Swearing in Fiction

[Dragonlady]

I'm not a sweary person - I don't disapprove of it, but it's just not me. I don't usually feel the need to include it in my writing, using non sweary curses, made up fantasy curses and other language instead. What are your thoughts? Does it have a place? It's in genuine situations of shock and peril that my characters seem to be reaching for the four letter words, do I let them?

I'm not purposely setting out to write young adult fiction, but my main protagonists are young, so it could be sold that way.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

If it’s right for the character I go with it. I have one (very) sweary books - a YA as it happens - and my others just have some words sprinkled through

 

[Venusian Broon]

Personally, if it is clear that a writer has deliberately replaced what I 'felt' should have been a swear word with non-sweary curses, made-up fantasy curses or is not doing it deliberately to make some valid point...then. actually, it puts me off this persons writing. Sure, if you are doing YA and it's part of the genre to refrain from the effs and cees, then fair enough. But I don't really read YA, so it's not really an issue for me as a reader.

So if I'm reading about a 'docker/trooper' in a 'gritty' work and the voice I'm getting is some sort of staid middle-class accent with 'dammits' and 'darns' replacing more colourful language, then, no, it probably isn't going to work.

Occasionally though, the above, replacing or making up stuff does work. I present smeg from Red Dwarf. Which has interesting connotations that really make it a filthy, albeit made-up, swear word. However the writers were probably straining a little against the BBC and light entertainment with their scripts. (Although the Young Ones I'm sure were full of swear words, and it was must see tele for my entire family, mum, dad and both me and younger sister. As it came out in 1982, that made me 11 when I was watching it.)

Having said that, there is no reason to have swearing in everything, or at all. It just depends on on what sort of style your aiming for and if it works as a package.

 

[HareBrain]

I think do whatever you're comfortable with. I've recently watched a few modern-set police/detective shows that I only realised afterwards didn't have any swearing. The characters came across as the kind of people who would swear, but just never happened to when the cameras were rolling. I think more than the absence or inclusion of swearing, it's the tone of the rest of the characters' speech that reveals the kind of people they are.

 

[tinkerdan]

You do need to be somewhat comfortable with it and I try to keep it from overwhelming the dialogue, so I limit it to situations that have stretched a person beyond their limits. You"d be surprise what some people are capable of spouting when under enough stress and pushed up against the wall. I certainly wouldn't go to great lengths to avoid it, yet I would reserve it for special instances. Too much of it and it becomes an annoyance like someone who says a lot of 'um' and 'well' or 'you know'--just filler words(they loose power quickly).

 

[Abernovo]

I can swear like a trooper, literally. A good Scottish upbringing, combined with a bedroom overlooking a parade ground will do that for you. Oddly enough, I don't swear that much--well, I keep it in context, at least--but I've known the words for a loong time, way before adulthood.

So, to pretend that people would not know certain words, or about real life, simply because they're kids, or priests, or maiden aunts would, to me, feel unrealistic. And, vice versa. Some individual members of a group might be innocent, others would not blink an eye at such words being used, and still others might use language which could strip wallpaper.

Paint the characters as individuals. If they need to swear, or use some made-up oath, let them. At the same time, if you have to smooth off the edges to keep it acceptable for publishing (sometimes necessary), then do that; after all, the sentiment of the speech is usually more important than the exact words. As HB says, it's the tone of the characters' speech which reveals who they are.

You'll know what sounds right from your characters' mouths, and what's in their thoughts. And, you'll know what you're comfortable with.

 

[Lumens]

Unless it's humour, never anywhere else but in dialogue. As a general rule with fuzzy borders.

 

[Extollager]

There's plenty to say about this topic, but here are a few thoughts. Use of typical swearing, obscenity, etc. has the effect, immediately, for me, of making a piece of writing reek of our own time and culture. If an author wants to write about some ancient realm or farflung planet, she or he had better not use expressions I'd hear on any urban street today.

Very well, an author might say, I'll borrow archaic terms (if I'm writing fantasy) or invent some (if I'm writing space fantasy). So I have a vague memory of L. Sprague de Camp, when he was writing fantasies in the 1970s, borrowing old expressions for the pudenda, etc.; these distracted me from the story because I felt that de Camp was showing off a bit by reviving words that were naughty in Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time. A similar type of distraction would, for me, occur if I were reading a science fiction story and the author evidently had concocted such terms of scandal and abuse. I would find myself to be out of the story and thinking about the author. The narrative spell would be broken.

So, pragmatically, there is a problem with using obscenity and vulgarity an imaginative fiction.

With regard specifically to swearing, that is, misusing the name of a god or God -- I don't think anyone is much bothered by Conan's "By Crom!" kind of thing, although, for me, it comes across as kind of a grab at a cheap "verisimilitude" -- i.e. I think of the author as having put that in as a quick was to try to imply a little "world-building," probably not very convincingly. Because it sounds a bit hokey, I might, myself, if writing a Conan story, write something like: "The Cimmerian cursed the Hyrkanian by his gods and reached for his dagger," etc. To me that sounds more threatening than the sort of thing Howard wrote, along the lines of, "Conan reached for his dagger. 'By Crom, Hyrkanian, I'll feed your guts to the vultures,'" etc.

