Dancing around swear words? (In a clean novel)

starrystorm

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I feel guilty writing this post since swearing is not something I do. I was never around anyone that swore growing up, by parents don't swear, and nobody I know does. I was always taught it was a bad thing, a sin at most. However, sometimes there are moments in my story that my characters get upset and they are the type of person that would swear.

My question is does words like heck, dang, and crap sound awkward when used in a YA book? Used lightly of course.

Another thing I like to do is just say "he cursed, she cursed, I cursed"

Sometimes I "dance" around swear words like. "Dang it!" Lewis punched the wall and proceeded to say worse things.

Are these methods acceptable in YA? I always use these methods lightly since I want to write clean books.
 
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pingle

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I think heck, dang etc are fine as long as they are true to the character. I don't know where your books are set, but if I set a YA book where I live, and my characters said heck rather than... I feel it would be disrespectful to use something stronger here, as you clearly aren't a fan, so I guess *insert ruder word*... well, there would have to be a reason for it, as I hear teens swearing alll the time. Religion is probably the easiest reason, can your teens be religious and simply be against it?

Otherwise, I used to often write 'he swore', 'she swore under her breath'. I didn't feel the swear word was always needed.
 
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CoffeeBeans

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I agree with Pingle, as long as it's consistent with the character who is saying it (or the situation they are saying it in) it works

But....

Sometimes I "dance" around swear words like. "Dang it!" Lewis punched the wall and proceeded to say worse things.

In something like this, I would probably call it out in a beta. I get that it's an example, but I think the concept holds. If someone is punching a wall, they wouldn't say "dang it" if they said worse things as well. To me, that's very obviously "the character says real swear words, but the writer is choosing not to show them" which doesn't work for me. If Lewis punched the wall shouting swear words, fine, but to say (as dialogue) "dang it" would feel untrue with what followed.
 

ap123

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If cursing is unnatural to you and the people around you, I'd say you already know how to make this work. Regardless of the characters/dialogue being written, it should flow naturally and fit the character. Tagging a bit of dialogue with, "and proceeded to say worse things" doesn't make sense if this is a character who doesn't/wouldn't use those terms. If it's a character who would and does curse, but you're uncomfortable writing those words, consider why it's necessary to write a character who does, is there another way to illustrate whatever point you're trying to make?
 

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I sometimes wonder whether people who swear a lot truly feel that characters are unrealistic when they don't swear. My feeling is that I have never read a book where I thought the character needed to swear and it was missing. But in those cases you can't call attention to your avoidance of it. If your character is one who would swear and you're going to mention them doing it, "Dang it," is going to sound unrealistic coming from them.
 

Woollybear

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I read excerpts from time to time IRL that feel like swearing and sex and drugs and violence and all of that sensationalistic stuff has become a crutch, almost like a cliche. Some writers use swear words with wild abandon.

I also see it working, though. For me, it only works in small doses. All those bombs get tiresome. Just like in real life, I don't think it's the best go-to tool for shock value. I start to roll my eyes.

And there are plenty of writers that take a hard 'no' stance on the matter of swear words, and they write plenty-tense and voicey stuff.

OP, for what it's worth, I try to avoid real swearing in my writing. But there are gradations of words, for example the word 'scat' is fine, in my book, and for the right character in the right culture and hurled in the right way, can be a swear word that works as well as the 'sh' version.
 
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pharm

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I agree with the posters above that there are more natural ways to avoid swearing than writing “dang it” or other similarly jarring phrases. It rarely takes me out of a story when there isn’t profanity, but would definitely take me out of it if someone says “oh heck” in a serious situation not played for laughs (like Flanders of the Simpsons or the way faux-swears are used in The Good Place). “Crap” is maybe slightly more versatile.

