THIS! Christine

Fuck!

Got your attention didn't it? I've had a few discussions with friends lately, regarding swearing, cussing and profanity in books and our own writing. How much to use it, when, why. That sort of thing. It made me mentally analyze books with varying degrees of swearing in them.

Here are a few examples that came to mind.

One character, a bit player in the story, never opened his mouth unless 'God damn bitch' (or whore, or a variation thereof), came out. He was a belligerent, unpleasant person, and his cussing (toward the heroine) merely reinforced my reasons not to like him. But he shared maybe three scenes with the heroine total, and two with other players. As I recall, the heroine in that story didn't swear. A few other characters did, including the hero, but some of it was internal monologue. Does that count? Over all I didn't think the story was filled with 'profanity' and when it was used, it worked well with the emotional impact of the scene.

Then there's Nora Roberts' 'in Death' Characters, Eve and Roarke. Eve swears far more than Roarke, but her Idiot! can come across harsher than a well placed fuck. Roarke swears when he's really pissed (usually at Eve). These books are my first real experience where the heroine cusses on a regular basis, and is in fact part of her character, for me it works. It emphasises her impatience with the rest of the human race.

I know when I'm writing an intense scene (probably an argument) my characters will use God damn, and dammit every frickin line... Happily I clean it up during second and third read-throughs, but to get the impact down initially, yeah they swear like troopers. However, if, after several read-throughs, I still found an over-abundance of swearing, my anal retentive bean counting personality would insist that I limit the amount of cussing done to a finite number. Like six per character. Then I'd have to pour over the scenes to sprinkle the swearing in the most crucial places. Seriously, this is how my brain works.

But the point... yes there was one, just took me a hell of a long time to get there. The use of swearing in books does not bother me so long as it works for the character and the situation. It actually bothers me more to have 'gratuitous' swearing in movies... er, except the movie, 'The Commitments'. Somehow, fuck you coming out of everyone's mouth (in an Irish accent) all the time didn't seem out of place at all. In fact I came out of the theatre trying to imitate exactly how the characters pronounced it. Sort of a fook yer.

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