Dear O'Abby: How do I write thoughts? (from the archives)

O'Abby is on holiday for a couple of weeks, so to tide you over, she's found a couple of gems from the archives...  Enjoy!  O'Abby will return, tanned and relaxed (hopefully) after a trip to Samoa.

Dear O'Abby,

I have a technical question I hope you can help me with.

When I'm writing a character's thoughts, do I need to write them like this?

She's a fox, thought Ted, before chastising himself, Shouldn't be objectifying her like that, dude.

One of my CPs said this is the correct way to present thoughts, but it looks weird when I have so many itallics scattered across the page.

What is correct?

Sincerely, Thoughtless

Dear Thoughtless,

I agree with you.  It does look weird if you have a lot of italics on a single page.  Personally, I don't tend to write thoughts in italics for just this reason.  But like so much of writing, there isn't actually a hard and fast rule.  The main thing to be aware of is to use italics sparingly as they do really stand out on a page.

My suggestions would be to use them to draw attention to things that you believe are important.  Not every thought is important, but some need some additional emphasis because they're imparting something key to the plot or revealing something special about a character.  In that case, italicize.

If you're writing in a more distant third person POV, you would use italics to show that a specific character had this thought.  Think of it like the narrator just dipped into the character's head and took a peek at what they were thinking.  It's not 100% necessary to use italics in this scenario, but it is something you see often.

When writing in third person and a character is talking to themselves, italics can be used to show this.  Often the thoughts are interspersed with action that can show the conflict the character is dealing with.  This is effective because there is a distinct contrast between the action that is not in italics and the inner monologue which is.

Another place you might use italics in thought is where a character is remembering something that was said in the past.  Again, you wouldn't do it for every memory, but if the words spoken were important, then they should be in italics.

Basically, using italics is a way to draw attention to something or emphasize something significant.  If you italicize all thoughts, you're giving every passing whim equal significance and this leaves you with nothing to use when you need to really hammer something home.

But don't sweat it too much.  There really are no hard and fast rules here, so if you think something deserves to be in italics, go for it.

X O'Abby