As for the issue of swearing in the name of, or at, the God in whom some readers, like me, might actually believe. I appreciate it when authors, movie-makers, etc. generally refrain from it.

Finally: I've read a great deal of fiction from before the 1920s. Obscenity, vulgar sexual references, etc. are generally completely absent from Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Trollope, the Brontës, Tolstoy, Stevenson, Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Gogol, James, Aksakov, Turgenev, George Eliot, Chekhov, &c. Their work is nevertheless regarded as rich in human interest. Outbursts of religious language are limited to "My God!" and the like. Dostoevsky is able to get across the suicidal Smerdyakov's blasphemous final gesture without quoting him.

 

[Venusian Broon]

making a piece of writing reek of our own time and culture.

Purely my own opinion - warning in advance - but I think all writing always reeks heavily of the time and culture that they were written in. I don't believe one can make something that is 'timeless'. However, on (numerous!) occasion(s), great authors can make something that makes future readers willing to suspend belief and accept the conventions and idiosyncrasies to see deeper truths.

I think there is a degree of 'translation' in what we try and put down, and I'm willing to accept something that strikes a chord with me.

I've been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy at the moment and I'm thinking...are the accents I'm reading, really what the backwoodsmen and women of 1900s USA would have spoken, or just what McCarthy, writing in the 2000s, (with a great deal of research and personal experience, I assume, to be fair) think they would have spoken? And how much has he changed for modern audiences anyway?

I suspect there was similar 'translation' going on in Dickens, Tolstoy etc... too.

 

[Extollager]

VB wrote, "all writing always reeks heavily of the time and culture that they were written in."

Hmm. So should we assume that, fifty years hence, someone reading A Wizard of Earthsea without knowing who wrote it or when, would be able to place it reasonably accurately in the period in which it was written? Of course, innocuous things like spellings and punctuation could be tip-offs; if we read something by an American author who uses colour, favour, etc. we will probably deduce that it's an 18th- or 19th-century work.

But I often remember that Le Guin said (in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," I think) that what is wanted in fantasy is a distancing from the ordinary. She would probably have assented to an addition to that statement: that this does not mean that what's wanted is gratuitous oddity.

I suppose that we get a lot of ordinariness in the writing of people who, perhaps, write fantasy because they grew up on it, like it, and are comfortable with it as an established niche. A good example, on the other hand, of a writer who sought the non-ordinary, by going way too far into mere oddity of style, is Hodgson in The Night Land.

 

[Nozzle Velocity]

I've been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy at the moment and I'm thinking...are the accents I'm reading, really what the backwoodsmen and women of 1900s USA would have spoken, or just what McCarthy, writing in the 2000s, (with a great deal of research and personal experience, I assume, to be fair) think they would have spoken? And how much has he changed for modern audiences anyway?

Oh, it's accurate, believe me. I was stunned when I read No Country For Old Men. It was like my grandparents and their parents and that entire generation of people I knew were standing in front of me. It was uncanny. At some point it occured to me that readers in other parts of America might not actually know what's being said.

As for swearing, I could strip the paint from a car at 30 yards. It's my superpower. But I also think it's important to act like an adult in public, so I think it should be used sparingly in fiction and only for a good reason. It seems cheap and gimmicky when it's overused, and it's overused a lot in independent comics.

 

[L.L.Lotte]

I always thought Steven Erikson did a good job of coming up with replacement expletives that suited his world.

It really depends on the personality of the character, and the author. But you don't have to have swearing in the writing to make it realistic, and if you as the author are not comfortable with swearing, then the reader will notice that in your writing, at which point it would be better to leave it out than try force it.

But definitely avoid modern euphemisms unless you're going for comedy -- they will only ever come across as cheesy.


And it isn't unheard of -- much to parents horror -- for YA books to have swearing in them. So just because it is YA doesn't mean you HAVE to exclude such language.

 

[Droflet]

As has been said, if it fits the character and situation, I have no problem. My first book is not cover to cover bad language but when it's needed it's used.

 

[Dragonlady]

@Extollager I find it interesting you don't like that type of fantasy curse, though I've not read any of the books you refer to. I've read a lot of historical murder mysteries with imaginative curses, and they tend to fit the character and read quite well. I'm pretty sure I've used that sort of stuff before, but not long winded ones. In the writing I've just done a character says 'Nalisso's Balls' when confronted by an unexpected situation they have to deal with that threatens life. Nalisso is a god who will crop up quite a bit. I think the F word probably fits her character better though. Her rather wet male companion, however, has a personality that really suits 'good grief'.

The other place it came up, so far, was in a descriptive rather than cursing sense, and not in dialogue, but in the character's head if that makes sense. @Extollager I too believe in God and am not a fan of real life blasphemy, but the joy of fantasy is that the gods are made up.

