Freaking italics.

When I started writing Not by Sword (ah!), I thought I understood how to format dialogue in prose. Apparently I did not. Through the editing process, I have learned that I was in fact doing it wrong (eek!). My copyeditor Molly helped me discover and rectify these issues, and I think I’m a better writer for it. I shall enumerate my mistakes here with much bellyaching.

Mistake the First: Using commas when a dialogue tag comes between two spoken sentences.

I knew the rule: “when a dialogue tag interrupts a sentence, set it off with commas.” However, I had apparently internalized this rule as “when a dialogue tag interrupts a line of dialogue (gasp!), set it off with commas.” So I was using lots of commas when I should have used periods.

Wrong: “I’m done,” Milo said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Right: “I’m done,” Milo said. “I don’t want to to this anymore.”

It was a difficult habit to break (almost as bad as double-spacing at the end of every sentence!), but my editor helped me chase down all the instances of this in my manuscript, and I’m cured now. Hooray.

Mistake the Second: Interrupting Dialogue with Action & Em Dashes

This one baffles me. It’s not a frequent occurrence, and I think there were only two places in my manuscript where we had to fix it, so when I come to this kind of interruption in my future writing, I’m going to have to refer back to this post to make sure I’m doing it right.

If a line of dialogue is cut off, you put the em dash inside (ack!) the quotation marks, but if it’s interrupted momentarily by an action and then continues in the same sentence, you put the em dashes outside (yikes!) the quotes.

This still looks super wrong to me, but I am deferring to my editor’s wisdom. (Actually, I’m mostly avoiding this type of grammatical structure altogether.)

Wrong: “Excuse me—” Milo said, checking how many stars were on the enlisted man’s shoulder patch, “—warrant officer. I have need of this ship.”

Right: “Excuse me”—Milo checked how many stars were on the enlisted man’s shoulder patch—“warrant officer. I have need of this ship.”

Mistake the Third: Italics (oh no!)

This one’s a little subjective, and therein lies the problem.

I had it in my head that any time a line of text is spoken indirectly or in a nonstandard way, I should italicize it. Phone call? Italics. Radio announcer? Italics. Somebody yells at you from a different room? Italics.

Unfortunately, I am writing science fiction, and people also (oof!) communicate their thoughts directly through an imaginary technology that links minds together while piloting a spaceship (or when they’re touching the horns of the sacred somi cattle). I briefly considered using double angle brackets (à la Animorphs) for this kind of thought-speech, but I settled on italics. This meant my manuscript had a lot (pained gurgle as though stabbed) of italicized dialogue. For clarity, we decided we needed to reduce that amount.

These are the rules we settled on (I think):

1. If it’s a conversation, no italics. (This includes phone and video conversations.)
2. If it’s through a mind link, italics.
3. If it’s from a broadcast or a PA, italics.

This seems simple, but it turns out there are also a lot of edge cases. What if someone is speaking out loud and they’re also connected to a ship? I left those unitalicized. What if they’re linked to a ship but speaking out loud through a ship’s speaker system? I italicized that one. Normal speech, but breaks out into song in the middle of a sentence? Dialogue in a hallucination? Quoting fictional scripture?

I give up. 😂

Conclusion

What do you think? More italics? Less italics? Am I overthinking it? What dialogue foibles are plaguing your manuscript? Let me know!

I hope your experience with italics is less tumultuous than mine.

And don’t forget to check out Not by Sword! My Kickstarter goes live August 28th if you want to help fund the professional audiobook of my debut novel!