Emphasis · 11:07pm Aug 12th, 2014
A well-meaning reader recently sent me a fairly exhaustive list of all the assorted typos and other errors they'd found in Flash Fog. While I readily concede that most of them were, in fact, mistakes, I was struck by how often this person noted that I had "forgotten" to italicize certain words for show emphasis.
For example, during the press conference in Chapter 16, the following exchange takes place between Hard Hitter and Fluttershy.
Hard Hitter apparently had thought his question was so self-evident that it didn’t need to be asked, because he was visibly attempting to repress a sneer when he continued. “Why didn’t you give these jobs to more qualified ponies?”
“My friends are qualified.”
This reader thought that I had forgotten to properly show the emphasis in Fluttershy's response, which should have been:
“My friends are qualified.”
However, doing so would have created two problems. First, it would create the impression that Fluttershy's retort was an irritated defense of her friends, when in reality it was a straightforward answer to the question. Second, it would have given the impression that Fluttershy had actually emphasized on the word "are," when in my imagination, that word has almost no emphasis whatsoever. When Fluttershy says "My friends are qualified," as far as she is concerned it is a relatively normal sentence, given in response to a question that was asked because the reporter was genuinely unaware of her friends' qualifications. The hostility behind the question goes completely over her head.
Is that a lot for my readers to deduce for themselves? Possibly. However, I decided that extensively describing how Fluttershy's response to this question was not significantly different from any other response would have both dragged the flow of the narrative and given the impression that her response was far more important to the story than it actually is. Anyway, I suppose what I'm getting at is that when you see a word in one of my stories that isn't italicized, even though you would put emphasis on it, that probably means that I didn't intend for that word to be emphasized in the first place.
(Don't worry about it too much, though. As far as my pet peeves go, this one is really, really low on the list. To be honest, the only reason I've bothered to type up all of this pretentious malarkey because I happen to be a bit bored at the moment.)
I simply assumed no emphasis was made because no emphasis was shown. It's not hard.
"I'm a year older than you."
One of the snarkiest lines Fluttershy's ever uttered and if any of the words have extra emphasis I can't hear it. She just normally doesn't speak like that.
2365594
Well, technically no, she had plenty of more overtly snarky lines while under discord's influence, but i'm not sure they count.
It's almost impossible to write a good Fluttershy voice and put emphasis on words with italics. She's too soft for that.
Your ad-hoc editor did one thing perfectly right, though. Sending the corrections and I-think-this-is-wrong comments by email instead of putting them in the comments. It bugs me when people do that. After they're corrected, that leaves a giant incorrect comment in the middle of my ego-sauna. (Ahh. Soaking in the compliments. Nothing like it.)
I prefer to have my editors visit the source Google doc and mark that up. It's even nicer now that Gdocs has "Suggest" mode. (I try to make everything I do Comment-Enabled for readers)
Stories are movies made in the mind, and while everyone's working off of the same script, we all have different directors. Emphasis can be tricky. Your well-meaning reader made the assumption that be cause s/he interpreted the story one way, that way must have been the right one.
Hardly the first time something like that has happened in fanfiction.
2365820 - That is basically my theory of how prose fiction is supposed to work, and why, when you get right down to it, I'm not really too annoyed by this sort of thing.
2365949 That might have been a case of needing a little body language to set the tone of her response.
Hard Hitter apparently had thought his question was so self-evident that it didn’t need to be asked, because he was visibly attempting to repress a sneer when he continued. “Why didn’t you give these jobs to more qualified ponies?”
The question was fair enough, though the tone it was delivered in wasn't very nice. Still, it deserved an answer. So it was with complete conviction that she assured him: “My friends are qualified.”
2365669 I'm going to have to disagree. Maybe in season one that was true, and depending on who is writing her for the episode that might be true, but Fluttershy has developed quite the range in four seasons. She even occasionally (gasp) sticks up for herself! The changes have been subtle, and over a long time, so it's easy to miss, but considering just how socially crippled she was at the start of the show, season 4 shy is a social butterfly now. If anything, her character makes you pay special attention for when something is said with emphasis, such as: "Oh, but I am weak and helpless."
2366003 *Grins* I a the bane of Kwak's existence because I am forever requesting more body language.
I think the issues may be that it sounds like something almost anyone would say with emphasis. So perhaps it is that your portrayal seems inconsistent with many reader's perception of fluttershy as a character?
I had no problem with the way the sentence was written, since it would actually be in-character for Fluttershy to respond to such a question with a non-defensive, matter-of-fact answer. Like Kwak says, Fluttershy would completely miss the hostility behind the question and give a simple answer, without escalating aggression.
And it is, indeed, a matter of fact that all of the Mane Six are qualified: Twilight Sparkle, beyond her immense magical talent, serves as All-Team Organizer for Ponyville's Winter Wrap-Up; Rainbow Dash runs Ponyville's Weatherpony Division; Applejack basically runs Apple Acres and is the go-to Pony relied upon for leading heavy labor groups; Rarity supplies the teams with the fog-proof costumes, and Pinkie Pie's organizing a diversion for the disaster victims.
The fact that Fluttershy is good friends with all of them just means they got contacted first. Not that they got contacted over anyone else.