Swearing in MG, what's okay and what's not?

May I suggest 'crud' for 'crap' instead of 'carp' - using 'carp' may be leave readers wondering why your characters keep talking about fish

My personal opinion is I wouldn't use carp. Like Stylo said, it looks like a fishy typo. Also, is crap not okay to use? I would have thought it would be okay as it already is a euphemism for 'shit'. I use crap once or twice in my current ms and haven't been asked to change it yet.

Personally, I don't think much is wrong with 'frikkin' or 'friggin'. When I've edited, however, I usually found them less necessary than I first thought, and found better ways to convey the emotion associated with them. I'm would suggest making sure they are absolutely necessary. A little bit of friggin' can have more impact than a lot.

That being said, I do tend to feel there's nothing wrong with the occasional damn or hell in MG, but I think my opinions fall a bit too far on the hell yeah use some friggin' profanity. Many people seem to feel otherwise, however, so I try to control myself and keep my characters from swearing. If they really need to swear, I go with 'he/she cursed'.

A loooooooong time ago, while in middle school myself, I read a book with the word "damn" in it. Can't for the life of me remember which book it was, but it was MG level, and I remember thinking "ohmygodtheysaiddamnandI'mreadingthisallbymyselfandnooneknows!"

Really though, I think one of the adults or older kid characters in the book said it. I was ok with it, my parents were ok with it. But I know a lot of people aren't. I'm personally using "crud" in my WIP right now. (Pizzle and carp sound a bit silly though) Frikkin' isn't my favorite either, and I would think that most MGers these days would know what that means..

Maybe reorganize a scene where there would be a swear word by having your MC comment that his friend (who might normally curse in a tense or trying situation) "listed off every swear word he knew." Something alluding to the cursing, just not actually saying the words.

Personally , in MG I would rather avoid using any swear words or similar phrasing. I can imagine using 'crap' and possibly 'friggin'' in YA writing but I don't see the need for younger children to be using those words or alluding to those words. Lets face it, there's very little time for innocence in books before an exposure to a lifetime of cursing. Maybe i'm just old fashioned!

Drachen Jager said:

Writing a new MG project and I find I'm using "frikkin" a lot.

What say ye? Is it MG-friendly or not? I mean, you and I know it's evasive swearing for something else, but 12 year olds don't.

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Many 12 year olds know, and so do their parents. Frikkin has hit the point where it qualifies as a swear word of its own. The cleaned up substitute would be "freaking."

How about making up a swear word unique to your story? Those can be a lot of fun. If this is the dragon fantasy, you should have a lot of opportunity for dragon-themed expletives. Preferably ones that doesn't rhyme with -king.

I'm struggling with this as well. I naturally write with a lot of cursing and this is forcing me to rethink much of my own voice - which I think is probably a necessary step for my writing.

I can't remember where I read it, but some blog somewhere suggested book themed curse words. So, if your book has dark caves, "Oh bats!" or "Guano!," or if you book is about baseball, "Foul ball!" I dunno. It helped me come up with something to use in my current MG, though after the negative feedback in SYW I suspect I'm actually not a MG writer, so take with a grain of salt.

I'm pretty sure twelve year olds know what frikkin is a substitute for. I wouldn't have thought much of seeing it in a book, but some kids and parents might.

I feel like you might be able to get away with "lesser" swear words like hell and damn in upper MG. After all, it's nothing worse than kids hear from other kids every day at middle school, and at that age, the parents are exerting less control over their kids' reading.

I remember J.K. Rowling using some light swearing in books 3 and 4, which would be the upper MG portion of the series. You could argue that book 5 is also upper MG, though it's making the transition into YA, and the phrase "enough effing owls" shows up in that book. Of course, we all know Uncle Vernon didn't say effing. He said the actual world.

Fizgig said:

I can't remember where I read it, but some blog somewhere suggested book themed curse words. So, if your book has dark caves, "Oh bats!" or "Guano!," or if you book is about baseball, "Foul ball!" I dunno. It helped me come up with something to use in my current MG, though after the negative feedback in SYW I suspect I'm actually not a MG writer, so take with a grain of salt.

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Hey there Fizgig, this is a bit off topic, but what the heck... a lot of the crit you received was not audience specific, but involved pacing and clarity issues that will be important no matter who your audience is. That probably sounds harsh - if you were thinking, "Oh, I just need a different audience," I'm saying I don't think that is the case. And yet it is also meant to be encouraging, because I also did not see anything holding you back from pursuing MG writing if that is your desire. At worst you might need to shift to YA depending on how dark your story turns out to be.

Crit can be overwhelming and discouraging even when it is constructive. The intent of the person giving it should always be to help the recipient, but it isn't always easy to tell how much the writer is ready to hear. And yet if you can put yourself in the right frame of mind, crit can really be inspiring because it's a glimpse into how people perceive your work vs what you intended when you wrote it.

