When I wrote my young adult short story, Love Magick, I carefully screened it for language, determined to keep it clean, but with other stories, I’ll the bad words fall where it may. Profanity has become a part of our culture, and it often delivers great meaning. A curse word can show a well-mannered character who has snapped under strain, or is slipping into darker ways. Profanity can identify an uneducated, or crude character, or perhaps a young person trying to establish their anti-society views with shocking language. Bad guys can confirm their misogynist ways by calling women a “slut,
debradunbar
I need a web person, that’s what I need! All these darned plug-ins and I can’t figure out which one does what.
Dana
you need a “like” button on the comments 🙂
Amberr Meadows
I keep it fairly clean, but there is no telling what might happen when I really get in-depth with my book. I’m a closet potty mouth, too, but you’ll only hear “shit” and “damn” in polite society or on social media. I feel like I am still under a corporate filter when I’m not. 10 years tends to do that to a person. 😉
debradunbar
Oh I like that one! It sounds like something from an infomercial.
I’m drafting out a YA fantasy that’s very clean – hard to go from foul mouth Sam to young adult 🙂
debradunbar
I’m still under the corporate filter. It’s like having a secret identity – professional woman by day, lewd and crude by night!
debradunbar
For all his gruff attitude, I think the tech guy was actually pretty decent outside work. We got along. I ask him to do something, he’d curse me out, then he’d usually do it for me anyway 🙂
Susan A.
Dana, I would love to see that one in a book, lol.
Dana
In all my stories, so far, I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum, but, in my latest, I’ve just left at as ” cursed” or “muttered a curse.”
Although, I am waiting for the appropriate time to use one of the most imaginative, yet confusing curses I’ve ever heard…attributed to my ex-wife no less…”you little rotating dick-o-flexer” :-/
Susan A.
It’s funny, but I hadn’t even noticed the non-demon characters weren’t cursing. Now you’ll have me paying more attention to that in future books, lol. It’s good that you have set guidelines for when and where to use the words. Some writers rely on curse words to the point they lose their meaning and just become annoying. It’s a careful balancing act. I reserve them in my writing for moments of high stress in my main charactersor for a really bad guy/gal who is obviously being lewd.
Thanks for sharing that story of the tech guy. He would make an interesting character in a book, but I’d hate to work with him in real life. I’d clash with him heavily and have to go elsewhere to get my computer fixed, lol.