How to portray a text message conversation?

[PennyThompson]

Hi everyone!

For my next-next story (the next story is in the publishing queue ), I'd like to include a scene involving a text message exchange between two characters.

I'd love to hear opinions, ideas, and examples of how best to accomplish this? Some ideas I'm considering right now are:

• Including some emojis in the exchange
• Using "align" tags to make one side of the exchange right-aligned
• Adding a ">" character to the front of each text message
• Some combination of the above

Have people tried any other techniques to represent texting?

Are there any hidden text formatting tags that Literotica will render for stories?

Thanks for any suggestions or advice!

 

[Rob_Royale]

Unless you're going to do an entire stream of text, there's no need to get fancy. Just do it like dialog.

"You have a minute?" she texted me just after lunch.

"Sure." I replied.

If you are going to do an entire conversation, maybe do it like this. Simple and easy.

Babe - I miss you.
Me - What about me to you miss?
Babe - Your ... smile
Me - Really are you sure it's not something a little lower?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Left and right formatting is tricky.

Left is easy, just do nothing. It's the default

Right is done with <p align=right> </p align> tags. This will add an extra carriage return after the closing tag so you won't need to add your own.
This will right and left justify the text only though, and won't indent the margins at all, so you will need to break up your lines yourself and you will probably have to use manual line breaks.

Example:

<p align=right>Im waiting 4 u @ the</br>pizza place, where</br>u @, lol</p align>

should make

Im waiting 4 u @ the
pizza place, where
u @, lol​

You can also try the <kbd> </kbd> tag to use a monospace font.

 

[alohadave]

Adding a ">" character to the front of each text message

Don't do this. It's an HTML character and will blank out each line.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I'll add that you can test this by just opening up a new draft submission, playing around with the codes and previewing over and over until it looks the way that you like. Just don't actually submit. : P

Just don't be surprised Katie's msgs are <------ waaay over on this side and Matt's msgs are waaaaayy over on that side -------->. Like I said, you can't adjust the page margins as far as I know.

 

[NikolasMann]

I hang been expecting a text from him, but the phone dinged when I was on the toilet.

He was just texting, it read, to tell me that he needed me, tonight.

He paused at the tonight with a comma, as if it was an ultimatum. Fuck you, I thought.

But I wrote - I’m busy sitting on something.

Who’s the guy? Who the fuck is ducking you?

I think I burst out laughing then, and the girls powdering their noses stopped talking. How like man to read something non existent in my words.

He’s gorgeous. Never complains. Just takes my shit like a man.

I could hear him rage on the other side of the phone .

 

[TheWritingGroup]

As far as I know, you can't use emoji in a story. (They work great here.)

-Annie

 

[Voboy]

I treat it like dialogue, because I think that's how most people imagine it now. As a rule, I think "less is more" when including texting.

It can be a good way to illustrate age/maturity differences, especially if one character uses proper grammar and punctuation and the other uses abbreviations, lowercase, etc.

 

[NotWise]

I format text conversations as normal dialogue, often using "sent" in the place of "said" and other clues to indicate that the conversation is going by SMS.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I've gone the ultra-formatted route. Conversation starts on page 2 and extends onto page 3. I used the time stamps on the messages to show pauses and enthusiasm. I've got typos, and I've got messages sent too soon because one of the characters is all flustered. I took the opportunity to show a conversation unfolding between two people rather than just delivering all of the information.

https://www.literotica.com/s/orchid-ch-01-1?page=2

When I first inquired if this was possible (here in the AH), everyone told me it was stupid and that I shouldn't do it. It was a lot of work to get right, and I don't regret it a second of it.

 

[AwkwardMD]

It's worth pointing out that there are some versions of the site which don't display my careful formatting properly, and that's a bummer.

 

[AllenWoody]

I’ve used a couple of different techniques, but recently settled on this (although it’s a Sci-Fi story where I feel empowered to be a bit creative with how future ‘texting’ might look):

—-

When Sheila didn’t show up after half an hour I texted her.

Me: Hey, where are you? Thought we were supposed to meet up at 7:00

Sheila: Oh shit. You’re there already? Can you send an Uber for me? [heart emoji]

This is when I realized I’d been Sheila’d.

Me: Uber? You could walk here faster.

——

This doesn’t require any funky left/right formatting, is distinguishable from dialog, and still allows you to splice-in non texting/dialog.

 

[Britva415]

I hang been expecting a text from him, but the phone dinged when I was on the toilet.

He was just texting, it read, to tell me that he needed me, tonight.

He paused at the tonight with a comma, as if it was an ultimatum. Fuck you, I thought.

But I wrote - I’m busy sitting on something.

Who’s the guy? Who the fuck is ducking you?

I think I burst out laughing then, and the girls powdering their noses stopped talking. How like man to read something non existent in my words.

He’s gorgeous. Never complains. Just takes my shit like a man.

I could hear him rage on the other side of the phone .

I can't actually tell from this what's text-message content and what isn't.

In this particular example, formatting would help but the wording is the problem. If your aim was to try to show an example of where the clarity of the prose in the story made formatting unnecessary, it didn't work for me.

