How to handle a 'Thought Discussion'

[Venusian Broon]

Or to put it another way, to write down a conversation between two people who don't use speech.

I have a chapter were two of my characters, one the PoV, end up hooked up into a big virtual environment - a bit matrix-like, but much more abstract, so they don't 'see' each other. Rather they feel each other's presences - at least that is the way I'm going with it at the moment.

But they continue their conversation, essentially passing thoughts to each other via the computing system they are both attached into, as the PoV character experiences a variety of other stimuli. So there's his thoughts, her thoughts, and descriptions of what he is experiencing.

If this was them both speaking then it'd be easy to write down. But they are both interacting by thinking...how to represent this in the writing?

For the moment, just to get the jist of the chapter down I've put: his thoughts down in italic, hers in bold italic and the description in normal font. Also I've adopted a speech-like structure so that as the dialogue flips between the two, each change starts on a new paragraph. It avoids a lot of awkward tags and seems to be quite efficient!

But is there a standard way of doing this? Or perhaps it would be easier to ask if anyone knows a good example of such a 'dialogue' in published literature.

 

[SciFrac]

I'd suggest staying in one character's POV. Don't give emotions and sensations for both, just one. If not, things can get confusing really fast. I don't see why you can't have regular dialogue tags after that. Two people and "talk" without sound, but the communication still happens right? One book I read used a different symbol to represent non-verbal speech. The difference looked like this:

Timmy said to his mom, "No mom, we were just watched TV all day long. Promise!"

But Timmy needed Johnny to support his lie, <You got it, Johnny? Just play along.>

<Yep! I'm way ahead of you bro!> Johnny replied. So he corroborated Tim's story with a wide, innocent smile, "That's right Mrs. B. We just watched television."

If they could keep up this charade, they might actually get away with it.

 

[The Judge]

I've just used italics for all telepathic speech, and although I don't use the equivalent of dialogue tags, I make it clear who is thought-speaking by having them do things, so "She turned the petal in her fingers. Are you sure?" That might not be possible, though, if they aren't present together and/or not able to do things.

I wouldn't put her thought-talk in bolded italics -- it will just look odd to have them different. Definitely have them on separate lines as per ordinary dialogue, though.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Interesting SciFrac, I haven't seen anything like that. I'll have to think hard though to see if it fits my situation...

It is only from one PoV as I implied at the start, so you're only getting her thoughts as if in dialogue. The experience is his and solely his.

The closest book I've got that I could think of is Walter Jon Williams Aristoi where people have seperate Daemons (I think that's what he called them) that think and interact inside the characters' heads - he has their thoughts in seperate blocks of text outside the main text, but at the correct points so that it sort of makes sense to the narrative.

All a bit non-linear and experimental - so I'll avoid that till I'm much much better!

 

[Gumboot]

My POV character has "though conversations" all the time in my book. I treat it exactly like dialogue, except I use italics instead of speech marks. I even use dialogue tags, I am just careful not to use ones that specifically indicated talking aloud:

***

When Calan woke the next afternoon his head throbbed uncontrollably, his mouth and throat were dry, and his stomach roiled unhappily. It was all he could do to crawl to the apartment bathroom and vomit into the toilet.
It’s a good thing the hëil are such an advanced society, the dagger called Árle remarked with disapproval.
They’re monsters, Calan disagreed as he clutched at his head.
The room swam around him, and he sat on the floor a moment, clutching at the walls. ‘I want to die,’ he murmured.
When he at last staggered into the apartment sitting room Lucius was seated, waiting for him. The old man eyed him with faint disapproval. ‘I see you’ve decided to embrace the hëil way,’ he observed drily.

 

[Lucky_Lola]

I have a lot of psychic conversations in my WiP and I use italics and these doodies < >

So...

<Did you see that?> the girl asked.
Her companion shook his head. <Hush, child!>

Clunky example, but you get the gist. Something else I try to do with my non-humanc characters is eliminate any use of colloquialisms, contractions or other oddities of speech, so as to make their word choice seem more considered.

I like the sound of this non-linear stuff, though. Good luck with it!

