reader is made to understand what is going on (such as using a pair of asterisks for mental speech delineation), then adding such into the writing can help the reader keep things straight. Once the convention is established, then phrasing like "said the haunting voice of the mental intruder in C2's head" used above would not even be needed. The reader would already know that the \* ... \* was from the previously established external mental voice.

Original score: 0