I'm curious if there is value to using made-up curse words. My main reason for asking this is that I write for a broad audience. I don't want to limit myself to only certain categories/age groups due to use of curse words. However, it seems unrealistic to have my characters not be able to use a swear word from time to time, particularly in the heat of the moment - "Drat! The air lock handle is busted!" doesn't quite seem to have the punch.

I have only recently discovered Battlestar Gallactica, the new series. I love the use of the made-up word "frak" as an exclamation and a curse. It works really well, it conveys the emotion of a scene, the sense of this being a group of gritty working men and women (it's clearly used more by characters like Starbuck.) But it's also clearly made up.

Is there a way to bridge the ridiculousness divide with something like that, or has Battlestar Gallactica taken the only good one?

Piggybacking on my brand-name post from a few days ago, I suppose I could use the term coined by the Battlestar Gallactica writers, as OSC mentions the example of coining xenocide but not being able to prevent others from using it. However, borrowing frak just doesn't seem right to me, though it appeals to me because of it's all-purpose nature. "Frak, the air lock handle is all fraked up!"

Any thoughts?

Good luck! If you need some help getting the creative cursing juices going, check out this video. It's a movie about a game but the script is pretty hilarious. Fear not, it is PG rated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5q3TG5yCG0

I see their value in an alien language and the reason is simple: there may be no direct translation. When making up language, the real test is whether there is a comparable English word and I think there is room to believe, in cursing, that there is not. The curse words we choose are based on our own values. On another world, the worst thing you can say to someone may not have anything to do with a sexual encounter, it may be calling them unenlightened or something.

Of course, in the series I mentioned (and in the example from Battlestar Galactica), they were making up words that were pretty clearly supposed to translate to f***, s***, etc. They were basically trying to get away with cussing on TV by creating their languages. I forgave Farscape, because I liked it, but I thought it was pretty cheesy.

The other downsides:

1. We won't have an emotional connection to the made up curse words. (This can be good or bad, especially if you are bringing a human into an alien culture it might be exactly what you want.)

2. You need to create a culture to support the words. I find that culture creation is the most difficult thing that authors do -- inevitably, they seem very Asian to me.

Of course, the other point, and probably the more important one, is that most people who curse, most of the time, use the words they do because that's the way they talk; they don't even think about it. It's almost as mindless as " . . . um . . ." and as a result, it can be left out of written dialogue just as often. However, sometimes an " . . . um . . ." is appropriate, and so is swearing/cursing/profanity/vulgarism. In these cases, relatively mild words like "damn" and "hell" usually avoid any possibility of either cheesiness or childishness, and will drive away very few readers (though no doubt there are some). If you really don't want to include even that much, then spend a fair amount of effort making sure your made up profanity sounds believable. Or if you have a character who swears constantly, and want to demonstrate that, but fear (quite reasonably) that so much swearing will drive away readers, then that's another case where you might want to make up your own swear words. Just remember, in that case, to have everyone else use some of them now and then, and not to let anyone say anything that we would say (unless those particular words are also included in the "offensive" characters litany).

If you do make up a curse word at least let the reader know why it’s shocking so we can share in the reaction of the characters.

Frag and Frak are not originally from Battlestar Galactica or Farscape. Frag, much like snafu and the acronym for Fornicate Under the Command of the King, was used in reference to something else (in this case, an explosion). Frick adn Frak were developed as alternates for curse words in cartoons (which was used proficiently by Yosemite Sam).

An aside:
There was an episode of South Park where the use of curse words, prolifically, resurrected demons. It was an intersting interpretation of curse words. Where you could actually curse somebody by saying the word...

There are real equivalents in english. Cor' blimey or blimey is one. Originally it was the oath "God blind me." Struth is another originally 'God's Truth'. The word bloody as an expletive is also religious in origin stemming from common oaths referring to either the blood of Christ or the blood of Mary.

It happens with other words too, like tawdry, which was originally 'Saint Audrey.' It refers to the festival of Saint Audrey where the participants dressed up in brightly coloured costumes.

