To curse or not to Curse...that is the question

mellymel · Nov 14, 2015

Hey guys!

I know we've talked about cursing to death over the years, but I'm struggling with what to do with my MS that I'm currently reading through. I queried it about two years ago, but only to a small handful of agents (maybe 10?) and didn't get any bites on it. I was already in an icky place emotionally at the time, so I put the novel aside and decided it wasn't a good time for me to query as I wasn't in a place mentally to handle rejections.

The story is a psychological thriller (upper YA) about a girl being stalked by her ex-boyfriend. My concern is that even in the opening chapter, there are a lot of curses. I mean, not like every other word, but the F bomb is thrown in there several times as the scene starts with a high school party in a basement and the MC's boyfriend (not yet her ex) somehow discovers she went to the party and shows up and a fight ensues between her boyfriend and her BFFs boyfriend. The curses feel natural to me and I can't imagine a bunch of H.S. teens having an argument/fight and saying "hell" and "damn" only. I hear the way teens talk when adults aren't around and I clearly remember the way me and my friends talked in H.S. and beyond. So, this brings me to my dilemma about whether I will be turning agents off by having all these curses in the opening chapter. I can change the curses if I must, but when I read it as such, it just doesn't sound real to me or give the same emphasis/feel to the scene that I'm going for. Also, the MC's BFF and her boyfriend are major potty mouths as part of their characterization and it's addressed in the novel and something they actively work on (they implement a swear jar--not for Bud Light but to put toward renting a limo for prom night), but again, is it too much for agents/readers? I could take out that little subplot of the cursing characters/swear jar, but must I? (I know I don't have to do anything, but I want to increase the MS's chances.)

Thanks for your thoughts.

Loverofwords · Nov 14, 2015

So, I'm torn. I've read books where curses were kept to a minimum and books were they covered the pages. I enjoyed both kinds of books equally, so it didn't really bother me.

However, I've read that curses and such should be necessary. You shouldn't throw them out all willy-nilly and expect it to shine like a diamond. Are you really sure it's necessary to have that many F bombs in a single scene? If you think so, then definitely keep them. If you don't think so, then maybe you should rethink your decision. Of course, it's all up to you. You're the writer and it's your book. You should do whatever you wish.

lenore_x · Nov 14, 2015

I don't know how helpful my anecdote is, but here goes: the YA contemporary I shopped had two MCs who cursed like sailors. Just did a search, it was a 50k manuscript and there are 68 instances of fuck (five of them in the first 15 pages) and 23 instances of shit (two in the first 15). I already had an agent at the time, but of the dozen or so editors who read it, not one said anything about the swearing.

I mean, it should fit the voice and not just be there for shock value, but from what you've described it sounds like that's not something you need to worry about.

CuddlyClementine · Nov 14, 2015

I only have a readers perspective to offer to this.

When I was reading YA books without swear words I would always feel despondent. I was a frequent swearer, even in front of adults, and when there were a lot of "hecks", "damns" and "goshdarnits" it was like the book was trying to shelter me from what I already knew. Back then I didn't much like a piece of paper trying to coddle me, so I would replace the swears in my head as I read.

mellymel · Nov 14, 2015

Thank you to those who have responded! The cursing is not at all gratuitous and I've tried writing the scene with cleaner substitutions but it usually sounds dumb and fake to me--like I'm purposefully trying to change them to be all, LOOK AT ME I CAN WRITE A BOOK FOR TEENS WITH NO CURSES! I have written MSS where there are no curses and others that have. When I can substitute a curse word for something else without it changing the overall feel of what's being said or what's true to the scene, I always do. I have been told by many beta readers that I do dialogue very well and I believe it's because I try to keep true to the voices of the characters and make them speak the way teens actually speak. And we all know that teens speak in all different ways, so there's no one right way. I guess I just wasn't sure if agents are generally turned off by it when it's a book from an unknown/unpublished author.

Thanks again for your thoughts and support.

DoNoKharms · Nov 14, 2015

Having had to write gritty crime stories in a PG-13 framework for a couple of years, I can tell you that you absolutely you can create harsh, vivid, realistic worlds without profanity, but it's a matter of finesse and execution. One mistake a lot of newer writers make is exactly what you described, substitution, where you write the line as you would with the profanity but swap in a softer word, like 'heck' for 'hell'. This *never* works and always comes off, like CuddlyClementine said, as forced and patronizing.

