Swearing in books
I swear when I write and so do my books.
That wasn’t always the case, though. In my first two books, Anvil of Tears and In the House of Five Dragons, I didn’t include any swearing. Sure, Tiberius cursed a little and Carce had its own sort of vocabulary, but nothing that would really be recognizable to the readers as profanity. And that made sense for those books – why would either Prianus or the Carcaen Empire have the same swearing as we do? It was easy to just leave those words out.
The first characters that ever swore in our books were Sam Trent and Samantha LeFevre in The Dead Beat.
A quick side note: Yes, those names. I thought I was being pretty fucking smart. I was so, so very wrong. So for the rest of this post, I’m going to call them by their last names.
Trent was a seasoned cop back in the 1940s and LeFevre was a bitter, slightly unhinged homicide cop. It just didn’t feel remotely believable that these two wouldn’t swear up a storm. We expect hardened cops to swear. It’s practically a job requirement.
I was terrified. I had written as honestly as I could to the characters as I created them, but I worried that readers would be absolutely scandalized when they read the word “shit.” And some readers didn’t like it. I’ve gotten some negative feedback about swearing in books, including the tired old “You’re better than that.”
At first, I was badly shaken by this response. Was I failure? Had I just cheapened my work? Some of the feedback came from my own family and it hit like a hammer.
But I got over it. Time heals even the worst gut-punches.
Fuck it. I’m going to swear. I’m an adult living in a time when I actually need to fear that Donald Trump might become the next president. I’m definitely going to swear. And so are my characters, if it’s natural to their voice. In Whisperworld, Julia swears quite a bit – she’s the mouthy one. She needs to swear. Zach doesn’t swear much, which makes sense – he’s the good boy. Same thing in Lily Quinn: Lily is a wild woman and curses like one, but Max only swears when he’s angry or scared.
Some people are uncomfortable with profanity. Fine, I get that. Most of my books aren’t for that crowd. Also fine. I don’t really like Charles Dickens, but I’d be a lunatic if I said his work didn’t belong on bookshelves.
And if you’re a writer who doesn’t like to cuss, that’s fine, too. Just be sure that it feels natural for your characters. A world-weary prostitute who doesn’t throw out the occasional ‘fuck’ (You see what I did there?) is going to stick out in your manuscript just as much as a sweet old nun who swears like Deadpool.
In the end, be true to yourself and do right by your fucking characters.
