Swearing In Fiction … is it realistic without?

Do you swear?

Last month, I shared a photo on my Facebook stream about the universe. It had stars and mountains and a lot of swearing in it. As soon as she saw it, my mother called. She was surprised I would swear on Facebook. Wasn’t I worried what other people would think?

Well, after debating with her the differences between swearing on Facebook, and sharing a photo on Facebook that someone else had created with swearing in it, I said I thought it was okay because the swearing was meant in reverence and awe.

In my head, I also thought ‘wow, she really does not read much of my writing’ – because a lot of my characters swear. It makes reading my work aloud to groups of eager listeners tricky for me because, well, I don’t really swear myself. In fact, I get embarrassed when I have to read the words aloud (come and watch me squirm sometime, I go red in the face!).

Is it realistic fiction without?

So why do my characters swear? Simple – most of the people in my life swear. People swear on television, in movies, on the street too… I prefer it if friends and family don’t swear in front of my children, but that’s because their world is so different to that of adults and I want to keep it that way as long as possible. I also don’t like Hubbie to swear in arguments. But then I am gifted with the ability to rile him more than most… (he he).

For the majority of adults, however, swearing is a normal part of everyday life. If they don’t swear themselves, like me (unless I stub a toe), then they know someone who does. So I wanted to know… how do writers handle swearing in their fiction? Are they happy to create characters who swear, or does it depend on their own use of profanity?

Along came one of my famous Facebook polls and, after a couple of weeks voting, here are the results:

Results as at 22 March 2013
Incorporates results from Facebook & Twitter.

Thanks to my writer-buddies who answered the poll or who commented on it: Margo Lanagan, Catriona Sparks, Jason Fischer, Mary Victoria, Laura E. Goodin, Geoff Brown, Gillian Polack, Graham Storrs, Kylie Scott, Andrew J McKiernan, Bruce Lyman, Martin Livings, Alan Baxter, Nansi Kunze, Leife Shallcross, Leigh Blackmore, Tom Dullemond, David McDonald, Imelda Evans, Jodi Cleghorn, Ross Hamilton, Zoya Nojin, Anne Swan, Füzzy Mijmark, Josh Whiteman, Matthew Morrison, Wade Bowmer, Devin Watson, Laura Miller, Carol Neal Thomas, Author Katherine Vucicevic, Barry Allen Gibbons II, Jo McClelland, Dorothy-Jane Daniels, Jacqueline Cross, Amanda Jayne, Kate Shapter, Simon Dillon, Pippa Jay, Simon Robertson, Simon Dewar

This was my most commented-on poll to date, with a lot of writers debating the when and how of their characters swearing. A couple of writers were keen to establish that they have never used and would never use swearing just for shock value. For me, that’s a given though. I don’t know any writers like that

I had lots of humorous comments too, on both Facebook and Twitter, declaring that characters who don’t swear are barely worth writing about (thanks old copywriting buddy Josh – ha ha).

But all joking aside, it seems I have a clear answer to my question. While some writers create characters who swear and some don’t, most create them ‘sometimes’ (irrespective of whether they swear themselves). Given that ‘sometimes’ could be said to be a qualification of ‘yes’, then the results reconfigured more simply give:

Results as at 22 March 2013

Phew! I’m relieved you all think swearing is a common enough human characteristic to represent it in your writing, to various degrees. It is a realistic approach to fiction, I feel.

Why we humans swear… well that’s another matter. On episode 142 of the 2010 season of MythBusters, the hosts devised an experiment that proved swearing aloud aids pain tolerance by 30%. Perhaps that’s why a lot of my characters swear – I do like to push their physical and emotional boundaries, he he.

As for that Facebook post of mine that sparked this discussion… it’s here: “The Universe is ?#@*&%! rad”.

Now… what about you? Do you swear yourself and does that influence whether your characters swear in your stories? Let me know in the comments below!