The trick is to write the dialogue in such a way that you communicate the same intent and emphasis as you would with the F-bomb, but in such a way that it flows organically without a substitution. This is tricky to learn, but once you've got the hang of it, you can do it really easily. If you want to see how it's done, watch any well-written show about crime that's not on premium cable. Breaking Bad, for example, manages to take us into the worlds of brutal cartels and low-level thugs and meth-head prostitutes and murderous Neo-Nazis and makes them all feel believable, all while heeding to basic cable standards.

Having said all that, that's just a tip if you decide to go the PG route. There's tons and tons of YA (my novel included) that goes harsher.

mellymel · Nov 14, 2015

That's an interesting point, DoNoKharms. I have not seen Breaking Bad but will perhaps watch an episode as research. I do watch Scream Queens, but there is a good amount of profanity and other harsh, slut-shaming words used. They pretty much use every word but the F word.

Sage · Nov 14, 2015

I was thinking about this when working on my Wattpad project. There is a mature vs. not mature rating for Wattpad, and I haven't figure out exactly how far you can go with swearing and stay out of "mature." My inspiration is Buffy, and there's very little swearing on Buffy, and except when they're making fun of it, very few substitute swear words either. And I started wondering how you have a setting where things jump out at you in the dark or attack you or actually hurt you or kill your best friend, and yet you can't swear. But it feels very natural in Buffy, and while watching it, I don't feel like it's unrealistic because they don't say the F-word every five seconds. Likewise, I used to hardly swear at all, and it was equally natural for me to write without my characters swearing. But since then, I've had plenty of swearing characters (still no f-word), and so trying to go back to not using those curse words is feeling more unnatural. Probably a sad statement on my ability as a writer to get around that problem, tbh.

That said, if your character would curse, let them curse. This is YA. Hannah Moskowitz's editor added another use of the F-word into Break, and she already had it in there 80-something times.

Sollluna · Nov 14, 2015

As others have said, you can curse or get the same meaning across without curse words. However, whichever way you're going embrace it fully. If the characters swear, have them really swear.

Recently read a book, written in first person, where the POV character doesn't like swearing because her mom didn't like swearing. There was a lot of swearing in the story, but instead of actually swearing, "butterfly" was used instead. It replaced all swear words, but from context it was pretty easy to figure out what the actual world should be.
Based on review, there were a number of readers who agreed this was not the right approach.

mellymel · Nov 14, 2015

Well, I just decided to copy the document and renamed it with the title plus the words, "LESS CURSING". LOL I Just want to try it out because I do believe that if I CAN write it without the curses while still getting across the overall feel of the story and the very important plot of the story (being stalked--which I briefly was, so some of it is based on a real-life circumstance), then I hope to appeal to a larger audience. I don't think people will choose not to read a book because it doesn't have lots of cursing in it, but I do believe having lots of cursing in it can be a reason some will not choose to read it. I like the idea of trying to reword the overall lines/sentences (rather than just substituting a word for another word) so the feel of the emotion is still there. It will require some readjustment for the secondary character, but it's not THAT big a deal.

eparadysz · Nov 14, 2015

I read a book a while back that actually used "f---" and "f---ing", with the dashes, and they were used a good deal. It was weird--I fill it in in my head anyway when I'm reading, so what's the point? And there was a lot of "edgy" content in that book (H0w to L1ve a L1fe 0f Cr1me), so I don't know why they thought those words were too much. Not to mention another F-word, nastier IMO, used as an epithet, was spelled out. :Shrug:

Fuchsia Groan · Nov 16, 2015

I recently read a YA book where all the characters said "effing" and "what the eff," and it really annoyed me. But that's because I've never heard a person make that substitution IRL. I imagine some do, but it's hard to imagine a whole group of teens talking that way unless they're all committed to not swearing for some reason.

My book had 11 fucks when I submitted it. No one ever mentioned the swearing, though I did end up taking out a few of them to give the remaining ones more impact. (Breaking Bad did have the occasional fuck, which you can hear in all its glory on Netflix. But AMC permitted only a couple per season, so they had to choose carefully.)

And I just finished reading an ARC of a YA book with a ton of swearing, starting pretty early on. It went to auction. I think the type of book and who's doing the swearing probably matter; it helps if the cussing characters are not presented as role models. There are some GR reviewers who will lament any amount of swearing for any reason in a YA book, but that does not seem to be the norm.

