Editing question

[Julia]

If you please,
I am finishing the second personal edit of a manuscript that I hope to submit soon.

After reading some different perspectives on things, I rewrote some of the prose and placed it in point of view narrative rather than omniscient description. This required the use of lots of italics for thoughts. As a matter of fact, as the novel is a time travel historical fantasy with a psych/telepathy element, there is quite a bit of italicizing.

Tonight, I have been reading a book on how to get your m/s rejected. (Obviously, with the intent of getting it accepted instead). The author states that agents and editors hate italicizing and will reject a manuscript on that basis alone.

Now I am in a quandary, and feel as if I cannot continue editing until I get this resolved, because while there is a lot of italicizing, I clearly would prefer not to have the m/s rejected out of hand.

I would love to hear people's opinions on this matter - especially those with first hand experience.

Thank you so much,
Julie Hoover

[Diana]

It would be interesting to hear what others have to say.

Yes, I've heard they hate italics in back stories and too many thoughts. Do you think you can tone down the thoughts and put dialogue in there to show what the character is thinking? In one of my books I used an argument between two characters to cut out a huge swathe of italicised thoughts and found it a useful tool.

I once read a novel where the author used a different font for thoughts, and it seemed to work.

[Lea-Ellen]

Julia wrote: "If you please,
I am finishing the second personal edit of a manuscript that I hope to submit soon.
--
Diana's response is a good one.
Another idea is to look at books by the publisher you'd like to submit to and see how they handle the internal thoughts of characters.
I don't write books, but I edit them. Some authors don't realize that you don't "have to" have internal thoughts italicized.
A situation where you would use italics though would be when a character is repeating words said previously from another character to a different person.

[Marcy]

ISTR that characters' thoughts aren't usually italicized; or am I wrong? I think you just need to indicate, directly or otherwise, that we're in someone's head, not necessarily through the use of Italics. I'd re-read it carefully to be sure you've got it down correctly, that's all.

[Michelle]

In addition to the previous comments, the use of italics really should only be used in thoughts when there is actually a telepathic conversation taking place. However, if there is a lot of telepathic conversation taking place, it would be advisable to find another way to express that the conversation is internal instead of external.