 

[Britva415]

Adding a ">" character to the front of each text message

Don't do this. It's an HTML character and will blank out each line.

A right-pointing (left-opening) angle bracket will work fine. It's the left-pointing (right-opening) one which looks like the start of an HTML tag and messes up page rendering.

If one does have a reason for printing a < in their story, the way to do it is to enter &#lt; in the story body and when the story gets rendered in the webpage, that code will get printed as <

As far as I know, you can't use emoji in a story.

What does "can't" mean, here? You can enter them into a story and there's no technical reason they couldn't be rendered in the published story page.

Do you mean they aren't allowed?

Or do you mean that entering the text shortcut "colon-right-parenthesis" isn't automatically converted to a smiley ?

In general, emojis are just characters and if they're entered from the "emoji keyboard" on your device, they should work fine in a story. The oldschool txtspeak form of emojis would just come out as regular typographic characters in a story instead of being converted to smileys.

 

[PennyThompson]

I've gone the ultra-formatted route. Conversation starts on page 2 and extends onto page 3. I used the time stamps on the messages to show pauses and enthusiasm. I've got typos, and I've got messages sent too soon because one of the characters is all flustered. I took the opportunity to show a conversation unfolding between two people rather than just delivering all of the information.

https://www.literotica.com/s/orchid-ch-01-1?page=2

When I first inquired if this was possible (here in the AH), everyone told me it was stupid and that I shouldn't do it. It was a lot of work to get right, and I don't regret it a second of it.

I LOVE the way you formatted those exchanges! (Also, that story )

Ok, this gives me a ton of inspiration on how I could make this work, thank you so much!

 

[NikolasMann]

I can't actually tell from this what's text-message content and what isn't.

In this particular example, formatting would help but the wording is the problem. If your aim was to try to show an example of where the clarity of the prose in the story made formatting unnecessary, it didn't work for me.

To each his own, I suppose! it was a quick off the cuff post. I was literally sitting on the toilet. But the first message, qualified by the ‘it read’ is clarity enough.
The second sentence was clearly the narrators metatextual comment on the received text itself.
And so on..

 

[THBGato]

Welcome to the AH @PennyThompson .

You should all go read her stories. They are LOTS of fun. (Penny, put a link in your signature.)

I just italicise texts. Sometimes I'll put a name and a colon in front of it to show who sent it.

 

[PennyThompson]

Penny, put a link in your signature.

Yes ma'am/sir/comrade

 

[ElectricBlue]

- I do this, keep it really simple -
- okay, cu then -

Getting too complicated and fancy with formatting will end in tears, as I found out when I used this << to designate texts, and inadvertently lost the messages completely - I'd set up an html string without knowing it.

 

[TheLobster]

Using "align" tags to make one side of the exchange right-aligned

I do that, both for text messages and for other kinds of chat, along with <kbd> tags to make it clear these have been typed out rather than said.

My latest story demonstrates this; the text exchange is rather crucial part of the plot there.

Alternatively, if your narration isn't so "in the moment" and you'd rather gloss over the exact exchange, you can always write it purely descriptively, like @NikolasMann suggested. But whatever you do, don't punctuate it like a spoken dialog!

 

[Flybynite1892]

Have people tried any other techniques to represent texting?

Dang, I'm glad you brought this up. I went back to the only story where I remember including a text exchange between characters, and I messed it up; I don't even think I put the text in quotes, which was a stylistic choice, but it doesn't read right to me now, eight months later.

Anyway, my first instinct *would* be to just put it in quotes like dialogue, honestly, but that's just because I think it's less likely to remind the reader they're reading. I always try to avoid that.

Doing some cool and interesting stuff with text conversations is intriguing though. I think it could change up the reading experience for sure. I think it's going to vary a lot depending on the type and the feel of the story you're working on.

 

[onehitwanda]

I'd like to throw out a cautionary tale. Don't trust the preview - whatever you do will look perfectly fine there but will be eaten and regurgitated.

If you're going to use formatting tags, make sure you enclose each individual line in them. Multiline blocks seem to get stripped as part of the publishing process.

 

[StillStunned]

If you're going to use formatting tags, make sure you enclose each individual line in them. Multiline blocks seem to get stripped as part of the publishing process.

Yes, I've learned this the hard way with italics. Add the formatting for every block!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I'd like to throw out a cautionary tale. Don't trust the preview - whatever you do will look perfectly fine there but will be eaten and regurgitated.

If you're going to use formatting tags, make sure you enclose each individual line in them. Multiline blocks seem to get stripped as part of the publishing process.

I've never had a problem with the final product differing from the preview. I always cut/paste into the submit box. I never upload a file. I preview relentlessly until it looks right and it works. The preview will show you when something doesn't break right, although it will NOT show you page breaks, so yes, if you have three consecutive paragraphs in italics, put each one in its own italics tagging just in case it goes across a page break.

I will say that when formatting say a couple of four-line verses of poetry in italics or centered, manual line breaks </br> are your friend. Carriage returns inside tags do strange things (and the preview will show you these strange things).

 

[onehitwanda]

I always copy + paste into the entry form, even though I write elsehwere. It didn't save Chiaroscuro and catgirls from the tender caresses of Shai-Hulud though.