 

[Tecdavid]

I'd just use italics for both their "dialogue". Italics are good for generally conveying a character's lines that are neither audible or spoken, such as thoughts, telekinetic communication, etc. I agree with TJ in that making one character’s lines bold would be a bad idea - I think it would just make things messy. If you structure your lines a little something like this, perhaps:

So, how's your day been? signalled Alice.

Then that would quickly and neatly tell the reader that the dialogue is neither audible (due to lack of punctuated speech), nor spoken.

 

[kaal]

Like TJ said, I just italicise. I do tend to handle it just like speech, without speech marks. In that I took my lead from Anne McCaffrey & Brian Lumley (amongst others).
Here's a bit from a cut scene in my main WIP.


Adam sat down on a wall in the enclosed quadrangle of shrubbery accessible only by 'kinesis and pole-vaulting.

The cat was there as if waiting for him.

He looked at the cat. The cat glared back.

Well? thought 'Arry; the name popped into Adam's mind unbidden.

Well, what?

I'm curious...

You can say that again...

Look here, you! You can't muck around with reality and expect to get away with it you know!

Adam looked surprised.

Most people, I suspect, would have found it surprising enough to have been 'pathed by a cat at all but you shouldn't really. I mean, you know all those times when they look at you as if willing you to make mental contact with them? They are.


With 2 characters the dialogue tags aren't really needed, like in normal speech. If you have to have more characters communicating telepathically in a scene, then the attribution becomes necessary, just like speech, but the attribution doesn't have to mention "speech" per se (again, as TJ described).
£0.02
K

 

[Venusian Broon]

Thanks all for the suggestions. Another chapter down the line should be written in thoughtspeak, so I'll give it a hard think as to what works best.

The main issue with the situation I found myself writing was that the non-PoV character became a disembodied 'voice' that just thinks her part of the conversation, so it became a bit like Kaal's cat communication*. Although to confuse the issue, she is more or less in charge of the environment that both are in so she can still do actions of sorts. He just doesn't see her.

It's actually quite nice to have a bit of freedom with the writing structure like this - with the proviso of course that the writing does convey exactly what you want it to in a concise and clear manner.

As for bold in text, it can work. From memory Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before has a mad German monk who 'speaks' in bold gothic font which really stands out on the page of Times or Verdana of whatever font they used for the normal text. A bit gimmicky I know, but it works. Gets his character across!

---------------------------------------------------

* Kaal this is completely off topic, but if a cat jumps up on to your lap front paws on your chest, then presses her mouth onto your lips - a cat kiss I suppose - what does that mean? Fishy breath? Mad cat? Proof of reincarnation?

I shall go with your suggestion that she was trying to pass on a nugget of cat wisdom telepathically I have other less appealing theories though, but perhaps for another discussion.

 

[Burl Bird]

I may be wrong, but I somehow feel that there is no real point in having telepathy and "thought conversations" if it only differs from regular dialogue by the use of italics and by changing the "he said this" to "he thought this"!

Am I wrong? I would always go with something like a stream of consciousness, maybe a bit (a lot!) more grammar-friendly than what Joyce did, but certainly free of traditional sentence structure. Italics are fine, but just substituting direct speech with italics is a terrible loss of potential.

Of course, it's just the same with substituting sails with FTL drives, magic with nanotechnology and good ol' uzis with lasers...

 

[prizzley]

Like tj, I've used italics (without quotation marks) for telepathic speech. Other than that, I've treated it as dialogue, but omitted 'he thought/she thought'. My characters can feel each other emotions, so I've stuck to one POV and made (I hope) it clear where one character feels another character's anger, distress etc. I decided stream of consciousness would too confusing in the multiple situations I have, though I can see it might work in certain circumstances.

I have done an online agent submission that stripped out all this careful italicising though. Another pitfall!

 

[Venusian Broon]

, but just substituting direct speech with italics is a terrible loss of potential.

I know what your saying BB but I suppose I'm concentrating on the basics at the moment - that I have two characters who communicate first (partially) phyiscally then virtually and I have to have some way of showing this to the reader.

But stream of consciousness writing is an interesting idea though - it could be an good way to indicate that the characters is in a really different state. I'm only on first draft so plenty of scope to experiment a bit and perhaps draft another version of the chapter and see if it works.

