Quick beta-type question for my flist...

[panik]

I just finished my latest fic - the one for mariojoe, the one she won for Moonridge 2006  (yup, it's only taken me a year to write ::hangs head in abject shame::)

OK, so... this story has quite a lot of first person in it, mostly in third, but switching into 1st from time to time, with the entire first chapter in 1st P; three voices. Now I know when you're reading it, that it should be apparent that it's moved into 1st, and who is talking, but should the formatting reflect that, do you think? I'm just experimenting with italics, different fonts, indenting pars - I'm just not sure...

Italics are probably the easiest, most recognisable way to separate out the 1st P sections, but I'm wondering if that's going to be too hard on the eyes when there are thousands of words of this (almost 3,000 continuous words in the first chapter alone)? - I'm wondering whether it's not better to just leave it all the same and let the narrative passages speak for themselves?

Any advice received with gratitude. (o:

Comments

[carodee.livejournal.com]

I'm going with starwatcher307 here. Use breaks and indicate who's speaking in the first sentence or as soon as possible. Formatting is nice but you always have to consider whether it enhances the readers' experience or not. I wrote a story with inner thoughts, flashbacks, and a third-party sorta mental-telepathy intrusion all in different fonts/italics, etc. and it was messy as hell. I'd have done far better to have saved the fancier formatting for the third-party thing and used plain breaks/punctuation stuff to set the rest of it apart.

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Message received and understood.

I was just playing with it and I think I agree, whatever I do to indicate 1st P. looks messy and *really* hard to read. Some of those passages are really long...