can you hear me now? —

When writing a fan fiction it’s hard to avoid dialogue or thoughts of any kind. There are many methods of indicating dialogue and thoughts; right ways and wrong ways. To show people talking you have to use quotations (“”). Thoughts should rightfully be in italics as well as flashbacks. The difficult part is when you want to differentiate from thoughts and flashbacks if you have both in the same chapter.

If you are in the present time frame then I suggest that your thoughts be in italics. When you switch to a flashback it would be helpful to write something like …

== Two years ago ==

I took a deep breath and sipped my coffee. It was mid-December and everyday there was snow falling from the sky. I had always loved the snow but that particular day gave me an even better reason to appreciate it.

“Excuse me miss is this seat taken?” someone asked me.

I looked up from my coffee to face an attractive young man with brown hair. I smiled and patted the seat on the bench for the bus stop.

“Not at all,” I just wanted to stare into his chocolate eyes for the rest of my existence.

“Miss?” he started to talk to me again, snapping me out of my daydreaming. “I don’t quite recognize you. Do you live around here?”

“Ani, I live in Gyounggi province attending Anyang High.” I normally wouldn’t have given that type of information but I felt comfortable with this stranger.

“Really? I live in Gyounggi also. My name is Park Jungsu but you can call me Leeteuk if you want. That’s what my friends from college called me.” He introduced himself.

Do yourself a favor and take notice on how I wrote that the setting was now two years in the past. Now, let’s make things a bit more complicated. We’ll add some dialogue to that flashback.

“Ani, I live in Gyounggi province attending Anyang High.” I normally wouldn’t have given that type of information but I felt comfortable with this stranger. Why did I say that?

The thought is not in italic but is in just plain, regular font. I feel that I have to stress how to properly use quotation marks because at times I see people do this …

“ What did you say?” she asked.

You see that space in between the first quotation mark and the letter ‘W’? It’s not supposed to be there. The gap has to be closed or else it’s wrong. I’m no English major but it’s just basic knowledge that spaces in between quotations and what is in between them is incorrect. A second thing that is commonly mistaken is this …

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped at me. I frowned. “I’m sorry but I just couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to stay home all alone!” “Whatever, just go to your room,”

Just to clear things up, the following text is not from anything I’ve written but is just improvisation. Only the flashback example is taken from something I’ve written; ‘Our Strange Relationship’ a oneshot written starring the supposed you and Park Jungsu also known as Super Junior’s Leeteuk.

The error with the text above is that the dialogue is all mashed together. When a new person talks you need to start a new paragraph. This is what it’s supposed to look like …

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped at me.

I frowned. “I’m sorry but I just couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to stay home all alone!”

“Whatever, just go to your room,”

If you didn’t know that that was the proper way of writing dialogue then obviously you haven’t read too many books in the past. Books don’t clump together their dialogue but they space it out instead. I don’t make the rules, I’m only sharing them. Oddly enough there’s another common way that people screw up incorrectly write dialogue in stories.

‘Whatever, just go to your room,’

That’s wrong too because you’d be using apostrophes and not quotations. I’ve seen some people even use those for thoughts, which isn’t necessarily wrong. If you’re trying to write in a formal matter then I suggest that you stick to making thoughts italic, putting dialogue in quotations, and flashbacks in italics. Also, when doing this make sure it is all in the same font, color, and size. I’ll write later on about this so you can fully understand the reasoning behind why doing such may be causing you to lose your subscribers and views from heightening.