Swearing in Writing

Everywhere you go, you hear it. If it isn’t the ‘F’ word then it’s ‘bloody’ this or ‘for God’s sake’ that: it seems blasphemy and profanities are part of everyday life. You might use swear words in letters to friends but not in business letters, certainly not in a covering letter to a publisher. But what’s the situation regarding fiction?

It depends on your audience.

A story for a women’s magazine is unlikely to print an expletive stronger than, “Oh drat!” whilst the independent press, particularly the horror, fantasy and slipstream genres expect realistically raw characters with no holds barred. Literary fiction – which crosses all genres really – expresses exactly what it wants to say without censors or conventions: swear words are unlikely to be taboo here. Crime, westerns, chic-lit and lad lit would all be pretty bowdlerized without them.

So why tread carefully in Writing Life and Playground?

It’s true I don’t like gratuitous swearing and I can’t bear bad language in a piece of writing that’s badly written and spelled but on the whole the occasional swear word helps to make a letter or piece of dialogue within a story more lively. If I swear in your feedback letters it’s because it expresses most precisely what I want and need to say.

Perhaps a naughty word never passes your lips? Ah, but as a fiction writer you become an actor on paper, you create and get inside your characters’ personalities! Swearing therefore has permission – here and now – to fall onto your page straight from your head without audible evidence that you even know what the bad word means. And sex: yes please, we’re adults.

© Bernie Ross 2006