I like the this approach to making up swear words. It makes more sense in a sci-fi setting to me.

Maybe you could call people tourists stemming from how 'some' folk prounounce terrorist.

I'm usually not convinced by swearing in fantasy settings. I think it brings the whole feel of the story down to a kindergarten baby-talk level.

Swear words need reasons to be such and should have a meaning. Consider how in English a lot of swear words were once legitimate anglo-saxon words made unpopular and considered crass by the invading normans. Perhaps this sort of approach would be helpful in a fantasy setting where there is a strong cultural contempt/pride ie: when a person swears they are actually using their mother tongue or one borrowed from a conquered people. But, in my opinion, all swear words need one quality in order to be used by 'the people' and that is the ability to be spat out in a moment of emotional extremes. That's why, 'drokk' is so dumb. You can't say it fast and nothing looks more stupid than a person stumbling over their swear words.

'Mother pus-busket' Is a good example of using a word with all the right sounds in Ghost Busters when Bill Murray's character is confronted by the whole 'jaws of hell' vista. You can spit out each syllable easily. It just rolled off his tongue, and mine too for maybe a year afterward.

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That's why, 'drokk' is so dumb. You can't say it fast and nothing looks more stupid than a person stumbling over their swear words.

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Drokk is said faster than gorram. It's pronounced Drock and is a one syllable word. It's said like the F--- word.
<shrug> I didn't create it.

It was interesting to learn the origin of blimey, though.

The 'dr' sound is a palatal gymnastic that, when said fast, naturally turns into a 'j', 'ch' or 'tr' sound making the word come out 'chok' trok' or jok' . It is uncomfortable in the mouth, unless someone places a schwa between the 'd' and 'r' making it sound like 'da-rokk'. Which is ostensibly a two syllable word anyway.

So, unless there is an important reason to spell it 'drokk' I would simplify. It seems like a classic case of someone shoving together a few likely looking letters without road testing the word. Of course this is just my opinion.

However there is a tendency in english to replace indefinite rather than definite sounds like a 't'. For example, our common word 'a' meaning a single article was originally 'one' became 'an' through repetition of an unstressed vowel and eventually dropped the 'n' atogether unless it precedes a vowel sound. Likewise 'mine' became 'my' and 'thine' became 'thy'. The 'n' is retained before a vowel sound because it makes the 'n' more definite AND allows the speaker to put more emphasis on an otherwise unstressed vowel syllable. So the words effectively become 'a napple', 'a nhour' etc

So, although a particular word in english is unlikely to lose the definite 't' sound, in the case of 'shizz' the author has carefully retained it by using a 'zz'.

I like it -- again just opinion.

I'm thinking of someone I know who uses the F word* 5 times in a sentence. (He talks fast. If he left out the F word, he could talk slowly and get out the same content!) What do you do with him? If he's in SF-land, you can use "flink" or something. I don't know what I'd do with him in present-day.

"It was so freakin' amazing, man. I mean, this freakin' dude was like, holding on to the freakin' steering wheel with his freakin' *toes*. I thought we were going to run off the freakin' road!"

I think I'd cut back to one F-word and use "freakin'" or maybe change it to "hellacious" or something else out-there but not one of the Big Six. But I don't know. Maybe it would sound silly.

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In the original Galactica they used two different time measures: "Centon" and I now forget the other (time to pull out those DVDs). I hated that because I couldn't tell which was a minute and which was an hour. But the swearing, the swearing made sense.

I really loved the Firefly and Serenity used profanity and other worse that were devolutions of ones we use today. The English language is getting full of slang - in fact. some of it is in Webster's dictionary now. It makes sense that 1000 year in the future that the language would have shifted further to a mix of English and other languages.

We create new words all the time. After all, English is a wonderful language where a proper noun can become a verb. To be "Mirandized" is to have your Miranda rights read to you. Poor Mr. Miranda didn't know that his last name would become a verb when he protested his conviction and "now" illegal interrogation.

