Internal and telepathic dialog [closed]
Closed by System†on Aug 16, 2017 at 23:19
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I'm writing a story about mental telepathy. In it, I have telepathic dialog between two characters. First let me say that I've been writing internal dialog i.e., thoughts, using italics. Example:
The poor man's gonna die of fright, he thought.
When I write telepathic dialog, I've also been italicizing it; this way the reader can differentiate between verbal dialog and telepathic dialog. I would like to know if I should use quote marks on the italicized telepathic dialog.
I would appreciate knowing whether or not I should italicize the telepathic dialog and if I should use quotations as well.
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1 answer
There are no conventions for representing telepathic dialogue. This means you get to pick how you are going to do it. It also means that you have to clearly and explicitly establish your convention for the reader. A typographic change is certainly one way, but you will have to be very careful to make sure that it is established clearly or you risk it all just sounding arch. Another way would be to invent a different speech tag instead of "said". What is the verb for a telepathic projection? Since there isn't one, you get to make one up.
My general point is, you are free to make up whatever convention you like, but there is no convention that the reader is going to understand without you making it explicit for them. So decide what you want to do, set it up for the reader, and remind them of it from time to time in case they don't read the whole work at one sitting.
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