I'll need to find some good examples of SoC writing with a interaction/dialogue between the PoV and another character though - any examples you can think of? (I don't have the time or energy to try and tackle Finnegans Wake if you were going to suggest that )

 

[monsterchic]

I think there's an example of this in the Beautiful Creatures series by Kami Garcia and Marcia Stohl. It's YA, but i haven't read it in a long time so I don't remember where exactly in the book.

 

[kaal]

@BB: If I *only* use telepathy/thinkspeak in a work, then no, no point in the distinction. However, if there is more than one type of communication going on, then it allows for different uses, plot devices, etc. If you want to do a SoC which has an emergent dominant thought conveying meaning, that would allow for different stories than plain, direct thought transfer.
Depending on what you plan to do with it telepathy/telempathy/yadda can be made into whatever you want it to do, with the ramifications you want within your work. *shrug*
With my works, I am very light on stream-of-consciousness and favour the direct speech-alternative.

@VB: I think that particular communication might have been food related... (But then that's a safe bet with cats, in any case.)

 

[Warren_Paul]

But Timmy needed Johnny to support his lie, <You got it, Johnny? Just play along.>

<Yep! I'm way ahead of you bro!> Johnny replied. So he corroborated Tim's story with a wide, innocent smile, "That's right Mrs. B. We just watched television."

This method was done by Russell Kirkpatrick in his Fires of Heaven trilogy. So it's a professionally approved method to use.

 

[hopewrites]

I can think of two examples from published literature; Ann McCaffrey's dragons communicate telepahicly and Melanie Rawn's dragon prince series has mages who communicate via light over great (or small) distances.

While I don't remember the way these two authors handled it (and am sadly seperated from my library for the rest of the weekend) I remember that it was natural to read and made perfect sense.

I would assume that any fantasy with animal companions would be a good guideline, though most ether use dialogue in some from or another. I suggested Ann and Melanie because I remember instances where some character or another shared an experience with someone - thing else. Oh I just remembered Robin Hobb has some too in her farseer trilogy (I'm only in the second book so can't say for the other trilogies in that set) where the main can sence with his companions sences. He comments on these added sensory perceptions from his perspective. So you could keep the POV you have going.

I would be happy to look the references I'm thinking of up when I get back if you want.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Hi Hopewrites!

Just spare a minute to find the references if you have the books to hand. Don't spend hours - I'll be taking at least another 6 months to fiinish my first draft so I'm not going anywhere anyway

 

[alchemist]

I have done an online agent submission that stripped out all this careful italicising though. Another pitfall!

Indeed. Fortunately most full-story submissions will be done with an attachment, but if you're posting a snall sample into their box, you have to be careful.

My one telepathic character uses italics only. I had to be careful to avoid italicising other words anywhere near her passages, lest it lead to confusion. The other option is < >. Somewhere, somewhen, Teresa Edgerton said it was acceptable.

 

[kaal]

Can't comment on Melanie Rawn, but as for Anne McCaffrey, she was one of my influences (as I noted above). If you go to amazon, look for Dragonflight and click on the "look inside" thang and search for "teach". That'll take you to a line from Mnementh (bronze dragon) telepathically talking to F'lar (his rider). To be brief, however, it's italics, no speech marks, dialogue tags.

 

[James Coote]

I can't remember where I read it, but I recall being told never to use different symbols for speech in different languages (i.e. no < > 's or anything similar).

I personally think you'd be better just letting the reader know they can communicate through the machine, and then have them talk to each other using normal speech marks, especially if they only get hooked up to this environment once.

The more the reader is aware of the mechanics, the less they are seeing from the characters' POVs and the more they are a detached, outside observers.

When people are immersed in an experience like playing a video game or driving a car, the tools they are using become subconscious extensions of themselves. When the traffic lights went green, "I turned left", not "I turned the steering wheel and pressed on the accelerator whilst lifting the clutch causing the car to turn left"

As for repeat use, such as between telepaths, most of your readers will not be telepaths, and so will find it awkward when telepathic communication is explicitly spelled out in front of them. A more subtle approach it to let the reader know when communication has happened, but not directly "hear" what was said. The two telepaths glance at each other, or one relays the message verbally to a non-telepath.

Or think about how it is done in the films Silence of the Lambs and The Shining