: Re: Different ways to emphasize My previous question was "Are paragraph spacing used for emphasis?" and that got me thinking even deeper about emphasizing. I'd like to emphasize to create tension

@Pierce369

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I use the natural flow of the text to emphasize one thing or another. It is a part of the rhythm of the language.

In one scene I had, I italicized a couple of words in dialogue because the character was emphasizing them. It was important to him that the character he addressed understood what he was saying, defending choices he made that seemed most bizarre and counterintuitive to the questioner.

If you invert word order, that adds some emphasis to what is said in that sentence.

Tension ought not be a result of artificial means. You are telling a story, a character is doing something, learning something or failing to - trust your narrative.

As a reader, when I look at a new book, I often read the plot synopsis on the cover and then read the first few pages. If I am not intrigued by the character, setting or tone I will put it down. I connect with characters and enjoy making friends with them - this engagement is not the result of italics but fascinating characters.

Many years ago, I was reading a book set during the French Revolution and it had some interesting characters. I do not know what happened in the last third of it as they had executed the only character really worth exploring (young nobleman with a strong social conscience). I wanted to know how this fellow was going to resolve his conflict. The rest of the characters were fairly stock so less intriguing.

If that book had been filled with bold, italics and combinations of those, I would still have set it down when I did.

That said, inversion of expected word order is a reasonable way to stress a word or two and potentially encourage the reader to recall that phrase later.

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