I do think it can require some clever workarounds for YA writing. Sometimes strong emotions demand strong language. Finding sufficiently strong language without profanity might be difficult, but not impossible.
 

pharm

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On the inverse side of the same challenge, there are some interesting interviews out there on the making of Deadwood and the difficulty the writers initially had using old-time profanity. They wanted to use strong and coarse language to convey authentically the crudeness of frontier norms (or reactions to norms) in a day and age when swearing was largely criminal. But they found that the authentic swear-substitutes of the time (“what in tarnations” and the like) sounded ridiculous to modern audiences. They kept getting laughs when they wanted to shock, and cringing when they intended to be clever or humorous. So they resorted instead to the cobbled-together “old timey” speak of Al Sharpton: ultra-formal, poetic and sometimes even Shakespearean iambic cadence peppered with modern profanities and innuendo. The rest is history.

I know there are good examples out there of writers doing basically the same thing in reverse with modern dialogue. I would bet it takes similar effort to have characters not swear at all as it does to have them swear well.
 

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I actually have a more innocent character say “poop” once at a non-serious disappointment, & even though it was totally his personality, betas still hated it.
 

Introversion

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If this is speculative fiction we're talking about, aka "not our present time and culture", you always have the option of inventing profane words whose intent is clear in context. The SF series "Battlestar Galactica" and "frack" was a perfect example. Someone who shouts "Oh, frack me!" in disbelief or horror is getting their point across without tripping over network TV censors.
 

cornflake

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I feel guilty writing this post since swearing is not something I do. I was never around anyone that swore growing up, by parents don't swear, and nobody I know does. I was always taught it was a bad thing, a sin at most. However, sometimes there are moments in my story that my characters get upset and they are the type of person that would swear.

My question is does words like heck, dang, and crap sound awkward when used in a YA book? Used lightly of course.

Another thing I like to do is just say "he cursed, she cursed, I cursed"

Sometimes I "dance" around swear words like. "Dang it!" Lewis punched the wall and proceeded to say worse things.

Are these methods acceptable in YA? I always use these methods lightly since I want to write clean books.

This feels contradictory -- if your character is a person who would swear (though given you feel it's a bad thing to do, I wonder if you feel bad people are the types who would swear, good would not), then having them not swear, but say 'heck,' and 'dang,' I think it could read oddly, like a movie edited for tv where a character says, 'the heck with this stuff!!' when they're screaming at someone and you know that's not what that kind of character would say.

If it's a character who would say, heck,' sure, say heck. Not all people swear.

I don't think 'he cursed,' would likely read naturally. You wouldn't say, 'he joked with her.' You'd either use dialogue or say something more specific, though it depends on the execution.
 

Kat M

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If this is speculative fiction we're talking about, aka "not our present time and culture", you always have the option of inventing profane words whose intent is clear in context. The SF series "Battlestar Galactica" and "frack" was a perfect example. Someone who shouts "Oh, frack me!" in disbelief or horror is getting their point across without tripping over network TV censors.

Seconding this, I remember reading a YA once—a new dystopia, so this shows how long ago this was!—where teenagers dropped the F-bomb frequently. Except they didn't. They said "coit." Which I found absolutely hilarious and clever, but this was before I cussed on the regular, so I don't know how well it held up. Anyway, context showed it was profanity, and it completely pulled me into the world by showing me that different swear words had become the rage. All without a speck of telling!
 

starrystorm

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Thank you all. What if, in my previous example, Lewis wasn't the narrator. What if it was more something like

"Dang it!" Lewis punched the wall and proceeded to say worse things, obviously not noticing I had come out of the kitchen.

Or perhaps something like this.

From the other table, I could see Jane mouthing curse words at me, and not the pretty ones.
 

neandermagnon

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I would get around it by saying "(name of character) swore" and leaving it at that.

For example:

Jack only had three more nails to hammer in. The chair was almost fixed. He took his eye off the nail for a fraction of a second and whacked his thumb instead. He swore loudly and tried not to cry.