Niiicola · Nov 17, 2015

Fuchsia Groan said:
I recently read a YA book where all the characters said "effing" and "what the eff," and it really annoyed me. But that's because I've never heard a person make that substitution IRL.

*Raises hand* But that's only because people don't swear at my office and I have to temper my natural inclination to swear a lot. I also make a lot of last-minute mid-word substitutions around my kids.

I did once have MC who creatively non-swore because she was a total goody two shoes, and I had fun making up expressions for her. She was balanced out by another character who swore like a sailor.

I'm all for swearing, to be honest, but it seems like most of the super big YA books are pretty swear-free. I guess that's a conscious choice so they won't get banned or shunned by conservative parents?

Putputt · Nov 17, 2015

My personal experience with swearing in YA...
When I was querying, one agent rejected me based on three reasons. One of the reasons was the swearing. She said there was so much of it she feared it would make the book a hard sell. I was open to editing out all the F bombs, but before I had a chance to, I received an offer, and then more offers came in. So in the end, the swearing turned off one agent but more agents did not mind it. After signing with my current agents, I went through the MS while editing it and substituted out some of the swearing which I thought weren't absolutely necessary. I left most of it intact though, since my agents didn't mention swearing at all.

In the end, I think you should do what you're comfortable with.

I went to a Catholic school in a conservative Asian country and my friends and I still dropped the occasional F bombs...so swearing came naturally for me as I wrote the story. But if an agent were to ask for an R&R for one without curse words, I'd find a way around it. Maybe change some of the actual dialogue to stuff like "She muttered a curse" or switch some of the F bombs to "what the hell" or even "what the--" There are ways around it. It's not really something that would make or break the book for me.

Travis Kerr · Nov 17, 2015

Generally as a rule I tend to keep cursing to a minimum myself, and most of my writing is not really young adult at all. This is just a personal preference though for my particular style, and not something that would be right for everyone. There are some people out there that are put off by prolific use of profanity, while there are others that curse with every other word. Neither is wrong, in my never so humble opinion.

I would say that it is not really up to you, but to the character. If you have a character that curses often, or one that curses in extreme situations which are bound to happen in the story, there is nothing wrong with depicting that character speaking with their natural manner. I've seen hundreds of books that have prolific curses, and only one of two have put me off of the book because of it. It wasn't the word itself that did so, but the simple fact that it just didn't feel natural for the character to curse in that situation, and it felt forced. Anything a character says or does should feel natural. don't curse for the sake of cursing, curse if and when your character would do so.

Travis Kerr · Nov 17, 2015

Another thing you might want to keep in mind is situation. For instance, someone might curse all the time with their friends, only when they are angry when talking to their parents, and never at all when talking to their grandparents. This is true for myself, and I'm sure is probably true for most people. If you have a character that acts otherwise, that character is bound to be put through the same sorts of disrespect that any person would be put through when doing the same thing.

DoNoKharms · Nov 17, 2015

If it's a helpful data point, my debut group forum has a thread about this, and so far we have 7 YA writers with moderate-to-heavy cursing and only 1 with none. So there's still plenty of swear-heavy YA selling.

lenore_x · Nov 17, 2015

Niiicola said:
I did once have MC who creatively non-swore because she was a total goody two shoes, and I had fun making up expressions for her.

I did this too! I had a beta or two critique it on the grounds that "no one actually says [those things]." I stand by it.

I too say "what the eff" sometimes, and I say frick and frig, and I say fuck as well, because variety is fun.

Travis Kerr · Nov 23, 2015

While, as I have said, I don't generally curse in my writing, I can say with certainly that I never use a false curse or a shortening. Writing something like "what the eff?" to me doesn't make sense. People don't generally talk like that, at least no one I know of. I have never heard a single person ever say that (though in today's youth where the phrase hashtag has actually been spoken out loud by at least two people that I know of, you never know). If I'm going to have a character curse, they are going to do so, unless there is a good reason for them to do otherwise. I've seen many television shows (particularly sci-fi) where the entire population uses offshoots of curses to get by the rules of the networks, but let's face it; it's funny for the first episode or so, and then it just starts to look stupid, followed shortly by simply being annoying.

Cobalt Jade · Nov 23, 2015

Didn't the Maze Runner series have a set of fake curses that was fairly ridiculous?