I tend to like having specific words or phrases linked solely to the fantasy or Sci Fi world I'm reading about. The trick of course is to get them to work.

Robert Jordon's "mother’s milk in a cup" didn't work for me but "blood and ashes" did.

Don't use gibberish.

In a fantasy/classical setting swear on the local gods like in HBO's Rome.

Don't make me, as a reader, stop and wonder if that was a swear word and how bad it was.

There is always just saying: "Mike swore." Don't be afraid to add an adverb to steer that more clearly.

I don't know about where all of you live, but here, shit=poo and poo=shit, both in their function as nouns, and as expletives. I'm not sure if "poo" has verb sense or not. Might need the trailing "p" for that.

"Made up" expletives can be enriching for a story, mostly when pertaining to those derived from religious belief systems when those systems are notably different from today's common western ones. Made up vulgaraties don't seem to work so well, but the notion of vulgarities is a holdover from times when the ruling classes spoke different languages than the common people. Even today, people use those distinctions in diction to set one group(usually themselves) at a higher social level than the other (usually those who "explete" plainly, rather than with obfuscation).

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Using a foreign set of swear words instead of English, as "Firefly" apparently does (I haven't seen it), when your audience is reading or listening in English, really strikes me as a way of saying, "Hey, hey, look at how clever I-the-writer am being." They might as well be made up---for the uninitiated, the foreign words and phrases have to be just as properly invested with emotional significance as any made up word.

I think some people are morally opposed to curse words, but made up words that mean the exact same thing are some how okay. The F-bomb is bad, but Frak, which means the same is fine. The S-bomb is bad, but Shiz is fine. If you're just trying to override the real word, you might as well use it. Unless your new swear word means something different. If you have a creative word that is some terrible insult of one's mother, great.

http://mr-writing-person.blogspot.com/2006/06/ask-mr-writing-person-gracking-grits.html

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...made up words that mean the exact same thing ...

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2) S-Bomb is doubly funny, because sometimes it literally acts like a bomb.

On a more serious note, however, shizz--in Kevin J. Anderson's use, atleast--sounds like it evolved from shit, over the course of many generations.

I think Firefly/Serenity uses the made-up (and Mandarin) curse words very well. You can't always tell what their saying, but the sentiment is clear.

KatTi, you asked:

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I would like to appeal to a YA/Children's lit audience... are made-up curse words any better?

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Also, if you're worried about getting banned, you shouldn't write any fantasy at all. Scifi should be okay as long as it's dumbed down.

Personally, I hope that someday a book I've written gets banned. I would take it as a badge of honor.

I definitely liked Jude the Obscure. A paragon of literary whatevers it was, and every time I opened it, it was like inhaling a new ray of sunshine.

Or something. That book was truly awful.

As a result, there are several writers who usually come highly recommended (Tolstoy, Dostoyevski) that I've never sampled beyond what I read in school. Then there are several writers (Hemingway, Orwell) whose work I read and liked later, but whose work I had to read for school (The Old Man and the Sea, 1984) I still don't like.

I'm sad, our PBS station dropped it a few years ago and my Saturday nights aren't the same. *sigh*

I use damn, hell and crap, alot; but none of the other ones. The others are just too harsh in my oppinion. Besides the more my MC becomes enlightened the less he uses the words.

Why would anybody say God damnit (or god blessit) if god is always referred to as Zeus or Apollo or blessed Balla for that matter. If there's a whole Pantheon of gods nobody ever says 'oh god' its not effective as a curse and throws a wrench in the works. Furthermore if your world doesn't believe in an afterlife there's probably not much concern about blessing or damnation so where do you go from there?

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Furthermore if your world doesn't believe in an afterlife there's probably not much concern about blessing or damnation so where do you go from there?

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There's always sex and bodily waste. If your culture believes it rude to eat in public (for example), there'd be plenty of good cursing centered on food.

The main thing is that, in a society where it's possible to reduce "I want to offend you" to a single word, it'll be done.