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Author Topic: !@#$ %^& @#$
JOHN
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This is something I struggled with early one myself. First and foremosst you need to know your audience, but let's assume it's an adult audience.

Secondly, you need to separate the art from the artist.

Just becasue your characters swear doesn't mean you do.

In the same way your bad guy goes around killing people, that doesn't mean you do, or even on a less drastic note. Just because your character has premaritial sex, doesn't mean it's something you believe in. People have sex before they're married.

It comes down to realism. Now, if you're writing about a church group, you might not have these problems, but if you're writing about a group of space marines, than guess what? More than likely they're gonna swear.

Just make sure you don't over do it, and you can ALWAYS avoid dropping the "F-bomb"

JOHN!


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Christine
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John, it amazes me that after this lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of swearing you've boiled it down to those simplistic terms.

Let's see here...first of all "adult audience" is a very broad term. Just because I'm an adult, doesn't mean I swear or that I like to read baout characters who do. Knowing your audience goes way way way beyond knowing that they are over the age of 18, and I think this is the biggest problem with what you said. The question is, does your adult audience want your heroes to curse? Probalby not, because we don't identify cursing with beinga good thing most of the time.

Second, you are right about separating art from the artist.

On the other hand, I don't htink it does come down to realism at all. Fiction isn't abiout reality, especially in dialogue. I've said this before, but let me just hit some of the highlights. Writing fiction is about provoking the right emotional responses in the reader, not necessarily about presenting the most realistic situation. In fact, I've had instances when I presented almost verbatim "real" situations from my past in fiction as part of a short stories and readers have called in "unbelievable." Why? Because reality doesn't have anything to dow ith believability. What we are looking for in fiction is not reality, but a sense of truth. We want to suspend the reader's disbeleif.

In that vein, I don't think you ever have to cuss. I'm not saying cut it out entirely, so don't flog me for that. In fact, I just finished writing a chapter in my novel in which I thought two cuss words were entirely appropriate. Because those are the first (and may be the only) two cuss words I've used, they helped to punctuate an emotional scene and show just how the characters felt. It's about emotion. If you just have a foul-mouthed character because you think that's what a "real" person in that situation will be, any reader who is willing to read it (I'm not actually going to be one of them, despite being an "adult") will become numb to the words. The emotion simply won't be there because it's become a part of the conversation rather than a powerful emotion grabber.

Let's compare writing as an art to classic art. A photograph is a perfect (theoretically, although not if I'm taking the picture ) representation of the world. It is clear, exact, but not always beautiful, not always emotional. The imperfections from some of the famous painters like Picasso reveal truth and beauty in ways not able to be expressed with a photograph.

I am not saying use cuss words. I am not saying don't use cuss words. I am saying that as fiction writers, our job is not to capture the world in a perfect phorographic clarity. Theoretically, that's what newspaper journalists do (we can argue about how well they do that on some other thread). We help readers escape the mundane, the real, and to become one with our fictional characters. We create heroes people love and situations they take pleasure, sadness, and fear in. You take their hero and give him a potty mouth and all the beauty, all the fear, all the pleasure and joy that a reader might otherwise have felt are whisked away and only a very small portion of the "adult audience" will even finish the story at all.


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JOHN
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I need to apologize because I didn’t read the entire thread before posting. I had some thoughts on the subject and posted them.

I found your response well thought out and I agree with a lot of what you said.

When I said know your audience, I was thinking a little more obvious. You’re correct an adult audience does not automatically mean swear words abound. But if you’re writing a young adults book or for network TV, you obviously don’t want to use swear words in those cases.

I always debate on the side of using swear words if you feel they are necessary, as like I mentioned, this is something that I struggled with. I now swear like a sailor, but I used to be opposed to it, and so my characters didn’t swear.

I think this looks kinda silly in some cases, and as you mentioned swearing used at key moments can bring out the emotional aspect.

I recently co-wrote a story that had little swearing as it was a submission for a mainstream comic book. There was one swear word in the whole script of the first issue. The main character was a pastor, and he was talking to a teenage member of his congregation while working on the farm. The teenager blurts out, “Shit!” to something the pastor said, and the pastor gives him a rather hard look, and the boy apologizes. Though the next issue has yet to be written, it’s planned for the pastor to say G.D. (I swear even I don’t use) and it adds to the emotion of the story.