I haven't posted to SYW yet, but I have been the recipient of crit elsewhere. Before I went through the process, I had this idea that once I got reader reactions, I would go away knowing how to fix every weak spot in my writing. Sadly, it didn't work that way! Sometimes a skilled critic can make an astute observation that clarifies everything instantly, but more often I'm left with the gulf between my intent and someone else's perceptions, and I don't know how to close it. But figuring out how to close that gulf is part of the process, just like learning to muddle through to the end of that first rough draft is part of it.

What I'm really trying to say here is hang in there! Bear in mind that a truly negative reaction would be nobody bothering to respond at all.

In your last SYW message, you asked some specific questions. I hesitated to answer because they were not directed at me. But if you like, I would be happy to offer my opinion on them.

Again, hang in there. IIRC you posted a WIP. In general, don't overanalyze while in the middle of a project. Tuck away the parts of the crit that made sense, and move forward.

Personally I'd avoid 'frikkin' - probably because it's so close to what it's a substitute for. It's pretty thinly veiled in my opinion. 'Freaking' I'd have more tolerance for in upper MG... but that's because I associate it more with 'freaked' than the original swear it stands in for.

Overall in my own MG stuff, I prefer made-up swears. I think they bring more personality to the page than existing curses - they can say more about character and they stick in a reader's mind.

(Tangent: I'll never forget sitting in a doctor's surgery and hearing an eight-year-old call his mother an 'infernal troglodyte')

Pizzle doesn't sit right for me at all. Carp... it could work, perhaps, but I think you're in danger of it looking like a typo... "Holy carp!" ... I think it would have to be world/character-relevant to feel right (so for an under-the-sea adventure, great... but something else, maybe not).

Middle grade readers are ages 8-12. My nine year old might know the words, but he'd never use them any more than he'd use other vocabulary appropriate to a 12 year old. Understanding what you hear is different than having it in your regular lexicon. Of course, if his parents cursed all the time that would change things. Some kids also go through a period where they experiment with saying the words to see what the consequences are.

I have once or twice called my 12 year old out for using a substitute word. As far as I know she and her friends don't curse. I don't expect that to last much longer.

The exact age and background of your characters go to believability here. It's not about your voice, it's about theirs.

I can't see using carp unless it is a family or group joke. I know five year olds who think piss is the actual name for urine, so I don't know that you need to change it. Fricken, friggen, and freakin are all sub words.

For things like this, I always ask myself if another word will do. If it will, I use it. If not, I go with the character. Let an editor argue about it later and remove if their argument is compelling enough.

You can also just say that the character swore.

In my upper MG fantasy, I know a bad guy swears in the middle of a battle. I just say that he swore.

There's another time where one of my major characters swears. I just wrote: Melissa mouthed a word that would have gotten her grounded had her parents heard it.

RWM's suggestion is great. That or invent "bad" words.

I talked to a published MG author several months ago who said that, at least with his publisher / editor (one of the Big Six), they've become more and more conservative with what they will allow in MG as far as swearing and romance. Violence was fine, so much as the main characters didn't kiss on the lips or say anything bad. That was just one author's experience with one publisher, but it's stuck with me.

bagels said:

RWM's suggestion is great. That or invent "bad" words.

I talked to a published MG author several months ago who said that, at least with his publisher / editor (one of the Big Six), they've become more and more conservative with what they will allow in MG as far as swearing and romance. Violence was fine, so much as the main characters didn't kiss on the lips or say anything bad. That was just one author's experience with one publisher, but it's stuck with me.

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I find that so strange. It's okay for kids to be exposed to violence, but God forbid that two characters kiss or that someone says damn. That makes me glad that my series starts out at the upper end of MG and transitions into YA. I think I'll be able to get away with more, especially later on.

Yeah, its interesting how far apart MG and YA can be.

YA: F-bombs, drinking, serious violence, sex... is all just fine. MG, they can't kiss or cuss at all? Its a big gap.

Sage said:

Really? Kissing? A small little first kiss during first love isn't okay? So sad

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I know! I'm hoping it's changed since the author dealt with it. It boggles my mind.

Here's the story: Apparently the publisher had just dealt with a parents' group who was threatening to sue over a kiss between junior high students in a recently-published book. Those parents found it inappropriate and even though they were a minority, they were a very vocal minority, and the "no kissing" edict was put into place in an attempt to stave off any future boycotts and/or lawsuits.

Although, given the uproar over the word scrotum in "A Higher Power of Lucky," I'm thinking proceeding cautiously is the best way to go.

It's not across the board. FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, NATE has not only a kiss, but a gay kiss. And uses the word fag. (Probably also damn and hell, but I can't remember the specifics.)

Proceed carefully, but be true to the voice of the piece. Like you said, it's not going to make or break the manuscript.

But as for this:

Drachen Jager said:

Writing a new MG project and I find I'm using "frikkin" a lot. Is it MG-friendly or not? I mean, you and I know it's evasive swearing for something else, but 12 year olds don't.

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Of course they do. Now, when my 3 year old says frickin' HE doesn't know its origins. But a 12 year old? I'm guessing at least nine out of ten.

I can't really comment on the whole swearing issue. I think it might be taken more seriously in the US than it is in Australia. Here, most the words that have been listed are just considered adjectives...

