Telepathic characters

[AmayaHayate]

I'm just throwing this out there, but how would [u]you[/u] go about writing a story with a main character in it that [b]only[/b] speaks telepathically? (As in transmitting their thoughts to the other character's head.) Remember, when a character talks, not thinks, their quotes have to be clear and defined with punctuation of some kind.

And, a telepathic character's speech is no different.

You can't use regular quotation marks. The reader has to know the character is telepathic, which is far unique from vocally speaking. Or else, the reader will confuse regular talking with telepathy. By using regular quotation marks, the vocal speaking and telepathic voice will always be confused with each other because you can't always tag the end of a quote with [u]he said telepathically[/u]. This is especially true in a beat-by-beat conversation without tags:

Toby telepathically said, "I'm your new neighbor!"
"Really?" said Sara delightfully.
"Can I come in?"
"Sure!"
"So, what do you have to eat?"
"Oh, just stuff lying around the house," said Sara.
"Well, cook whatever." Toby said, "I'm in the mood for pretty much anything."

See? If you quote telepathic remarks with "" marks, they always blend in with regular vocal speech.

This: "Talk, talk, talk," he said telepathically. --That looks like the character is still using his voice and lips. And if you keep tagging quotes with, [u]he said telepathically[/u] every time you say, [u]said[/u], it starts getting annoying. People automatically overlook the tag, anyway.

Another thing you can't do, and the reason why: [i]Italicize the telepathic quote without punctuation.[/i] Why? Because when your telepathic character is thinking privately to himself, the thoughts are usually [i]in italics without any punctuation[/i]. What this means is if your character has a thought before or after his telepathic quote, it can't be told whether he's thinking privately in his head, or if he's talking to someone telepathically.

Example with tags:

Toby thought, [i]Tomorrow's prospects look iffy.[/i] He then said to Sara, [i]Are you coming with us in the morning? I'm not feeling good about this.[/i]

Example without tags:
[i]Tomorrow's prospects look iffy. Are you coming with us in the morning? I'm not feeling good about this.[/i]

Example with a speech tag:

[i]Tomorrow's prospects look iffy.[/i] He said to Sara, [i]Are you coming with us in the morning? I'm not feeling good about this.[/i]

Example of a thought tag:

[i]Tomorrow's prospects look iffy[/i], thought Toby. [i]Are you coming with us in the morning? I'm not feeling good about this.[/i]

Do you see how utterly confusing that is to tell thought from telepathy?

To know a character is speaking with telepathy with punctuation, how would you go about that?

Edit: I forgot to mention, you can't use apostrophes, either. Because when your telepathic character is quoting another character, he still has to use those same apostrophes to quote with.

If you were to use apostrophes to punctuate telepathic speech, it would look like this:

'See how big the ocean is? Sara said to me, 'I love how beautiful you are when you laugh.' I about died when she said that.'

What a mess, huh? So, you can't use apostrophes to quote telepathy in the event your character just might quote someone else.

I already have a perfectly telepathic main character in my story, and I already established a clear and defined way of quoting his telepathic remarks, clearly defined from private thoughts and speech. I just want to know how you, personally, would go about it.

[London]

Somewhat relevant:

I read this book by Alan Paton called [u]Cry, the Beloved Country[/u], it had really strange punctuation.
Ganked from wiki:
[quote]There are no double quotes in the whole book; instead Paton uses dashes (—) to indicate the start of speech acts. This may not seem like a literary device at first, but soon it becomes evident that they do a lot more than would be expected. Because phrases such as "he said" or "she said" are rare, it is faster to read and, especially in the intercalary chapters, adds a feeling of desperation and rapid progress towards the novel's final catastrophe.[/quote]

At first the lack of quotation marks was totally annoying but about a fifth of the way in I got used to it and it seemed pretty natural for the rest of the book. And, ho man, this article is rather poorly written. It looks like some high school kid's english essay converted into wikipedia form.

So.. I wouldn't worry too much about strange punctuation. Your readers will get used to it. Personally I would use maybe [something like this] or a different font for telepathy. If you're planning on publication your editor would most likely have his/her own suggestions.
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