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Q&A Internal and telepathic dialog

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...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-01-03T20:41:55Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29555
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:50:49Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29555
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:50:49Z (over 4 years ago)
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.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-08-03T23:19:12Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 2