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Q&A Background speech with foreground dialogue

I saw an effective example of this in 1634: The Baltic War (David Weber & Eric Flint) recently. The factors that made it work were: The background speech was in italics (as you've done here)...

posted 10y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:50:43Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8663
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T02:50:43Z (over 4 years ago)
I saw an effective example of this in _1634: The Baltic War_ (David Weber & Eric Flint) recently. The factors that made it work were:

- The background speech was in italics (as you've done here).

- The passages of background speech began and ended in the middle of sentences.

- There wasn't a lot of back-and-forth; for every speech chunk there were at least a few paragraphs of foreground action.

- The content of the speech clearly showed passage of time (as suggested by Lauren Ipsum).

As I read this I felt that this was a familiar technique -- surely I've seen it before.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-08-19T13:23:45Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 2