Clyde Andrews asks about...

Formatting Interior Monologue

Don, How does one write a dream sequence? Not a “he woke up and it was all a dream” type sequence, but an actual dream. In the next story I have a character being communicated to via his dreams. So how would I write it? In single quotations, double quotations, italics, or some other way. Just thought I’d ask you.

Thanks, mate.

Clyde Andrews — Speculative Author

Good question, Clyde...

Dream sequences such as you describe are actually extended interior monologue. Now, how to handle interior monologue? There is no standard format.

No punctuation: In Pushed to the Limit, Bonnie Gibson tells us what Brenda thinks when she’s alone. That’s interior monologue, and Bonnie uses no punctuation at all for it. I think it works well. Only in a couple of cases did I add italics, where special emphasis seemed to be needed.
Single quotes: In Gaia, Tala Bar indicates a character’s thoughts with single quotes, while spoken dialogue is in double quotes. I think that also works well. Of course, that option is not available in British punctuation.
Italics and colour: Steven F. Murphy’s “Sharpshooter,” is rather complex. I decided that Vannoy’s interior monologues were best set off in italics. In addition, there is communication from an artificial intelligence device by way of a visual display: that’s in small caps in green and, in one case, in red.

Cautions:
- Colour-coding text — or even borders — can be useful, but only if its purpose is obvious.
- Italics are useful, but they can be strong medicine: if italics extend more than a couple of lines, they become hard to read.
Boldface: In Kevin Ahearn’s excerpt of Intelligent Design, almost half of the text is in italics or boldface, to indicate different speakers. We normally use boldface only in headers, subheads, and lists in departmental pages such as this one, not for emphasis or any other purpose. The reason is that boldface is a form of “yelling”; it drowns out the text around it. I don’t think it works well at all in Kevin’s text, but we don’t hold excerpts to the same standards as the rest of the issue.
Block quotes: I don’t think single quotes, italics or colours will work with a whole paragraph, which is the length I would expect for a dream sequence. Rather, it’s best set off as a block quote. Michael E. Lloyd uses block quotes for a similar purpose in Observation One.

To indicate block quotes, it’s best to use the HTML tags: <BLOCKQUOTE> at the beginning and </BLOCKQUOTE> at the end. Be very careful with those angle brackets: one too many will put everything in your text in full caps!

I hope this helps...

Don