Use of bad language

[Hammerhand]

Wow, what an amazing response. Thanks guys, I think it's unanimous that I should go with what feels right. So far, I have one of the boys calling the other a ba***** when he had stitched him up in front of a teacher, and another occurrence where one of the older characters calls one of the boys a little sh** in frustration. I know it's hardly south park but I was worried even about those 2 occurrences, and there are maybe half a dozen more instances where I toned down the swearing with (almost comically rubbish) alternatives that I will probably revert to what my original feeling was.

Thanks for the support, I feel much better about it now.

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Originally Posted by Hammerhand

My WiP is based around some high school teens and invariably, confrontational language crops up. Now in reality I know the kids would be effing and jeffing but by writing it, it feels somehow like I'm somehow condoning it. I've tried to keep it tame but it just doesn't feel right.

What makes this more difficult, is that my novel is targeted at the YA/X-over market and I'm not sure that a publisher would entertain it as a book for that age group if it was full of swearing.

Has anyone got any 'strong' language that is less than blue but hard enough to be more than fiddlesticks, plonker, twit, jerk, flippin' 'eck and bloody hell? or should I just go with the language that feels right? it's in context and is by no means gratuitous.

Thanks in advance

HH

Twilight features a vampire chewing the fetus out of a pregnant woman. A few fucks, *****, and twats aren't going to raise eyebrows. If you replace real language with bowdlerized language you're not going to sell the piece except maybe to a hardcore Christian publisher. If that's what you're after, go for it. But 'fiddlesticks'? Don't. Just don't.

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by Fishbowl Helmet

... A few fucks, *****, and twats ...

MummEEE!

[David Evil Overlord]

Originally Posted by Karn Maeshalanadae

Wow, a little long-winded way of saying crap or damn, isn't it, DEO?

It is, but in my own WIP I have a character who has that happen to her on a regular basis, as her mother tries to clean up her dirty teenage mouth. Then, when the mother actually swears, you know something big and nasty just happened to make her forget all that morality (and soap) she's been shoving down her daughter's throat.

Usually, I've managed to avoid swearing. This particular WIP seems to call for some. So I do.

[Lilmizflashythang]

Really, Peter? The word for a young rooster is bleeped out? Well, I guess it could be worse, afterall Yahoo bleeps out the last three letters in "pass."

[AnyaKimlin]

I've had the first three letters of Cumbria bleeped out before. My YA character does use shi*t. crap. damn, bull etc alongside some world specific swear words and curses. Not a lot but when his uncle pees on him in the first chapter (MC is hiding behind a bush) using something other than a swear word felt inappropriate and it shaped his way of reacting to things.

[Boneman]

Yeah, fishbowl, how did you get those words past the censor???

[David Evil Overlord]

It was suggested Down Under that the proposed Government Internet Filter (to remove all those naughty words that might upset you, because they only happen on the internet and never in real life) would prevent Virginia from Scunthorpe sending emails to Australia because the filter would spot those naughty words cunningly concealed within those supposedly innocent words...

[Venusian Broon]

Wow Oz is getting a bit puritan, Virgin a naughty word?? We've got a company named that over here

Or is it in fact the word gin which has now taken on some despicable sexual connotation?

[David Evil Overlord]

I think it was the combination of Virgin and the part of the female anatomy that can be made from part of Scunthorpe that had the internet filter frothing at the mouth.

[Venusian Broon]

That's definitely a filter set to kill, not to stun, so to speak.

I do feel a little bit sorry for Scunthorpe in the internet age, it's been blocked for decades and must feel really quite lonely. And the name's got nothing to do with female anatomy either.

Plenty of real Gropec*** lanes in medieval England though - they just really weren't that imaginative when it came to naming a lot of things.

[David Evil Overlord]

I've heard about that. Don't know how many Gropec*** Lanes you could cram into a medieval-England-based fantasy world, even if your fantasy was set in Scunthorpe.

[Venusian Broon]

At least it makes it easier for the writer of medieval-based fantasies, because by just naming the street it worldbuilds as you go!