Forum: Author Hangout

I would usually prefer 'said Joe'

And I prefer "Joe said" because it's the speaker that's important so I want to see that first. The "said" is sort of invisible because when it comes after the name it's basically skimmed over.

I agree.

In my stories, I have mental dialog between two or more telepathic characters.

Originally I used 'said', but no words are spoken. I started using 'thought' instead of 'said', and that helps signal that the conversation is not verbal.

'Thought' is becoming stale and I need an alternative verb. Any ideas of another verb indicating the process of telepathic communications?

Good words for the transfer of a message, but I don't get the sense that the transfer is done using telepathy.

In that particular case, 'thought' is the appropriate verb, as the whole telepathic conversation is occurring in the one (two) characters' heads.

"transfer" is more confusing that satisfying.

Any ideas of another verb indicating the process of telepathic communications?

My gut would be to use "thought." I guess you could put the telepathy dialogue in italics and the first time it's used, the dialogue tag could be "x thought, telepathically" and from then on you can leave out the adverb because you already notified the reader of your technique.

Or you could even use "x said, telepathically" and then use "said" with italics. That might even be better because italics are used for thoughts. So combining "said" with italics would have a specific meaning to the reader.

That is what I did in my posted stories. In the Introduction, I defined dialogue in italics was telepathic communication. But used 'said' in the dialog tags. As I updated earlier stories I replace 'said' with 'thought'

I will think about using 'said' in that way. It sounds like a good alternative to constantly using 'thought'. I could also use other tag verbs in that manner.

How about creating your own word?

I suggest either constructing it from the appropriate Latin/Greek roots so its meaning will be intuitively obvious or use a nonsense word, as RAH used 'grok'.

Or you could use 'said' and stick a 'p' in front, 'psaid'.

AJ

Thanks for the input.

A made-up word to replace 'thought' doesn't feel right to me. Made-up words are fine for a story, but I view a dialog tag as being the narrator talking to the reader, and a made-up word doesn't seem appropriate for that purpose.

Thanks, DS.

From what I recall of my stories, telepaths share the thoughts they direct to each other or to a group of telepaths. The telepaths don't read thoughts concerning other things another telepath may be thinking about. I didn't think about telepaths who are not part of the group listening in on the conversation, so I never addressed that type of situation.

That isn't by design so much as my thinking that invading another's thoughts would violate a telepath's privacy and I imagine that such a violation would destroy the relationship between telepaths. So I didn't address that situation in the stories. Although I have a vague recollection of addressing telepathic privacy in one of my Opening Earth series of stories.

Just catching this discussion, but rather than change the attribution term itself, I found that doing it visually by combining the two different ways of indicating thoughts, single quotes and also italics. Thus readers can tell at a glance whether the character are speaking, and when they're not.

Along a same track, I always prefer to inset any conversations that isn't between the same people in the same room (ex: broadcast over the radio, telephone conversations, or even speaking telepathically to another alternate world. The 'in-place formatting' captures those details fairly efficiently.

And finally, the constant "he said", "she said", and "they thought" gets really repetitious after a bit. So now, in most cases, I use "beats" or "indirect attribution".

Based on the 'single subject in each paragraph' emphasis in basic English, that also relates to the speaker. Thus, if rather than saying "Tom said this", if you simply mention what Tom was doing early in his response, readers will naturally assuming Tom's also the speaker, whether they're aware of why or not. In cases of an extended two-person dialogue, the only time you'd then need to state "said" at all, is when it becomes unclear who the last speaker was. In those cases, you simply clarify who's speaking by adding the regular, normal attribution (my editors taught me that, warning me whenever they felt I'd lost the readers entirely!). Yet boy continually shifting between them, it minimizes the majority of attributions, with no real loss of understanding for the story as a hole.

Though another fun aspect of telepathy, which I've used fairly often over the years, is just having the character saying "Hold on, I'm talking to someone else just now," when there's no one else in the room, largely leaving everyone else befuddled, and silent, until he ends his other conversation and then relates what he's learned.

So, essentially you continually playing around with awkward conversational tensions, while highlighting who's really, without any awkward power plays.

Well, I've found it useful at least, though everyone has to want it for themselves, as it's hardly a universal, common technique.

In my stories, I have mental dialog between two or more telepathic characters.

Did you know the verb of telepathy is telepathize?

From dictionary.com:

telepathize
[ tuh-lep-uh-thahyz ]

verb (used with object),te·lep·a·thized, te·lep·a·thiz·ing.
to communicate with by telepathy.

verb (used without object),te·lep·a·thized, te·lep·a·thiz·ing.
to practice or conduct telepathy.

So instead of "said" or "thought" (dialogue tags are verbs), you can use telepathized.

My browser (Safari) underlined it as a spelling error. LOL

you can use telepathized

Yes, I could, but don't hold your breathe. :)

Yes, I could, but don't hold your breathe. :)

LOL

Did you know the verb of telepathy is telepathize?

Now you mention it, it's so obvious I feel stupid for not having thought of it.
It matches other words ending in -pathy such as empathy empathise.

AJ