: Re: How to stylize notes/book-passages being read inside my story? In course of joining a friend of mine during her NaNoWriMo escapades, I tried myself at actually writing a story set in a world

@Pierce369

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I am not sure if the italics are yours or Lauren’s, but the purpose is to set it apart without being jarring, which italics can do. You could even combine bold with italics for everything that a character reads.

I have characters reading, but longer passages I just say that MC opened Voyages to the Moon and Sun and continued reading from the bookmarked page. Shorter passages, such as text messages, I separate from the rest of the sentence with an em dash.

He glanced at the text on his phone - relax, trouble sleeping.

I have one scene where a character is pretending to read a novel, but does not turn pages as she is listening intently to her mentor and another converse. They bring it to her attention that prose means characters and plots and, well, turning pages. Try poetry, the more obtuse the better, if she is not going to turn pages as poetry can be savoured and each word held in the mind - less turning of pages if she wishes to go unnoticed.

Consistency is key here. Provided it is clear that the information the character is obtaining is from something he is reading, you should be fine. Longer passages, as Galastel mentions, should certainly have their own paragraph or two.

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