I also have to laugh at Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series where the characters say "Shards!" instead of "Shit!"

Anberlin · Dec 1, 2015

I actually had this conversation with my husband recently.

I think that it's important to be realistic and, in real life people (especially teenagers) curse. I was tempted to put a few curse words into my story, because I felt like the situations warranted curse words.

My husband mentioned to me that regardless of whether or not someone would curse in that situation in real life, curse words tend to jump off the page. When readers, especially young ones, read a curse word it tends to stick in their minds and pull them out of the world of the book. I don't know if this is true for everyone, but thinking back on my younger years, I found that it was true. I can remember times when I read a curse word in a book and it made me pause. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I think my goal is for everything to flow, I don't want anything in my novel to make a reader stop and think about the word choice.
In the end, I'm finding that it is possible to convey the same emotions without curse words through character actions and different words.
At the same time, though, I have read several novels where the cursing made the book what it was. It wouldn't have been as realistic or affect me the same way without it.

I guess it all comes down to whether or not it NEEDS to be there. And, at the end of it all, you are the best person to decide.

Samsonet · Dec 1, 2015

*is kinda embarrassed to admit this* Yeah, it sticks in my head. Not like "OOOOOH they did the SWEARING" but like. Does anyone else have that thing where words just repeat in your head and you can't shut them up? Like an earworm, except it's your subconscious cursing you out? Is that weird?

(This isn't to say writers shouldn't curse, just why I don't like reading books with cursing.)

frimble3 · Dec 1, 2015

I would suspect that, like Putputt's example, if an agent or publisher generally likes the book, but not the swearing, it would be a relatively easy fix. What would they really rather buy: good plot, interesting characters, but swearing, or rambling plot, boring characters, but absolutely clean?

Roxxsmom · Dec 1, 2015

Cobalt Jade said:
Didn't the Maze Runner series have a set of fake curses that was fairly ridiculous?

I also have to laugh at Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series where the characters say "Shards!" instead of "Shit!"

I've seen less of this in recently published fantasy and SF novels, though a made-up curse can work well if it really rolls off the tongue and fits the fantasy culture well. I've tried to come up with some alternatives to "hell" and "damn" for the cultures that don't really have the concept of these things, for instance.

I think "shit" is one that almost every culture has an equivalent of, though. Everyone has a concept of feces and doesn't think it's a nice thing. The precise word used for everyday reference versus a cruder one changes, of course. In our language, the words poo, poop, crap, muck, feces, stools, doo doo, dooky, and shit all mean the same thing, but they don't carry the same emotional weight. I believe that the actual word "shit" wasn't always as profane as it is now, however, more like saying "crap," or even just "feces," back then. I've no idea what they might have used as the equivalent of today's use of "shit" when they wanted to be rude in middle English, however.

The thing is, it can be hard to get the same punch with a made-up or milder (in our terms) word for excrement (or sex in the case of "fuck.") Having someone yelling, "poltz," for instance, or "muck" just doesn't create the same feel. Might work for a kids book, or one written for a religious audience where profanity is forbidden. But seems a bit silly or "delicate" in a book written for mainstream adults these days.

But since I write secondary-world fantasy, I tend to assume we're translating whatever language is spoken in that world into something approaching modern English, sans anachronisms, modern colloquialisms or slang. So my characters just say "shit" when they want an earthy word for feces, and "fuck" when they want an earthy word for intercourse. Some characters are less comfortable with those words, but that's an aspect of the voice and personality.

m.f.alira · Dec 7, 2015

Personally I'm not a fan of books that show a lot of swear words- mainly the F word, but there are a lot of people that do enjoy the usage of such words. However it boils down to one thing, know your market. If your readers are open to the use of the F word every page or so, then by all means use it.

To curse or not to Curse...that is the question

mellymel

Loverofwords

lenore_x

CuddlyClementine

.

mellymel

DoNoKharms

mellymel

Sage

Supreme Guessinator

Sollluna

keyboards: useful for typing errors

mellymel

eparadysz

Fuchsia Groan

Becoming a laptop-human hybrid

Niiicola

Twitchy

Putputt

permanently suctioned to Buz's leg

Travis Kerr

Travis Kerr

DoNoKharms

lenore_x

Travis Kerr

Cobalt Jade

Anberlin

Samsonet

Just visiting

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

m.f.alira