Write Better: Tips and tricks

Swearing

"Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain

If you guys haven't, read up on Mark Twain and swearing. It's delightful. It shows you that a few common curse words isn't all there is to the art. There's a lot more fun to be had with cussing than just blasting off a word or two.

Mostly, people just consider the usual bad words as cursing/swearing/etc and lump it all together, so that's what we're going to focus on today. Curses and swears and whatnot can be different, but on wattpad, they're mostly synonyms.

When you're writing your novel, you might stop and ask yourself what kind of swearing you're going to include. There are a few things we know about swearing.

1. Swearing is an everyday occurrence out in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people swear every day.

2. It's realistic that if you're writing for young adults and up, at least one character knows swear words, regardless of whether or not they plan on using them.  Kids hear things. They're friends hear things. The bathroom stall says things. They might keep their tongues clean, but there's a good chance that they know  what the bad words are.

3. What makes characters (and people) unique is that we aren't all the same. Even within a single story, characters have different levels of comfort and/or willingness to use profanity. The constantly observed queen can get away with a lot less than the workers on break in the back parking lot of your local grocery store.

4. Some readers do not see a need to read vulgarity for their own personal reasons, and they will either abandon your story at first swear, read until it overwhelms, or not pick it up in the first place. They may not support your book. You may lose money from never getting those readers. They may tell you they returned your book, or recommended all their friends and family not to go near it. 

[Note: These readers have every right to make their choice. You don't have to agree, but please respect them. Like it says in #3, we aren't all the same!]

5. Writers are not their characters, but that isn't going to stop people from judging you. And it probably won't just be about the level of profanity. Writers are in a profession where people judge you however the heck they want for whatever reason they want. And they do it a lot. Publicly. If you use profanity, you'll hear it. If you use bad grammar, you'll hear it. If you use perfect grammar and no profanity, you'll still be judged. That's just how it goes. That being said, swearing is one of those areas where just by doing it, you're going to attract opinions (good and bad).

So how much is too much?

The general rule of thumb is somewhere in the low to moderate range for average fiction (YA and up). That will give you the broadest appeal (IE: you probably won't offend most people beyond some of the readers in #4, who just don't like to see any swearing).  That's why it's so often recommended. It's what works for most people in most cases. You can go beyond it, just be mindful that you may get less readers (and on wattpad, you'll probably get marked mature).

There's no magic word count or percentage of f-bombs per story that will tell you it's too much. A lot of that depends on what your reader decides is too much for them.

Some other things to keep in mind when you're writing.

Swearing ages your story.

1. It can either give away what time period the characters are in, or give away what period the writer is from.

2. It will almost automatically move your story out of the range of young children. The BFG doesn't stand for Big Effing Giant.

Swearing isn't what makes a story realistic. It adds an element of realism.

Sometimes writers are faced with the suggestion of toning down their character's cursing.

"Swearing is realistic," they say.  And yes, yes it is.

But it's not what makes  the story realistic. It just adds another element that helps the reader believe that if this scene were to happen, it'd probably go down like this. You should be able to (as an experiment) bleep out the word and still find the character's reactions realistic. If you can't, that's a typical sign something isn't doing its job in the scene.

A lot of swearing can remove the impact swearing can have in a given situation.

Once readers are used to seeing it, they're not really going to distinguish it from any other time, which means you'll have to do more work to make sure your scene/dialogue/action/reaction/whatever conveys the proper importance and gets to the heart of the matter.

Variety is the spice of life.

Change things up. Try and find different ways to insult things. Have fun. Be imaginative. Think of something specific to your story environment. Don't be afraid to forgo one f-bomb for a descriptively nasty phrase. Sometimes those things stick in readers heads and make a scene more memorable.

Sometimes it's fun to let loose and say "I've kissed lemons sweeter than him" over the more common "he's a fucking bad kisser, Susan." And other times you just want something else. Just have some fun and play around!

A tip when editing:

Swearing is a part of your word count. It's also often used as an adjective, and in writing you don't often need a lot of adjectives to make a point. So if you need to slice off words for some reason (like falling under a word count), it's a pretty easy target to cut one here and there.

Check the strength of your sentence without it. If it sounds the same without the swearing, you probably don't need it (though you may like it). If the sentence loses it's meaning or impact, it's probably necessary.

Remember: A well placed f-bomb can convey so much, but if you're using it frequently, it's good to keep an eye on the writing to make sure you're conveying character and emotion beyond "using f-bombs is how Bob talks." Readers should see more to Bob than that! And Bob probably knows how to get creative, too!