Tolerance of Expletives in Novels

Shazbot! If I want to use frelling curse words, I will the frack use frelling curse words, goramit!

It's a common "argument" against using cruse words.

I disagree with the premise, though. We have curse words because they serve a legitimate purpose in our language. If they were so unnecessary, they wouldn't be so popular.


People use them often in real life, and literature would be the poorer for not being able to reflect that use.

I think it was Stephen King who said that if a character's nature is to curse, let 'em at it. I have sailors with filthy mouths, and I have monks who can't even manage a 'damn'. Got a problem with that? Take it up with my character. Don't do them a disservice. Let their voices be their own.
~Lev

There have been many threads on cursing in SF and fantasy, and it always comes down to the same stalemate. Some people loathe any and all cursing, or think all cursing should be made up words (like Robert Jordan uses). Some people are okay with a little if it sets the tone and characterization, and some say "bring it on."

I think it really comes down to the tone and audience you're shooting for. No approach is going to please everyone, but from the popularity of fantasy writers like George RR Martin, Abercrombie and others, it doesn't seem that the liberal use of "real world" curse words hurt sales in and of themselves.

Yep, it's a matter of tone and character.

That said, I personally find expletives work best as an exclamation point. Use them judiciously for effect, otherwise they turn invisible... then rapidly become annoying.

You can always imply cursing - "He swore under his breath." "She shouted in my face for a full five minutes, not only questioning my eyesight and masculine genitalia but drawing several crude comparisons between my ancestors and various species of space vermin." - without actually resorting to the words themselves, saving those for emphasis. The imagination often produces more colorful phrases, anyway...

It depends on what you're going for with your book. In some of my stuff, I use few real-world curse words. In my current epic fantasy, though, I've actually set it in our future, so some of the language has carried over. I believe C.S. Friedman did something similar in her Coldfire trilogy.

Levico said:

I have sailors with filthy mouths, and I have monks who can't even manage a 'damn'.

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It might be interesting if you defied stereotype and switched the two!

Lego Bono said:

In my e-mail to her I told her that there was explicit language in my MS, and she responded saying authors have an essentially endless treasure of words to use in the English vocabulary without having to resort to expletives.

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Bullshit.

caw

This is one of those "you can't please everyone" deals.

Would your character use the F-word and other profanity? If so, then write your character cursing.

Is your narrative voice one that allows (naturally) for expletives at times? If so, go for it.

Some people will shy away from curse words. Not your problem and chances are, these people are not your targeted audience.

But, keep in mind that if your cuss words stick out like a sore thumb, there might be a voice issue going on.

Ditto what everyone else said.

Just for the record, I'm in the "usually okay with anything" camp, but even I'll get pissed off if the story drops the F bomb every other page. It's less because the word bugs me than because I quickly tire of people who feel the need to do that in real life. It just gives me the impression that the author is one of them.

I generally draw the line at "shit" in my own work though, and I don't use it very often. Somehow "crud!" just doesn't ring true when you're writing a story with a lot of blood and explosions =_='

Lego Bono said:

In my e-mail to her I told her that there was explicit language in my MS, and she responded saying authors have an essentially endless treasure of words to use in the English vocabulary without having to resort to expletives.

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This makes the assumption that expletives are automatically the "worse" of two choices - those choices being four-letter-words or the rest of the English vocabulary.

To me, that's a false dichotomy. I include expletives with all the other words writers can use. If the story calls for these words and a writer doesn't use them, the story will be weaker.

My favorite example is a line from Kill Bill: "My name is Buck and I'm here to fuck." What word would be better there? Fornicate?

So I'm wondering, what is your take on this? Do any of you guys use colorful language in your MS/novels?

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Yes. And I write fantasy romance.

I actually don't use "shit", but of the four manuscripts I have published or contracted, three of them use "fuck" or some variant thereof. Not often, once or twice per book, but it's there.

ETA : One reason I can't substitute "frick" or "freg" for that word is because I don't use it as a cussword. I use it to mean sex, and I need it to have the punch that "frup" just wouldn't provide.

Also, how much of a hinderance, sales wise, do you believe that puts on reaching the widest audience possible in either the SF or F community? The most popular books these days clearly seem to be YA, at least Hollywood thinks so.

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YA isn't immune from expletives either.

Personally I prefer the Robert Jordan method when dealing with another world. I find that modern curse words draw me out of the story as much as it would if the character said "cawabunga dude," or "Tooootally" (Even though I know they aren't exactly modern.) But that's just me.

I prefer a surgical F-bomb strike to a carpet F-bombing. A fuck deployed with precision can liven up all manner of situations. A deadening hail of naughty words, on the other hand, can be exhausting.

Most of my aliens say fuck. Convergent language evolution, or something.

'Fuck' was used to great effect in the opening scene of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'. Might be more difficult to manage that scene in text.

I think they're more effective when used sparingly. Used too abundantly, it loses its punch and starts to just be obnoxious.

I struggled with this issue in my current MS, because in the past I tried to avoid it. But it came naturally to the dialogue and lost too much force when I edited it out. Oh, and I'm using real swearing in this one, except for a few ethnic epithets.

