Writing Thoughts

How do you express thoughts from a character in your story? There are different ways you could do this. You could use quotation marks, but that could be confusing to the reader since speaking is in quotation marks.....is the character thinking or speaking? Apostrophes could be used, but the most common way and the way I prefer is writing thoughts in italics. Here is an example of speaking and thinking in one paragraph of a book I am writing:

Earth calendar year 1962. Age 5.1 years: She is going to help Daddy paint the fence. “Krissy, go get the paint from the shed, here is the key,” he says. She skips down the dirt road to the shed. The door to the shed is old and worn. Daddy should paint this shed door too, she thinks to herself as she puts the key in the lock. The key goes in but will not turn.  She tries and tries again, turning and pushing the key, wiggling the doorknob and finally in frustration kicks and kicks the door. By this time, she is red-faced and angry.

All three ways are acceptable, it depends on your preference.

Teri Saya