Often that's more effective than the words he actually said. I don't see that there's an issue with it because very often dialogue doesn't match how people actually speak otherwise it'd be full of irrelevant chatter and ums and ahs. So for example if two characters chat about the weather for twenty minutes before getting to the important plot relevant conversation, you might say:

For twenty minutes, they talked about the weather, but then Alex said... (or something along those lines) I don't see that swearing is different to any other time you'd use indirect speech or summarise part of a conversation.

- - - Updated - - -

Thank you all. What if, in my previous example, Lewis wasn't the narrator. What if it was more something like

"Dang it!" Lewis punched the wall and proceeded to say worse things, obviously not noticing I had come out of the kitchen.

Or perhaps something like this.

From the other table, I could see Jane mouthing curse words at me, and not the pretty ones.

I like the second example better but either of these examples are fine, IMO.

ETA: for the first one if you didn't want "dang it" to be in there you could try something like "Lewis punched the wall and said a whole string of nasty words" rather than the dang it, unless it's part of his character to try not to swear (try for a bit, then give up and swear anyway), in which case it's all good.
 
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Sage

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I just can’t imagine a person who really swears & is going to really swear right after (so they’re not in a situation where they have taught themselves to control their language), starting with “dang it” while they impetuously punch a wall.
 

ap123

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From the other table, I could see Jane mouthing curse words at me, and not the pretty ones.

This may just be me but my only thought reading this is, which are the pretty curses? I'm someone who's quite liberal with cursing, in life and with my characters. They can show anger, humor frustration, horror, or creativity, but not pretty.

I just can’t imagine a person who really swears & is going to really swear right after (so they’re not in a situation where they have taught themselves to control their language), starting with “dang it” while they impetuously punch a wall.

Agreed. If you aren't comfortable using, reading, or writing these words, why are you writing a character who does?
 

starrystorm

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This may just be me but my only thought reading this is, which are the pretty curses? I'm someone who's quite liberal with cursing, in life and with my characters. They can show anger, humor frustration, horror, or creativity, but not pretty.



Agreed. If you aren't comfortable using, reading, or writing these words, why are you writing a character who does?



I don't know where pretty came from. Not really used to describing swear words.

Sometimes my characters are just that kind of person. Not so much in my current WIP or the one I'm beta-ing, but I have a future project in which those characters would swear if real.
 

Woollybear

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I took Sage's comment to mean that the sequence is odd.

"Dang!" He punched his fist into the wall. "Motherf***er!"

^^ Like, it's a little too staged by virtue of the sequence, and you seem to be reaching for an escalation, but it doesn't quite work, I don't think.

Swearing, he punched the wall.

He punched the wall. "That m*****f***ing son-of-a-b****!"

^I think that's the right structure in terms of line edits. You don't want to break it up back and forth--do the talky and the action in either order but don't then retread ground by repeating any of it.

I could see this character easing off the language, though, kinda like this:


He punched the wall. "That m*****f***ing son-of-a-b****!"
"Yeah, Clyde's a real piece of work."
Mark shook his hand out and stared at the new dent in the wall board. He muttered, "Dang. There goes the deposit."

^Because his emotion was released in the first line.
 
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Roxxsmom

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If you really want to avoid swear words in your prose, but have an occasional character who does swear, you could just say something like, "Uncle Bob Swore," or "The engine died again, and Sue went off on a tangent describing sexual practices that seemed rather improbable for car" etc.

I did have to laugh when I read your post (not at you, but at the nature of human experience and our tendency to live in environments that confirm our own nature), because my background is the opposite. I've spent most of my life in CA, and I've known very few people who never swear at all, though most I know restrict the amount and nature of swearing to their surroundings (I would never say something stronger than "crap" in a class I was teaching, for instance), and some avoid particular words or types of swearing.

If swearing isn't something that is natural to you or to the cultures you want to portray in a book, then there's nothing wrong with writing characters and environments that fall within the zone of comfort. Forcing it might feel strange and "off," actually. If the style of dialog feels natural to the setting and characters, it's unlikely most readers will fixate on the absence of something.
 
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starrystorm

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I took Sage's comment to mean that the sequence is odd.

