Oh yes, Carolyn I'd appreciate any advice you have on fiction. By the way your advice on Amazon promotion is invaluable. I saved it. Thank you so much.

Let's see, Hannelore:
Do you know Christine Hohlbaum. She is also an expat living in Deutschland!
Glad you liked the Amazon stuff. There is more detail in the Frugal Book Promoter. How to make what you do work--focus on the angles and target your efforts.
Now, about fiction. Let's start with italics. They are being way over used for internal thought. You will find fine authors using it but if you do and you're a first time author, it will limit you. Most agents HATE it when writers use it. If you take classes at the best writing university's you'll find that it's a no-no. So why risk it?
Because it makes writing internal though easier. In fact, it often becomes a crutch. I advise against it in my class unless you can verbalize a very good reason for using it. And, yes, I know this is controversial. Many writers have a vested interest in my being wrong becasue they have books out there in which they have used it.

And that's one reason I list it here. For the dialogue. For the controversy. (-:

If anybody has an example, I might be able to show you how to get around using it by using other--more widely accepted--techniques. (-: And yes, there's a section on this in the Frugal Editor. You'll have to excuse me but you'll see that it's hard to rewrite a chapter. (-:

Best,
Carolyn

No, don't know Christine. Is she a known author?
Okay here is an example out of my book where I used italics. I used them to show a thought, because I wanted to avoid writing, "she thought".

Why doesn’t she come in? Melanie busily stirred her coffee. She quickly glanced over to the other two personnel counselors.

Christine is great! She has a newsletter, Powerful Families, Powerful Lives which I love and you can visit her respective sites at:

http://www.DiaryofaMother.com
http://diaryofamother.blogs.com

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff (2003) and SAHM I Am: Tales of a Stay-at-Home Mom in Europe (2005), has been published in hundreds of publications. When she isn’t writing, leading intensive seminars or wiping up messes, she prefers to frolic in the Bavarian countryside near Munich where she lives with her husband and two children.

Somebody just shoot me, I used italics....teehee.

Thanks for the info. JJ. Gee, I live near Muenich too. Will check out her site.
Got an extra bullit?...I used italics too.

Well, maybe Ms C won't notice...shhhh...be vareee vareee quiettttt....

Hannalore: Your example (we're discussing using utalics for internal thought, here) :

Why doesn’t she come in? Melanie busily stirred her coffee. She quickly glanced over to the other two personnel counselors.

So, I'm assuming that this whole chapter of scene is in the viewpoint of Malanie, right? And you do a very smart thing. You put the name Melanie right after the internal though of "Why doesn't she come in." So, your reader know on two counts whose head you are in and that this is internal thought.
1. You're doing the scene or chapter from Melanie's viewpoint anyway.
2. The very next sentence in that same paragraph shows what Melanie is doing and tells us that it is Melanie doing it.

So, your reader knows that it is Melanie's internal thought. You don't need to slam her or him (the reader) with it by putting saying "she though" which you already sensed. But you also don't kneed to put it in italics for the reader to know. Trust me, she does. And she knows its not an outloud comment because there are no quotation marks. She won't have to think about this. She is a reader. She just knows. And you, as a writer are in partnership with your reader, so you need to trust her a bit more.

Additional note: Showing what a character is doing while she is thinking or speaking is very good technique for helping a reader to know where she is. It also helps with the setting and often characterization as well. Beginners often don't know to use this technique.

Now, just to clarify. You CAN use italics for internal though. The question is, do you need to. I heard of one person who used italics when it was the internal thought of a robot and it was often inerspresed with an unspoken exchange of thoughts with a human. The robot's thought-dialogue was in italics. That seems like a really legitimate use of them.

In This Is the Place, I used italics to show when the protagonist was writing in her journal. I would never do that again. I would just transition to the journal better. The readers would have known if I'd transitions from real life to life of the written word better. That was eight years ago and one of the reasons I wrote The Frugal Editor. So that others could avoid learning things the hard way. I was a journalist and publicist. What did I know about fiction techniques when I started creative writing. With apologies to journalists everwhere, not much. (-:

So, What do you think? Are you all going to shoot punctuation marks at me for being such a spoil sport? Now, what about italics used for other reasons. When do we use them, when not? Hint: Most of us use them way too often.

Oh, PS. Yes, Christine Hohlbaum is getting quite well known. She's bee on NPR radio several times and has her own PR firm as well.

Best,
C.

Best,
Carolyn

Thanks so much Carolyn for your long answer. Now I have another reason to go through my manuscript again.
( I just had to clamp my fingers down not to italicize “another” and “again” in the above sentence. Wow…this is hard.)

I know. Really hard habits to break. And sometimes we then return to using quotation marks. Try not to do that! Quotation marks are for dialogue, irony and sarcasm. Things that the reader might not get without them. They are not for emphasis, slang (we all know slang, right? Unless we're new English speakers!). I think it all boils down to that trust thing, don't you?
Glad I could be of help.
Best,

Carolyn, one of the most common editing mistakes I get from writers submitting work to Dotsie is the space after a sentence ending. Industries standards changed a few years ago and although it is an ongoing battle among the teachers and professors, the standard remains ONE space before you begin the next sentence. I'm not referring to LINE spacing, but the space you put at the end of a sentence before you begin the next sentence.

Care to comment on that? Do you see a lot of this? I know I do.