In the past week I’ve received comments back for “Dark Empire” from my editor. And there was some great news: there’s very little rewriting that needs to be done.
While I do have some rearranging to do, there’s really just a couple of scenes that need to be added to improve continuity. I’m looking forward to writing these little additions, working them into the story like puzzle pieces.
Another finding that came from my editor involved formatting. At times, she changed my italics to normal text, and more rarely changed my normal text to italics. While I’ve been really careful to avoid the character thinking “to himself” error, I struggle with clarifying when the character is thinking and when the character’s thoughts are just part of the narration.
So I did some research and found many confusing schools of thought (hah, hah, an unintended pun). Since it appears to be author’s preference, I’m going to try to use italics when the thought is in first person and present tense. If my rule needs to be modified after an editorial pass, I will, but this might be a good style pointer for now.
The other place where I’ve used italics is in one single dream sequence. Since italics are rough on the reader’s eyes, I’ll review this scene with a critical eye to determine if it can be completely unitalicized without confusing the reader.
What do you think about use of italics? Have you ever been tricked in your reading by a dream sequence that you thought was normal action?