So, I’ve been putting a fare amount of internal dialog, or just the MC thinking about things in lately, and want to insure that I’m formatting it correctly. So, would it be something like this?:
“Is it bad that I can’t help smirking at that?” I think as the hood flops over my eyes once more.
So, something like that?
One popular convention is to use italics for mental dialogue. As in:
Is it bad that I can’t help smirking at that? I think as the hood flops over my eyes once more.
Using quotation marks is also fine, but can be mistaken for something said out loud.
Personally, I prefer to avoid specific internal monologue in a CoG game written in a close second person. The player knows they’re riding around in the MC’s body. You know about your pulse quickening, that sort of thing.
So rather than:
“Is it bad that I can’t help smirking at that?” You think as the hood flops over your eyes once more.
I’d prefer to see:
Is it bad that you can’t help smirking at that? Your hood flops over your eyes once more as you walk away.
Or something like that. I think there’s plenty of good reason for self-reflection in a game, I just think that calling it out specifically breaks the connection a little bit, and keeping the thoughts and feelings flowing in second person feels more immediate.
I usually use italics like Havenstone 
Tends to make it clearer than using quotation marks and means you don’t have to continuously write “you thought” if you’re using a lot of it which gets repetitive.
Always weird to separate thoughts of characters from the narration. Isn’t the narration already a reflection of the character’s perspective on the world?
This is just my personal preference, but I use a mix between italics and no separation. It depends on the context and POV for me. I’d use italics for the example you provided or maybe flip the sentences around so I can fit both the thought and the event, if that makes sense.
Not necessarily. One interpretation of the RPG-esque way that CoG stories use the “you-I” distinction is that only the first-person statements directly reflect the character’s perspective, and the narrator of the rest of the story is a Dungeon-Master-like figure describing and commenting on that perspective.
Oh the other hand, if you have a lot of internal thoughts, might be fun to just wholeheartedly dive into the main character’s perspective. There’s a lot of fun to be had there.
The question bothering me is : is there an “official” way to handle mc thoughts? Each one of us has their own preferences, what really matters to me now is “avoiding mistakes”. I would not want to rewrite dialogues because they don’t comply with official guidelines. Anyone hear knows about official guidelines?
Here is the style guide. I don’t see anything about internal monologue.
For me, I’m doing first person, except for when the character perspective changes, and that’s not really for that long.
On reflection, I wonder how many readers will interpret this as the omniscient narrator asking if you think it’s bad, rather than a representation of the internal voice of the main character. The conventions of CoG tend toward the former…
On reflection, I wonder how many readers will interpret this as the omniscient narrator asking if you think it’s bad, rather than a representation of the internal voice of the main character. The conventions of CoG tend toward the former…
I mean, is there much of a difference? If the rest is already written in a close second person, you’re already getting omniscience into your thoughts, feelings, and state, like:
Your heart races. You feel sick to your stomach. Is this fear? Is it love? Is it something else?
You could use this as a prompt for a choice or you could leave it hanging as a question your character’s mind. I don’t think italics would be necessary in either case. But we may just have to agree to disagree.
It’s true, nothing officially about internal monologue, so for CoG titles that I’m editing, I ask Jason and/or Mary (the main editor) for an individual ruling.
I will note that the style guide includes keeping stylized text like bold and italics to a minimum. I assume this is for the sake of screen readers and other accessibility tools, but I’m not sure. It may be something to keep in mind if you’re leaning on stylized text to convey a specific meaning, however. I’m not sure if screen readers pick it up.
They don’t, no. At least mine doesn’t, there’s probably a way to, but it would involve some messing about with the settings.
Normally I put something like, I wonder, I think, something like that after just to clarify that it’s internal monologue anyway.