Handling Profanity

How do you handle profanity in your fiction? Do you fade to black or just drop the f bomb like it's nobody's business?

edited 30th Jan '11 12:47:11 AM by joeyjojo

Depends on the character?

Uncultured Boston Street Tuff, Carpet Bombing Atomic F-Bombs.

Refined British Gentleman? Rarely a "God Damned."

Well the character I'm working on at the moment is in the NYPD. So I guess that he would be shooting his mouth off like a cannon.

Obviously.

Okay what would be a reasonable amount of swearing that is believable for a hard character but doesn't come across as gratuitous? Would F words do or do I need drop a few of the big Cs?

edited 30th Jan '11 1:36:42 AM by joeyjojo

I have a character that specifically curses too much for it to be meaningful, while the rest tend to stray from the word fuck, but are more likely to use bastard and asshole and all that stuff. And you have one or two people that just use the odd words like cunt and twat.

Really depends on the character and story. My "Gangster Hamlet in 80's London" story is obviously going to use more foul language then say, a happily married couple in a well-to-do surburbia.

Here's the thing, you have to treat cursing like just another type of talking, the same way you might consider that whole buffy-speaky thingy, or eloquently phrased diction requiring poise.

No scaring away from it. Got it?

Cluster F-Bomb on average, though varies between characters.

One of my personal goals is to write believable dialogue that avoids profanity about ninety-nine percent of the time.

That might just make narm.

Possibly, but I've read plenty of literature where you don't really notice the absence of profanity unless someone actually points it out afterwards. It's not the kind of thing I look for in fiction.

No, the absence and then sudden inclusion of cursing might make it narm.

If a character is supposed to swear a lot, I'd probably write down swears as often as the character would find it appropriate time to swear. I don't get how people who use the f-bomb like commas are understood by anyone and that's about the point where I would say it's overkill.

Though I guess if a character is muttering angrily to themselves instead of conversing, I might just say "he swore" instead of writing it all out if it's prose.

And which swears kinds of depends on the person, I think. I dunno. Some people gravitate towards one or two particular words while other people will die knowing that they've uttered every naughty word the human tongue can produce.

edited 30th Jan '11 9:51:36 AM by Kaxen

Some people do swear to the point of over kill. Mostly teenagers.

Well yeah, but I would probably avoid writing it because I find it only mildly more readable than characters who have their dialogue written with too many apostrophes and slurred together words.

...unless the point is to show they're on the verge of incoherent when swearing, I suppose.

Well, normally one would do it show how annoying they are, and so the reader does not like them.

I have one use of the word "bullshit" in my current story, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it, as it might seem out of place, being the only word worse than "hell" or "damn".

^ Precision F-Strike. It'll make the use of the word "bullshit" seem especially forceful.

I tend to go easy with the swearing if I think that my parents are likely to read it. Otherwise, very much depends on the character. I usually aim to portray realistic personalities.

I don't use swearing much, atleast not words stronger than "shit" or "damn".

In one of my works (The Ultimatum), most of the profanity is made up (and pretty mild); some characters curse, and some don't. I don't know where that falls in the scheme of things.

In the other (Stakes), the protagonist cusses a bit more but it makes sense for her to do so.

In other words, if it fits the setting, the story and the characters, have at the cussing. If it doesn't, don't. Just remember that there are millions of words in the English language and only a dozen or so constitute "dirty" words.

For me it definitely depends on character and situation. Being rather profane myself, I'm fairly open to swearing in dialogue. However, it's rare that I use it in narration unless the story is told in a stream-of-consciousness style.

edited 30th Jan '11 9:30:29 PM by PFrost

Well, looking at myself (you'll know why after reading some of my post), the angrier I get, the more f-bombs I put out. Granted, some of the forum examples are gratuitous and written that way for a reason, but I know cops and they tend to drop an f-bomb or two in everyday conversations (some of them even more, I know a guy like that).

In serious situations I might drop a word or two just to show the gravity of a situation, otherwise profanity would be few and far in between.

But when it's in the personality of the character, like say my wrench wench with a foul mouth and a love for schadenfreude, I'll explicitly use the "()^(*^$@!*(()&@^%!" method of cursing to show blatancy, frequency, and and levity.