 

[Harpo]

Drokk! In fiction, anything can be swearing, flippin' 'eck Tucker!
Naff off, my smegging droogs

 

[Toby Frost]

I once heard that "naff off" was invented for the comedy Porridge, which was set in a prison but broadcast quite early. I'm not sure if it's true, but I heard that they needed something that sounded coarse but wasn't real swearing.

A few days ago I watched the western The Wild Bunch, which is about low, sordid people and violent as hell, even by modern standards. But it was made in 1969, and there’s no heavy-duty swearing. It’s quite odd when I first realized it, but given that they’re cowboys, it doesn’t seem too wrong. I’m sure cowboys swore all the time, but not in the old films that gave me my lasting first impression of the Old West, and that's probably what counts. In the fantasy novel I’ve written, the setting is clearly somewhere between 1450 and 1550 (albeit in a fantasy world). However, I wanted the story to have a rough, thriller-type feel, so I went with pretty modern swearing (although not anachronisms).

One problem with swearing is that some swears are more modern and/or place-related than others. At the end of The Lies of Locke Lamora, which is a fantasy set in Not-Venice, someone shouts “Mother****er!”, which sounds jarringly modern and American. On the other hand, if you do go properly historical, there’s a risk of characters saying things like “Zounds!”, which derives from “God’s wounds” and was probably quite blasphemous, but to modern ears seems a bit arch and silly. As Venusian Broon says, even logical made-up swearing can sound silly. Tad Williams did it quite well in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, where pseudo-medieval characters swore on “God’s tree”, which was clearly the cross. So maybe having something clearly real-world to refer to is the way to go. It’s worth mentioning that medieval (style) people would be much more religious than even pious people now, and so blasphemy would seem more severe to them.

 

[Dragonlady]

@Toby Frost it fascinates me how words change over time. Many 'crude' words we now think of as swearing were, before recent centuries, just standard words, but as you say, blasphemy would have been viewed differently then.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Hmm. So should we assume that, fifty years hence, someone reading A Wizard of Earthsea without knowing who wrote it or when, would be able to place it reasonably accurately in the period in which it was written? Of course, innocuous things like spellings and punctuation could be tip-offs; if we read something by an American author who uses colour, favour, etc. we will probably deduce that it's an 18th- or 19th-century work.

Generally yes, assuming they are reasonably well read. I can do it easily with SF and could probably pin down most other genres, and I don't think it is a superpower.

But I often remember that Le Guin said (in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," I think) that what is wanted in fantasy is a distancing from the ordinary. She would probably have assented to an addition to that statement: that this does not mean that what's wanted is gratuitous oddity.

But the thing is that what is ordinary changes over time. And how you 'translate' this distancing, taking Le Guin's quote, will be measured against what the author deems ordinary at that moment.

However getting back OT:

Finally: I've read a great deal of fiction from before the 1920s. Obscenity, vulgar sexual references, etc. are generally completely absent from Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Trollope, the Brontës, Tolstoy, Stevenson, Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Gogol, James, Aksakov, Turgenev, George Eliot, Chekhov, &c. Their work is nevertheless regarded as rich in human interest. Outbursts of religious language are limited to "My God!" and the like. Dostoevsky is able to get across the suicidal Smerdyakov's blasphemous final gesture without quoting him.

Yes that are all great writers and I've highly enjoyed reading any of their books. But could any of them, in their times have got away with vulgar sexual references etc. without being taken to an obscenity trial? Or to cause a scandal amongst their readership? I can't speak for all the writers on your list but I'd suggest it was mainly middle class men and women writing for the middle class. And the middle classes in those days* would have a set of values that I'd think would have not wished nor hold no truck for any blaspheming or swearing in their novels.

Now I'm not suggesting that any of these authors were champing at the bit to pepper their work with filthy smut, or actual real world swearing. They probably felt, as writers of their times, it was either something they would never have done or it was a taboo far too far to break. Or were not wanting to taint their work as bawdy or as erotic pornography. It was only reasonably recently that the taboo in obscenity and swearing in literary works was broken, wasn't it? I'm thinking around about the time of the unbanning of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Although that is really for the anglosphere.

Anyway just some thoughts.

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*okay, okay I am thinking about the Victorians/proto-Victorians here in the UK, I am no doubt being presumptuous on what peoples other countries reading markets consisted of.

 

[Cathbad]

I have a couple of made-up swear words in my fantasy world, but I believe they're not hard to determine what they mean.

I didn't make them to avoid using real curse words, but because I thought different cultures would have different swear words.

And since my world's concept of Hell is (slightly) different from our own, there are a few cuss words I had to modify.

 

[Plucky Novice]

There's no religion in my fantasy novel so I've had to create a new swearing vocab but also exclamations too.

I took it a bit further and developed other vocab to keep the swear words company. I think it makes it a little more natural. All the vocab follows a world theme.