Having said that, 'frikken' is a bit of a meh type of word. It's kind of dismissive. "Freakin'" has a lot more umph to it in my opinion. Personally I like 'feck', but I've always had a thing for the Irish.

I think 'carp' would be irritating to read out of context.

Drachen Jager said:

In my experience, groups who try to sue/boycott over such minor things as mild swearwords or a kiss don't tend to mind the use of derogatory language for groups they find objectionable (as I suspect would be the case here).

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Sure, that's true, but my point is that Simon & Schuster wasn't scared off by either language OR content that they knew could rile some people up because it was faithful to the voice and story in an excellent book. (And some people have predictably been riled up by Federle's books, but he's mostly gotten amazing reviews and awards, so I think publishers take these things on a case by case basis.)

I'm on the side of not having cuss words in MG. This is less an editor/publisher thing than my preference though. I cuss a lot in real life. However, I don't cuss in front of people under 12. That includes my own kids. It's a personal choice. My teens were allowed to cuss to their hearts' were content once they hit 12 with the understanding that there are "acceptable & unacceptable venues" to do so. Therefore, in my books for readers under 12, I don't use real or fake cuss words. In my YA, which is for teens, I have yet to write a book without cussing.

If anything it bugs me MORE than it does my editor in MG though . . .

I angst on things like Hel (the Norse afterworld), the "cock crowed" (which is more appropriate phrasing when quoting a prophecy) because they raise euphemism issues. My editors (Little, Brown US & Atom/Hachette UK) were fine with these, however.

For actual expressions of cussing, co-author & I have used these:

in LOKI'S WOLVES:

In ODIN'S RAVENS:

As to the oft-mentioned "violence is okay" thing, I have to say that our US editor had issues with violence in one place in both of the 1st 2 books.

She had no issue with a kiss (on the cheek) or the way we handled cuss words OR the words that could be read as euphemisms. I think that "language isn't ok, but violence is" has become one of those topics we toss around a lot. In my experience & in chatting with other authors, there is no unified response on this from publishers.

RANDOM NOTES in re: THE THREAD:
Some authors cited in the examples are "above the law." JKR, by the point of those later books, could make her own rules.

Note that there are potential consequences if you use cuss words--school & library market being the potentially big one, & in MG that's a critical market. If however those consequences aren't as important as the inclusion of those words, then it's immaterial

Melissa_Marr said:

I'm on the side of not having cuss words in MG. This is less an editor/publisher thing than my preference though. I cuss a lot in real life. However, I don't cuss in front of people under 12. That includes my own kids. It's a personal choice. My teens were allowed to cuss to their hearts' were content once they hit 12 with the understanding that there are "acceptable & unacceptable venues" to do so. Therefore, in my books for readers under 12, I don't use real or fake cuss words. In my YA, which is for teens, I have yet to write a book without cussing.

If anything it bugs me MORE than it does my editor in MG though . . .

I angst on things like Hel (the Norse afterworld), the "cock crowed" (which is more appropriate phrasing when quoting a prophecy) because they raise euphemism issues. My editors (Little, Brown US & Atom/Hachette UK) were fine with these, however.

For actual expressions of cussing, co-author & I have used these:

in LOKI'S WOLVES:

Then Fen swore under his breath.

“You’re one crazy—”
The wind whipped his last word away.​

In ODIN'S RAVENS:

The dead Viking snarled and bellowed curses, calling Fen a shaggy hair, a bread nose, a half troll, and a pot licker.

“Hrafnasveltir!” one of the old Vikings bellowed. [NOTE: Note this means raven-starver, i.e. coward]
​

As to the oft-mentioned "violence is okay" thing, I have to say that our US editor had issues with violence in one place in both of the 1st 2 books.

". . . a bit dark to have the heroes amputate an arm, even though it's a monster."

". . . will this scene [a river of zombies, drowning, and fight] be too violent for readers?"​

She had no issue with a kiss (on the cheek) or the way we handled cuss words OR the words that could be read as euphemisms. I think that "language isn't ok, but violence is" has become one of those topics we toss around a lot. In my experience & in chatting with other authors, there is no unified response on this from publishers.

RANDOM NOTES in re: THE THREAD:
Some authors cited in the examples are "above the law." JKR, by the point of those later books, could make her own rules.

Note that there are potential consequences if you use cuss words--school & library market being the potentially big one, & in MG that's a critical market. If however those consequences aren't as important as the inclusion of those words, then it's immaterial

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This is very interesting. I would have stressed about 'Hel' also. I've wondered what to do when there is the notion of 'hell' in MG. Somehow, 'down there' doesn't sound quite right to me. I'm glad the editors were alright with Hel for the Norse afterlife.

With regards to this thread, I hadn't considered the school and library market. I'm not sure I'd risk losing those over a swear word, and although I'm not against an occasional damn or hell, I try to just take all such words out when I edit. I've never thought of crap as a swear, however. Among the people I know, it's not considered one.

I actually think I stress more about violence. It seems like it has to be handled carefully in this age group. Plus, I want to responsible with how I write, but I also like some of action and violence in a story and always have