I’m a big character guy, as I’ve stated here MANY, MANY times. Character equals plot; plot does not equal character. Therefore, dialogue equals character and narrative equals plot. (sort of)

You can’t sell you characters short. We as the audience need to know them. If you’re character is otherwise heroic, but has a pension for using the F-word every other word WE need to know that, and form our own opinions of him. It would be REALLY interesting if you bad guy didn’t swear!! . It’s just like whether or not you character smokes. It’s a nasty habit sure, but it doesn’t make the person inherently bad, but just might make them a little harder to like.


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autumnmuse
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I have thus far avoided commenting on this topic, because it seems to push too many buttons. But I will succumb to temptation, and since I'm not very good at keeping my big mouth shut, here's my two cents.

I am telling this story to illustrate how differently people can react to the same stimuli (in this case, swearing and flipping the bird.)

I personally do not swear, or flip people the bird, or do any of the other vulgar things that seem to have permeated parts of our society. Mostly I consider this a blessing, but on at least one occasion it was a curse. (And I'm not Mormon, in case you are wondering, but I come from a long line of people who are all clean-spoken, and rely on wit rather than crudity to lambast people.)

When I was seventeen and rebellious, it had come to a point where my father threatened to kick me out of the house if I crossed the line one more time. I knew he meant it, and resolved to be good. I had some "friends" who wanted me to go see them, and they lived an hour away. My father forbade me to go (my sister had tattled on me that I spent a week making out with one of them the year before), but he said they could come over to our house. When they pulled up, I went over to the car. They immediately yanked me inside it and drove to their house an hour away. I tried to tell them how much trouble I would be in, but they didn't believe me. I asked them to let me out and they wouldn't. To try to express my frustration, I said "F*** you!" and flipped the driver off. To me that was huge. I had never done either of those things and even in the situation I was shocked at myself. But all they did was laugh and keep driving. (In case you want to know the ending, they kept me at their house and wouldn't let me call home overnight. My dad found out where we were and threatened to call the cops if they didn't bring me home. They said it was a practical joke and took me home. The next morning my dad gave me a choice: press charges of kidnapping or move out that day, because he didn't believe me that I hadn't wanted to go. Since I had known these people my whole life and they'd never behaved that way before, I didn't press charges. I was out of my parent's house that afternoon. But it actually ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me, getting out on my own.)

Now I know that I am weird, but nonetheless, swearing was reserved for something hugely important. I really really meant it when I said it. If I use swearing in my novels, again, I will really really mean it. It will have impact to me.

But here's the thing: That is just me. Most people don't feel that way about it. My "friends" probably used bad language all the time, so when I cursed, they hardly noticed. If people like them are reading my novel, and come across the one or two swear words, they may not even notice, at least not to the extent that I do.

Even I am inured to hearing other people swear, especially in movies (none of my current friends swear either). However if my parents or friends read that novel, they would for sure notice. They would notice so much that I probably will find a way to write my novel without using the words, because my friends and family are more important to me than the nebulous "gentle readers." And the impact would only be so strong with them or other people like them anyway. For the majority of readers, the impact wouldn't be as great as I would be trying to make it. So my solution will be to write around it.

In case you haven't figured it out, I was the person HSO referred to who used "gosh" when my character wouldn't have. You know, I didn't even notice that I wrote that.

What I will do in future is to write around the language, using techniques already discussed in this thread. I actually meant to do that in the story, but I do not think about swearing, to the point where it hadn't even occurred to me that the bad guy would swear in that situation.

I hope that normal people reading my work will not go, "Gee, she should be cussing more. This is boring." But I KNOW that my friends and family will be able to read my stuff without being offended.

(As to subject matter, that's a whole different ball of wax. I personally enjoy horror, and Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. So I may choose to write the same type of stories that he does, just not with the amount of profanity.)

Hope this makes sense to people. I know I'm not changing anyone's mind, but I'm trying to communicate my particular take on this, as an alternate perspective.

Throughout history, most societies have not used swearing as much as Americans today. It's only been about sixty years that swearing has been as prevalant as it is now. It is possible to write about evil people without using profanity. Take Edgar Allen Poe or Charles Dickens; they wrote about some of the slimiest filth around. People can read what they wrote, without missing the profanity. Now I know that they were writing within the context of their society, but the point is that it can be done. I am going to look at it as a challenge: can I write without profanity and still have a visceral, true-to-character impact on my readers? I guess I'll find out, won't I?

