Know What You're Doing When You Write Foul Language

I’ve known people who would never dream of saying “damn” and then lose it completely and say “fuck” over and over. Sometimes, a deep breath just doesn’t do the trick. I’ve known people who just barely communicated because the amount of foul language coming out of their mouths almost obscured what they were saying.

But whether they never swear, or can’t stop swearing, you need to convey the sense of language your characters use and it has to be realistic.

Nothing describes your characters as accurately as the language they use. A large burly man dressed in rags is walking toward you on the sidewalk. Ten feet away, his eyes meet yours and hold there. You think, oh no, and get ready to say, “Sorry, I don't have any change.” When he's just a few feet away, he smiles and says, “Beautiful day.”

The words we use and how we use them say more about us than the clothes we wear and, often, how our faces and bodies look. Language is how we express our thoughts and feelings. It defines us more than anything else about us.

For example, a friend of mine ran an English immersion class for French high school students (many years ago). When he first ran it, there were situations where students had nervous breakdowns, made suicide attempts or dropped out of the program because they couldn’t handle the stress. The problem was that they were cut off from using their language. They defined themselves and their reality so deeply through their language that, when they weren’t allowed to speak it, their personalities began to dissolve.

If you put all the love, commitment and work into creating real characters in your stories―characters who are believable and surprising―then you have to go the whole distance and let them talk the way they will.

In children's books, family books, and religious books, the language is going to be toned down, not because teenagers, seven year olds and priests don't swear, but because your characters are created for a very specific audience and they represent the ideal type of person in your reading audience. This is the way you've created them. They'll take the road less foul-mouthed. On the other hand, you might want to change the rules and give the audience something new. Make sure you have a thick hide and a day job before attempting this outside the home.

I know very few people who don't swear at one time or another. We use strong language when we're mad, when we're disappointed, when we're reaching orgasm, when we're trying to insult someone, when we crush our thumbs with a hammer, when we're surprised, when we're frightened, when we're…

It goes on. And many of these times are appropriate for strong language. The same holds true in your stories. You use language that's appropriate for the situation and for your character in that situation. One woman might say, "Damn!" when she burns herself on the barbeque. Another might say, "Fuck!"

Don’t Under-do It

Don't have a big burly biker saying "Oh fudge!" when he comes back to his Harley and sees that somebody's taken a knife to his custom paint job.

Don't censor your characters’ language with F***! and c--- and &!!&%%$#!@**! You can use this kind notation to write non-fiction, but don't use it in your fiction. Real people don't speak in stars, dashes and ampersands. If you use this kind of technique, you take your readers out of the fictional world that you've made so real for them with your blood-and-soul characters and force them to focus on the fact that all they're doing is reading a make-believe story.

Let your characters talk the way they will talk without censoring them and your readers will stay in the world you’ve created.

Sometimes beginning writers are shy about using the word fuck. Don't be. It's old hat these days. Used appropriately, it neither startles nor offends. Used appropriately, it can deliberately startle or offend. It's that versatile. Use it for effect, and use it to define your characters. Does your character say “I fucked so and so …” or “I slept with so and so …” Both statements say the same thing, but they suggest different attitudes toward sex.

In Heavy Load (a laundromance), the lead female character, Hillary, is a young intelligent woman who has been betrayed by her boyfriend. Her language throughout the book is mild with the occasional “damn"…never anything stronger. But when her boyfriend uses inside information from her to steal her job and then calls her up to try and make her think everything’s alright between them she says, “Fuck off, Tim.” And hangs up on him. You don’t expect this kind of language from her, so when you hear it, it emphasizes that something is really out of whack.

The word cunt― considered almost mandatory in some British movies and books―is still pretty much verboten in most mainstream North American writing, which is exactly why it can be a powerful character definer when it’s used appropriately. Want to learn more about this word? Watch the Vagina Monologues with Eve Ensler.

But Don't Overdo It

I used to work as a bartender. One night a customer came to my bar and started talking to me about the rough time he and his brother had experienced earlier in the day moving a large couch down a narrow stairway. I’ll quote just a small part: “The fucking thing was fucking too fucking big for the fucking stairway and we fucking had to fucking take the fucking legs off …” This is exactly the way he talked for 10 minutes. Would I use this in story about him, exactly as is? Probably not, and not because I’d be concerned about my gentle readers’ ears, or consider it too gross. This is exactly how he talked. But I’d still delete a few of the “fuckings” and then read it out loud until I was satisfied I’d captured his tone. This kind of extreme overuse of a word is just as distracting as taking twenty pages to describe a setting for a scene that lasts for one page. The verbal expletive barrage focuses the readers attention on just one thing, the word, and looses a lot of the meaning of the conversation and the delineation of character in the process. This is where the writer as editor comes in and recreates reality in his or her likeness and strips away the extraneous detail that distracts from the story the same way F*** and Sh--! would.

Write Mindlessly and Go Right Over the Top in Your First Draft

When it comes to language, don’t let an image of your future readers, an image of your parents, children or a favorite teacher looking over your back, or your own sense of what’s right or wrong for yourself stop you from letting your characters use the kind of language that’s appropriate for them. A man saying to his wife, “You fucking bitch” draws a truer picture of a disturbed personality than the passive description: “And then, in front of everyone, Jack verbally abused Sally.”

Write without editing and write fast and furiously, putting in every foul expletive that you think might surge through the dialogue and the narration. Come back to it later and edit out the stuff that you feel is too far over the top, distracting, inappropriate for your reading audience, or just not right for that particular character.

If you’ve done your work in creating your characters, let them talk the way they will.

Try This

As a person, you may not like certain language and you may never use it. As a writer, you do what your characters demand. This exercise is designed to break the ice between you and how your characters need to express themselves.

Write the word (or phrase) that you think is the most repellent word you can think of twenty times. Then write just once, the word you think is the exact opposite. When you're finished, read the word aloud all twenty times. And read the final word.