Oh, side note. In Stardust, I remember there wasn't any swearing, except for one 'fuck,' which was so unexpected I found it hilarious (there may be a few others, I'm not sure). It wouldn't have been if there had been swearing right and left.

Albedo said:

Most of my aliens say fuck. Convergent language evolution, or something.

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Yeah, I figure that if the characters in my world of Eden use words like bread, shark and nipple, then they're not going to make up a word to use instead of fuck.

I read a really good book recently, "The Martian", that I almost had to put down because there was so much swearing. It fit the situation, sure. But it really jumped out and made me uncomfortable. Especially because there are people I would love to recommend that book to that I won't now because of it.

On the other hand there were three places in the book where the swearing really worked for me. It was just the other 9000 times that made me flinch.

I don't have much swearing in my work, because I don't use it much in my vocabulary. Makes me as uncomfortable as trying to write explicit sex, so... I leave it out.

Queen of Swords said:

Yeah, I figure that if the characters in my world of Eden use words like bread, shark and nipple, then they're not going to make up a word to use instead of fuck.

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That's my thought. We're essentially translating their vernacular (warts and all), not their high school grammar texts.

The same curse word can do different duties, too.

Frex, I have a character who is a bit abrasive, sometimes deliberately so. In one scene she's being obnoxious and uses 'fucking' as a casual adjective where it's not really appropriate. It feels a little 'over the top' as she speaks to the MC (who himself has quite a mouth at times) and I think her usage goes to show that he's a little uncomfortable with her abrasiveness, even tho he's pretty tolerant of it. It might be a little uncomfortable to the reader too, but that fits the circumstances.

In another scene, MC has kinda lost it at someone he's sick of being forced to put up with, and there 'fucking' feels like cheering.

In fact, it's been shown that 'fuck' is so versatile that it can be any part of speech.
(Blog author didn't invent that. I first saw the core of it circulated on paper ca. 1978. However, substitute just about ANY word for 'fuck' and the article becomes a treatise on how to vary usage for different purposes.)

johnhallow said:

Ditto what everyone else said.

Just for the record, I'm in the "usually okay with anything" camp, but even I'll get pissed off if the story drops the F bomb every other page. It's less because the word bugs me than because I quickly tire of people who feel the need to do that in real life. It just gives me the impression that the author is one of them.

I generally draw the line at "shit" in my own work though, and I don't use it very often. Somehow "crud!" just doesn't ring true when you're writing a story with a lot of blood and explosions =_='

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This. 10000X this. I love me some good cuss words, but when it's too heavy-handed and every other word that comes out of a character's mouth is "F***", I tire of it. Very quickly.

As far as fantasy-specific language, I personally keep 'modern' swear words out, such as Store High In Transit (XD) and the F bomb. Why? Because they seem out of place. You're more likely to see things like 'blasted' or 'bloody', 'son of a whore' or 'bitch!' in my fantasy settings.
Not to argue with JRR Martin, of course.

You're a writer. Every word is in your toolbox.

And as a writer, you're expected to be an expert on the nuances of every word you use, and to find the exactly-right word to convey what you want.

If the exactly-right phrase for your character to bellow out is "Fuck you! Fuck you with a moldy pine cone!", then that's what you need to write down.

The reader can, of course, choose to not read your book for any reason they want. It's not really something to worry about; plenty of fish in the sea, y'know.

KateJJ said:

I read a really good book recently, "The Martian", that I almost had to put down because there was so much swearing. It fit the situation, sure. But it really jumped out and made me uncomfortable. Especially because there are people I would love to recommend that book to that I won't now because of it.

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Isn't that the one about the guy who gets left for dead on Mars? I'd swear a lot too, methinks

I hear they're making a movie out of it, and I wonder how they'll handle the f-bombs there.

But this is an example of taste again. Swearing doesn't seem to stop books from becoming bestsellers or attracting loyal fan bases (one of my coworkers was raving about how wonderful this book was the other day), but it can turn some folks off. Often, it's people who wouldn't like the story for other reasons, but not always.

The question is, of course, would having the exact same story with less swearing result in its being less popular overall, or would it actually be even more popular?

I don't know the answer to that. I suspect the loss to gain ratio might vary with each book, and it's probably something editors consider carefully.

Levico said:

As far as fantasy-specific language, I personally keep 'modern' swear words out, such as Store High In Transit (XD) and the F bomb. Why? Because they seem out of place. You're more likely to see things like 'blasted' or 'bloody', 'son of a whore' or 'bitch!' in my fantasy settings.
Not to argue with JRR Martin, of course.

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Or Joe Abercrombie or a whole host of other fantasy writers who are selling very well.

Out of curiosity, is "bloody" been in use in English longer than, say, "s***" or "f***"? I was under the impression that the latter two words are far from modern, though they were less likely to be used as stand-alone expleitives once upon a time, and more likely to be paired with something specific (like calling someone a goatf***er).

It doesn't really matter in my world, as it's not set in ours, and I'm essentially translating whatever they'd say into English anyway. I don't like everything about the GRRM, Abercrombie's etc. writing, but I do like the general voice of the characters and the style of the storytelling.

In my western fantasy there's relatively little.

In my paramilitary sci fi there's a ton. My characters, especially their captain have a hard time going a line of dialogue without cussing up a storm.