Swearing in books

[j. d. worthington]

It depends on how much there is of it and how extreme it is. Such, if used properly, can add to character, it can also lighten things at particularly grim moments, if the expletives are a bit odd. I wouldn't just pepper his language with the harshest terms, but a lot of characters in fiction use such words a fair amount... they just don't tend to be the ones that modern people find all that offensive when they're used that much, unless it's really necessary to drive home a point about that character and make him (or her) thoroughly unpleasant....

[Lith]

My personal opinion is that fantasy isn't the best setting for copious amounts of bad language, because it's just too contemporary. But perhaps an editor would be a better person to ask?

Because even if it doesn't work for most stories, it doesn't mean it couldn't be pulled off.

[Spectrum]

To quote an example, George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire uses the dreaded F-word a lot, and it works perfectly well in his setting.

[Talysia]

Originally Posted by Lith

My personal opinion is that fantasy isn't the best setting for copious amounts of bad language, because it's just too contemporary. But perhaps an editor would be a better person to ask?

Because even if it doesn't work for most stories, it doesn't mean it couldn't be pulled off.

This is more or less how I feel about it. I read more fantasy, so seeing a lot of swearing doesn't seem to fit (in my opinion, at least). The one exception I can think of is when an author makes up a set of swear words based around the culture and setting of the fantasy world they've created. I don't mind seeing bad language in books, but in certain settings/situations it doesn't feel right to me.

[quidscribis]

There was one book I read about a decade ago that had so much useless gratuitous profanity that I ended up getting so fed up with it that I grabbed a black felt marker and started blacking them out. It was pretty shocking seeing how many black marks there ended up being. Of course, I gave up after a few pages or so, both blacking it out and reading it.

I'm pretty sure it was a Ludlum, so possibly the one mentioned further upstream, although I wouldn't swear to it on a stack of Bibles.

Occasional profanity I can handle. Gratuitous everywhere profanity? I won't even read it. To me, it feels like laziness on the part of the writer.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Talysia

This is more or less how I feel about it. I read more fantasy, so seeing a lot of swearing doesn't seem to fit (in my opinion, at least). The one exception I can think of is when an author makes up a set of swear words based around the culture and setting of the fantasy world they've created. I don't mind seeing bad language in books, but in certain settings/situations it doesn't feel right to me.

This gets into what I was saying earlier... there is actually quite a lot of cursing and swearing in fantasy, but it isn't done using our contemporary words of this sort. It is modeled on the culture. I believe someone else brought up Conan's use of "Crom!" -- which was used in various ways in the stories (both by Howard and others: "Crom's beard!", etc.), which would be equivalent to a Christian using the word "God" as an expletive. Using older gods' names, or older words (bemerded, for instance, in Eddison, rather than a modern "covered in sh*t") allows for a fair amount of it... but as they aren't familiar in our society as cursewords, they almost become "white noise" or verbal coloring.

I do agree that, in most fantasy settings, it's a very dubious procedure to use contemporary curse or swear words, as they will seem out of place; other than that... try to make it realistic for that character, but don't go overboard....

[andrew.v.spencer]

Aragorn used to swear like a trooper off camera and off page, he just made sure none of it was in the media to sully his image in the Fourth age.

Also Frodo was the Shire's swearing champion five years in a row. And that's the twuth.

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

As I said, it's a dialectical variant that's been around for some time. (And, if you're interested in such things, the etymology of the "true" word, "fr*g", dates back to the 15th century; it's from a late Middle English word signifying "to quiver", and was originally used to mean to move about randomly; rub -- usage about 1425-75).

Thanks for the etymology, JD - I'm writing a book set in London in 1593, so I'm always on the lookout for good period swear-words. The Online Etymology Dictionary dates its use as a euphemism to 1598, but of course that refers only to written evidence, so I'm sure it was in use long before then. I have a book on my shelves that's devoted purely to "rude" words in Shakespeare ("Shakespeare's Bawdy", by Eric Partridge) - the number of euphemisms for sex and the sex trade is amazing, and some phrases ("on the game") are still in use today...

In my book, mostly I use Shakespearian-style insults ("thou mewling whey-faced aleworm"*), or bits of British English slang that don't sound too modern, like b-ll-cks. The F-word may be traceable as far back as the early 16th century in written records, but it does sound rather modern owing to the fact that it was banned in print until recent decades. OTOH it doesn't feel out of place in "The Lies of Locke Lamora", which has a quasi-historical setting that seems to me to fit somewhere between the 15th and 18th centuries, judging by the costume descriptions and overall level of technology. Since that seems to be the period when "swive", the main slang verb for copulation in the Middle Ages, was replaced by f---, that would make sense. If I do use f---, though, it certainly won't be in such abundance as in "Lies..."!

* the 'thou' is an important part of the insult, not a casual archaism - by the late-16th/early-17th century, it had become a by-word for name-calling:

"If thou thouest him some thrice, it shall not be amiss" (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night) - Sir Toby Belch, advising Sir Andrew Aguecheek on how to proceed in a duel, by beginnng with insults.

[j. d. worthington]

Well, let's see if I'll have to censor my own link here....

Online Etymology Dictionary

And yes, it appears that the earliest usage in print was around the early 16th century, but it was around much, much earlier... its origins are in doubt, as you can see when you look it up at that site, and it's closely related (in some derivations) to "fr*g", of course.

The thing to remember if using cursing in any fiction is to balance what is considered a curseword or swearing now and what was considered so at the period you're writing about. Words we view as such may simply have been the proper term for something in the original language and time, yet if they hit a modern reader as inappropriate, it can be jarring. It's a fine line one has to walk between the two....

[Hawke]

I agree with the contemporary argument, I find that words like Bast**d are ok in moderation...another point to consider is that if your fantasy story is set in another world apart from earth, and this can apply to general fantasy settings as well as science fiction, then who's to say how your world has developed to use bad language.

I've read authors such as Feist who've used the language used in the same sort of era e.g. "Jakes" in stead of the crapper or whatever, and that works well, but I've also read fantasy books with more modern swear words in it which also worked...its a matter of choice and whether it works for your particular book I suppose...