"Dang!" He punched his fist into the wall. "Motherf***er!"

^^ Like, it's a little too staged by virtue of the sequence, and you seem to be reaching for an escalation, but it doesn't quite work, I don't think.

Swearing, he punched the wall.

He punched the wall. "That m*****f***ing son-of-a-b****!"

^I think that's the right structure in terms of line edits. You don't want to break it up back and forth--do the talky and the action in either order but don't then retread ground by repeating any of it.

I could see this character easing off the language, though, kinda like this:


He punched the wall. "That m*****f***ing son-of-a-b****!"
"Yeah, Clyde's a real piece of work."
Mark shook his hand out and stared at the new dent in the wall board. He muttered, "Dang. There goes the deposit."

^Because his emotion was released in the first line.

You're right, both of you. If someone was going to curse hard, then they would start off hard. That sentence doesn't work, and thanks for pointing it out for me.
 

Roxxsmom

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I strongly recommend the book Holy Sh*t, a Brief History of Swearing (by Melissa Mohr) to writers, whatever their approach to it in their writing. The book does a good job of addressing the nature of swearing in different cultures and of exploring some of the biology, linguistics, and sociology behind "strong" language and the nature of words considered obscene in particular times and places.
 

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This may just be me but my only thought reading this is, which are the pretty curses?
I took 'pretty' to mean 'cutesy', the prettied-up ones: dagnabit, gee-whillikers, jumping jehosophat, tarnation, etc. Wasn't it in 'Little Women' that 'Christopher Columbus!' was used as a swear?
 

starrystorm

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I took 'pretty' to mean 'cutesy', the prettied-up ones: dagnabit, gee-whillikers, jumping jehosophat, tarnation, etc. Wasn't it in 'Little Women' that 'Christopher Columbus!' was used as a swear?

Or that. :)
 

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FWIW, I didn't mean that if the author doesn't swear, they can't write a character who does. You just have to be careful about how you write it, so as not to call attention to your avoidance. I would have no problem with occasional mentions of swearing without the actual words. If the swearing character is using tame language without explanation for why they're currently toning it down, however, it calls attention to the avoidance,
 

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Story storm, I want to say first that I relate to this so hard to this. I have been struggling with this too, since I grew up in a family of typical Midwestern conservatives. Cussing = bad. But my characters frequently cuss. That's just how they said it in my head when I wrote. When I went back to read the draft, I really looked hard at where I might be able to tone it down. Only a couple of places I did. Otherwise, I realized that I would greatly change how the dialogue came across and the emotions conveyed in the scene. For example, in one of the final scenes between my heroine and the villain I have this line.

Shiloh spat, sending blood spraying over his face. “**** you.”

If I use any other word here, it takes away the intensity and doesn't truly show the level of her hatred. If I narrate like this:

Shiloh spat, sending blood spraying over his face and told him to do an inappropriate sex act with himself.

It really diminishes the intensity of the moment and would bring readers out of the scene. So, I left it in. Swearing can be really effective in getting strong emotion across. I think there are places where you can get away with 'they swore', but it generally depends on the intensity of the situation. Ultimately, I left it in, because it didn't feel true to my story if I took it out.

So I guess my ultimate question is: Do you not want cuss words in your book? Or are you afraid of backlash from people reading the book? I know mine is definitely the latter. I think as authors we have to prepare ourselves that people aren't going to like our books, so we have to make a decision between being true to the story/character/art or giving into fear of pressure. At least, this is what I keep telling myself. However, if you really don't want to use cuss words, you will have to create characters who would not use cuss words as previously said. One of my characters does not use cuss words and tells other they shouldn't swear because of her faith.

I don't feel as though I've really given anymore advise that you haven't received other than that I really get it. When my mom asked when she could read my novel, I screamed internally because she's not going to like that. But it's not the only thing to like. Create the story for you, that you will love, that works and carries the emotions you are trying to get across. That's the best advise I can give.

Good luck to you.