Imaginary Quotation Marks

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."--Opening line of Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenIn college a few short years ago I had the good fortune of taking a class that I truly liked, entitled The Golden Age of the Novel, or something like that. Our kindly old professor had wispy white hair that he combed straight back, and he began the first real class of the semester with an observation about the first line of Pride and Prejudice that made me think, "This class is going to be good." The observation may not have impressed many of my classmates.  As a senior Economics major in an English class I may have been several years behind on the punch line.My professor said, "The narrator is not sharing her opinion. This is the opinion of Mrs. Bennett, whom we follow through this first scene."In section, a mandatory small-group discussion for the class, the grad student leading us pointed out that this happens throughout the novels we were reading. Tolstoy uses this in Anna Karenina. Thomas Mann uses this in Buddenbrooks. She called the technique some literary term that I have since forgotten. I will call it "imaginary quotation-marks."When writing in the third person, an author can switch from the opinions of the narrator to the opinions of a character without any indication of the change. This method approximates a characters thoughts more realistically than an explicit quotation. Ask yourself: do I think out loud in my head, in the same way that I speak to other people? Or do my thoughts move fluidly from observations of reality to my opinions? I would answer yes to the latter.Today, write a piece that uses imaginary quotation marks.***Men act according to their self-interest. Landon pushed a heavy raise forward on the green felt of the poker table. The dealer nodded to his opponent. From behind the reflective-lenses of his Ray Bans he considered the chips. In his fingers he rolled a lone five-dollar round. He had a four percent chance of winning the pot. He should fold.He raised.Landon pulled his baseball cap lower on his head, a practiced maneuver. He did it every hand.On the table lay a queen of hearts, an ace of hearts, an ace of spades, and the jack of hearts. In his hand, Landon held an ace of diamonds and an ace of clubs. Gifted players raised on a hand like that, but not too quickly. And Jiao Li, all ninety five pounds of him, had just raised the stakes against a player with pocket aces. What did the guy have?A royal flush.Landon clinked his chips together. He rubbed his nose. He pulled at the brim of his hat. And he raised.The odds of four aces losing to a royal flush were one in 2.7 billion. It didn't happen.Jiao Li leaned his mystifying glasses over the table, and re-raised.In the 2008 world series of poker, in the final round, a contestant had lost because a royal flush beat four aces. Landon remembered it well. His focus wavered. Randomness promised that unlikely events could occur back to back. There was no safety in a recent act-of-god tragedy.He folded.Jiao Li kept his cards to himself. If he had showed them, Landon would have seen a two and a seven.***Getting Started: 4Character: 4Point of View and Tone: 4Plot and Narrative: 3Dialogue and Voice: 3Descriptive Language and Setting: 3Revision: 3Overall: 3*Level 3*