[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited August 12, 2004).]


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JOHN
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All I'm saying is, and I'm not trying to be argumentative, if your story is about Marines or something they're not going to sit around saying, "Excuse me can you please pass the tea and crumpets."

Swearing can be used sparingly for impact as others mention, and it can be used for characterization.

I hope no one would think a story was stupid becasue there were no bad words, but it does take away from the realism factor as pointed out in the cases above.

People are willing to write violence, or sex, but NOT swearing seems silly.

I just don't see it as a morality question. Characters are who they are...

JOHN!


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Christine
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There are two characters for every character you write. One if the character, the other is the way people see that character. This is much like real life.

So let's take the example of the marine.

Who is he?

He's probably a tough guy, a strong man, and hard-spoken. But if he is your hero, he is defined by more than his status as a Marine. Is he married? Maybe he has a wife and a little girl at home. Maybe he reads to the blind on his day off. Maybe he's a good friend who always watches hib uddies back. He's more than just a marine, whoever her is.

So let's take a scene in the mess hall. While he would not be likely to say, "Would you please pass the tea and crumpets?" What does it add to his characterization or realism to have him say, "Pass the ****ing potatoes?" Why doesn't he just say. "Pass the potatoes, will ya?"

I'm not a marine. Maybe in real life it's part of their culture to say, "Pass the ****ing potatoes." but I don't care. As a reader, I want my hero to be a basically good guy. I want the tough guy with a wife and daughter (basically, one who has a soft spot in just the right place.) If you make him cuss, he'll never be anything other than a marine. How's that real? How's that adding to his characterization if all I can ever think of him as is a rude jerk? I mean, if he's going to rescue his wife and he's toe to toe with a kidnapper and he says, "Sianara, Mother ****er." I won't just be ok with that, I'll get into it. But if he says, "Pass the ****ing potatoes." and "What the **** do you think you're doing?" (in reaction to soemthing not particularly important) and "I got ****ing latrine duty again today." and basically rattled on, using (especially) the F word every time a word comes out of his mouth then your characterization that you pride yourself in has failed, because he's just a jerk. He's not mey hero. It doesn't matter if he builds houses for habitat for humanity,visits his mom every Sunday at the old folks home, and reads to the blind, I still think he's a jerk. Is that unfair? You say, these people exist in real life, good guys who cuss and you know what? I end up judging them by their language too. It's human and I can't help it, but the vast majority of humans do it so why don't we just be honest?


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EricJamesStone
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If as a writer you are so concerned about realism in your dialogue that you feel it necessary to include swearing, let me ask you this:

Does your commitment to realistic dialogue extend to realistically including the following things people very often include in real-life dialogue (sometimes multiple times per sentence):

Um
Uh
Ah
Er
Like
You know


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HSO
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That depends... an occasional "Er..." is perfectably acceptable. Doing it consistently throughout a story can be troubling and annoying.

Although, if you've got a character who consistently uses a particular idiosyncracy, sometimes it's very funny to see it written out. For example:

The girl from the valley said, "Like, you know, this whole thing is, like, stupid, you know?"

Her best friend nodded in agreement then added: "Like yeah, I know." She paused and reflected a moment and scratched her head. Finally she gave up thinking about it and said, "Um...Sarah? What's stupid again? Like my brain is like not working."

</end 80's flashback>
***

So, yeah... if I had ocassion to do something like that, I would, but only for effect. And definitely not throughout a story...unless it was "like" two pages long or something.

Then again, since I'm reading DA's Hitchiker's Guides books at the moment (and enjoying every bit of it), I'm not bothered by his tendency to use a lot of "Er's" in his dialogue.

Everyone is right, though... we don't necessarily write true-to-life dialogue. We approximate it.


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EricJamesStone
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Right. If the effect you want to produce in the reader requires ums, likes, or profanity, then use them. But "being realistic" is not a sufficient reason to annoy the reader.
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Christine
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LOL.

Eric, I think you have said in one sentence what I have apparently had trouble saying in paragraph after paragraph. That is a beautiful summary.


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HSO
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Wow! Christine, if you thought his pithy remark was funny, try this one:

You still haven't thanked anyone(not just me) in your slipstream topic.

*sounds of crickets*


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Christine
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That was rude and uncalled for.
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wetwilly
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Christine, would you please just say thank you so Mr. HSO will shut up about it already?
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