Question

If I'm writing someone's thoughts and they are telling them to me, do I need to put them in quotations and create a new paragraph?

My two sentences with this dilemma:

1) After those mesmerizing eyes unfreeze, I had thought, I will make this gorgeous stranger forget about any problems or worries he had before.

2) Why his neck? I had thought. Why not on arrogant Tyler Hollis's neck, the bartenders's son? I would have gladly avoided him for the rest of my life!

Also, do I need to start a new paragraph after 'bartender's son?'

Answer 1

After those mesmerizing eyes unfreeze, I had thought, "I will make this gorgeous stranger forget about any problems or worries he had before".

"Why his neck?" I had thought. "Why not on arrogant Tyler Hollis's neck, the bartender's son?" I would have gladly avoided him for the rest of my life!

No on the new paragraph. Your still writing as a continuation to your thoughts and it needs to stay with the rest of the "conversation"or you will confuse the reader.

Answer 2

To start with... using had in that way is passive.. which drives your reader out of the story and minimizes detail expression. As a general rule, you need a new paragraph every time someone else starts talking/thinking/acting. It's a way to help the reader keep track of what's happening. When writing, if you lose the reader's attention or they get lost... you've lost your reader and you're pretty much just talking to yourself, which isn't as much fun.

Sentence one: After those mesmerizing eyes unfreeze, I had thought, I will make this gorgeous stranger forget about any problems or worries he had before.

Rewrite:

He blinked, his thoughts coming back to the present.

Those green eyes still had a hold on me though, drawing me in, wrapping tendrils of need around my heart. Whatever worries or problems he had - I was going to make them go away.

Second sentence: Why his neck? I had thought. Why not on arrogant Tyler Hollis's neck, the bartenders's son? I would have gladly avoided him for the rest of my life!

There are so many ideas in that sentence. It's almost an info dump. If we don't know who Tyler Hollis is by the time we get to caring about someone's neck, we don't need to know, because he's not that important. In fact, I'm assuming the neck in question belongs to the cute guy, but that whole sentence is mostly about aversion to Hollis... Without greater context, I won't know how to redo that sentence.