My History Maps books have two distinct voices, outside of the characters’ spoken words. The narrative voice tells you what’s happening, and the contemplative voice – usually in italics – contains some of Zoe’s thoughts, word for word.
But it was not ever thus.
The first draft was far more messy, because I was writing – very quickly – with the idea of trying to convey her arguments with herself. One voice, in plain text, would be contemplative voice A, and the other, in italics, contemplative voice B.
I think it might have worked, if I hadn’t also been using plain text for the narrative voice and everything else besides. It was only towards the end of book 3, that I started to realise my mistake. See, I knew there was a good reason for writing three books at once.
In the absence of a workable third typeset, I needed a fix that would restore some clarity, and losing one of the contemplative voices was it, though you’ll maybe detect the shadow, the echo, of it lingering still, in places. There’s quite enough madness amongst the various characters, without us hearing Zoe’s constant inner dialogue, anyway.
That’s my current work. Editing, nitpicking, changing formats, blending in that surplus voice, ironing out the typesets. If you’ve ever played The Sims and watched the opening subtitles, it’s something like that.