Cluster F Bomb and Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness

If you use the word fuck in your story, it will decrease the audience you are able to sell to, regardless if it was only once. If you use the word fuck quite a lot, you might find that it reduces the amount of fucking readers you could have, even if you are not using it in every sentence and your using it well.

I\'m too tired to quite in context of Long Word Overusage but I believe you understand what the writing would look like.

One question I did have is, is there a guideline or rule on when you can use swear words and non-traditional prose words in your writing without being pushed into the bad writing box?

I fall into the \"I just found an amazing word, and I want to use it!\" mode, or the desire to have characters calling each other \"dick cheese\" or \"poopstabbers\".

Is using swear words an instant death sentence for your writing when it comes to publishing time? Does the same extend to strange, exotic or long words?

Not necessarily.

If you use long and/or complicated words, words that many people do not know, often in your writing then there is a chance that it will annoy some (potential) readers, yes.

But let's look at it from the other side, too. Dune is a fairly popular series and yet every book is peppered with words made up for the series, words that are explained/translated in their own glossary at the end of each books. Really peppered, "on average" good luck finding a page without any of those words.

And those words, in spite of being annoying until you memorise them all, increase the level of immersion. Those are not the words the author is using because they fancy using them, oh no. Those words are the words used in the world of the story, they lend to building that world, they make it more authentic. Subtle changes like that, in spite of being potentially annoying, in the end make it all the better.

And the same thing applies to complicated words. If you use them throughout the text because you fancy using those words and just want to use them, it's probably just going to be annoying. But what if those words, for example, were a part of a certain character's speech? Then it would help shape the character as something, would make it all more authentic. Because the characters, in spite of being just some sort of archetype with certain quirks glued onto them with copious amounts of metaphorical instant glue, have to be seen as people too.

Furthermore, if those words were only present if that character is slipping and they did not exactly match what the character is supposed to be, it presents an unknown element, a mystery. One that can enhance the story if taken care of properly. Because we all know that regardless of where the story is place, regardless of what world it is, speech patterns heavily depend on the caste the character in question belongs or had belonged to.

And as for swear words, well ... if it's a science fiction or a fantasy story then you have the advantage of having a world in which things are already different, so be the thinking person and notice the fact that this would make the slang, including swear words, different in those worlds. And for as long as you don't explain what they mean, swear words that are such in the in-story language but don't mean anything in the language the story is released in, seem to be fine regardless of the rating (though, of course, if the characters swearing all the time are main characters then the plot is likely one that would warrant a rating equivalent to "T" or higher anyway).

In any case, there's also the matter of the intended audience. If the story is created with adult readers in mind, then you don't need the lowest ratings, really. "T" is fine enough, and sometimes even "M" isn't bad. Not that this stops teenagers from reading such works, mind you; I'd know something about that, there are cases where I didn't even get weird looks when trying to check such a book out in a library (though that might have had something to do with the fact that most of the books of that sort I'd checked were not vulgar but simply too heavy for most people my age to understand, and I had a history of checking out increasingly heavy books of that sort). Anyway, the point is, if the story is generally intended for people no younger than a certain age anyway, then you probably don't have to worry about including things that would up the rating to that age.

edited 12th Jan '15 9:16:40 AM by Kazeto

I saw the thread title and thought you were talking about me.

Since I use frequent swearwords and hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian ones I'm personally not troubled by either in books and also put both in my own stories.

Mind you, I'm writing because I enjoy it, not because I expect to launch the next Harry-Potter-esque craze.

edited 12th Jan '15 11:04:24 AM by Wolf1066

>> Mind you, I'm writing because I enjoy it, not because I expect to launch the next Harry-Potter-esque craze.

Don't we all, though?

I mean, as far as I know, if someone wasn't writing because they enjoyed it with revenue being just a possible pleasant bonus, they wouldn't be able to write it in a way that would have the end result sold at all.

Stephen King is probably one of the biggest cluster F bomber in all of literature and look how successful he is.

I write in a florid language very often, but I almost never use swear words. I don't know why, it just feels inapropriate. Which is ironic because I write about death, murder, mayhem and often use very gory descriptions of battle and its many happenings, but not one swear word. You could say I have a Double Standard: A man may have his skull cleaved by a war-axe and then his skull collapses messily into two halves of bone and blood, but he may not say "fuck" before dying.

Then again, some people generally don't use swear words often, or even not at all. So if those characters are ones of this sort, there isn't really anything wrong about them not swearing even in such situations and it'll feel right for them to behave the way they do.

I write characters who don't swear - or swear so infrequently that if they utter "fuck" it's your cue to run for cover because all hell is about to break loose - and others for whom "pretty fuckin' hot out there, ain't it" is "polite conversation" and "he's a good cunt" is an acceptable compliment.

I tend to take the view that "People who kill people are not given to saying 'poo' and 'gosh'" and consequently many of my characters swear - including those who don't kill people.

If that limits my audience and nets me an "M" rating rather than a "T" or ends up with "Rated R16+ for Violence, Supernatural Themes, Swearing, Smoking and having a garish cover" plastered on it, so be it.

I'm not going to get my nose out of joint if someone says "hey, we market books to kids, we're not interested" - that's their right.

"People who kill people are not given to saying 'poo' and 'gosh'"

That provided me with a hilarious mental picture of a sociopathic executioner with a blood bath origin who has no qualms about beheading somebody, but responding to threatening or surprising situations with "Gee whizz!" and "I can't handle this poo anymore!"

Ah, objective achieved.

edited 12th Jan '15 7:59:17 PM by Wolf1066

The way I see things, good writing is about recognizing the effects of all your possible choices and then picking the ones that best suit your intentions.

Some people think swear words are inherently cool, others think it's morally wrong to use them. Some think brevity and simplicity are necessarily virtues, others think the same about sophistication. Them folks are all pedestrian gosh-darned fuckwits.

Whenever you feel like inserting a swear word or an obscure term, think about whether it adds to or detracts from whatever you're writing, and make your choice accordingly.

edited 13th Jan '15 10:41:50 AM by ArtisticPlatypus