Cussing in Fiction
Years ago a (now former) friend of mine agreed, with enthusiasm, to read an early draft of a novel I’d written. (Not the official first one I published this year. I never developed the novel I’m referring to in this story.)
I got her address, boxed it up and mailed it, all the while excited about what she’d think of it, wondering what suggestions she might make. I was twice as excited when she confirmed that it had arrived a few days later.
The next day all that excitement went away, replaced by irritation and disappointment. My friend emailed me.
“I’m sorry, but there are curse words in this book. You didn’t tell me there would be curse words. I can’t get past chapter one. I’ll have to stop. I’ll sent it back.”
Way to go back on a deal, right? And way to be sanctimonious about life. (There is more than one reason we are no longer friends.)
She informed me, after my stunned objections, that good stories can be written without “resorting” to “curse words.” This after I told her I was going for realism, and that there were some bad people in the novel. It didn’t matter to her.
Though I eventually left both that novel and that friend behind, I’ve never forgotten how it made me feel to be told that in essence my manuscript was not readable, after just a few pages, because someone in there said, “Damn it all,” or the equivalent. Characters, plot, theme, the vast majority of my prose, none of that could possibly have any value because, “I can’t get past the curse words.”
I sometimes wish that as a parting gift years later, I’d have mailed her not a manuscript, but a crowbar, with a note attached saying, “for the stick up your ass.”
Harsh? Yeah, probably a bit. On the other hand, get a clue. She knew this was based on some historical events, and that it involved royal intrigue and murder. That, she was ready to embrace, but the word “shit,” just crossed a moral line.
She’s not alone in this assessment, I know, but she was the only such person to read that manuscript.
Not that she altered the course of my future writing. When I think a curse word will work, or is realistic I use it in my fiction. I will continue to do so, unless writing a kids book, or some other genre that requires a particularly curse word-free story. Even then, only if I think there is such a story that I need to to tell. Story first, or what are we to make of anyone who writes a murder mystery?
Using curse words is for poor writers. Jumping right to bad words just proves you aren’t creative enough to come up with another way of conveying your meaning. It’s lazy.
Writers hear this literary pontification all the time, but is it as true as it is snooty? Yes, but only indirectly. What should actually be avoided in our writing is laziness, shortcuts, distractions. Curse words can be used in all of these poor ways, but so can twist-ending, character stereotypes, or any number of devices. If you don’t like to read or hear common swear words, fine, own up to that and be done with it. But don’t go out of your way to blanket their use as “bad writing.”
Let’s face it, sometimes a lack of swear words take us out of certain kinds of stories. Would a thriller set in a Bronx police precinct feel authentic, or naive if nobody in it, good guy or bad, ever swore? It might end up being an interesting literary experiment, possibly even a masterpiece of language and diction. Yet it would not rightly be considered a “gritty thriller” that takes place in anything like our own world. At that point, the criticism for cussing doubles back on itself; it becomes lazy writing to plug in a non-curse word every time. Who is using the crutch now?
Just as using a curse word is not de facto lazy, avoiding them is not de facto creative.
“Jake, I’m so tired of your feces.”
That line conveys something, and does so without a curse word in it. We probably have a general understanding of how Jake has made the speaker feel. It’s a correct, clean line as far as that goes.
It’s also patently absurd. It’s an atrocious, hackneyed, juvenile replacement, that outside of parody would almost certainly never be uttered in anger by a single human being on this planet. Using it would bring any semblance of story skidding to a halt, and proceed to beat the reader senseless with a wooden beam that has, “I, the author, refuse to use swear words because I’m clever,” burned into the side.
And yes, the opposite is certainly true. “I fucking hate going to the fucking store with that fucking stupid fucker.” I grant you, lines in this extreme are often deemed gritty and en vogue, and thus get better press. The truth is, though, it’s not any better than the feces line, because in this case the swear words are being used to establish cheap (and false) gravitas. This is what needs to be avoided, not curse words in their own right.
Truth be told, even when going for a realistic tone, I don’t have as much swearing in my fiction as I do in real life. At least not in the stories I’ve written so far. Just like good writing doesn’t include every single “er” and “umm” it probably doesn’t need to contain every swear word the average person in the situation would use. Yet to ban all of them, unless writing a children’s book or heavily religious fiction, does more harm than good, to me.
Christmas Creep…For Writers
September is in its final act this year. October is checking itself out one last time in the backstage mirror before making it’s entrance. (And there is my quota of theatre metaphor’s for the day.)
The Halloween stuff has been out for two weeks or so. But just as October lies in wait to take over for September, the masks, candy corn, plastic skeletons and witch’s cauldrons in the retail world don’t have to crane their metaphorical necks very far in order to see partially open boxes marked “Christmas” stacked up in the store rooms.
We, too, the consumer shall see the Christmas stuff trickle onto shelves and displays in a matter of weeks or less.
Christmas itself may not quite be around the corner, but “Christmas Creep” certainly is-the concept of retail businesses providing Christmas-oriented sections of their store, complete with decorations in some cases, in a theoretical effort to spark an early start to extra holiday spending. Though, as retail friends of mine have also explained, starting early is also a necessity because there is much less time available during the actual holidays. Fair enough.
So there are economic and practical reasons for Christmas Creep. And if you love Christmas, or have had a rough summer for some reason, you may find yourself poking around your Christmas playlist a bit early any given year, for a pick-me-up, if you like Christmas. So there’s a fun/spiritual element to it as well.
As the temperatures around here very slowly but noticeably drop, and the inevitable retail shift I described becomes imminent, I’ve been thinking about how author’s sometimes experience something similar to Christmas Creep. Sometimes we think about and plan for, and in some cases actually construct the ending of our stories before the rest is finished.
I would have love to shared a clever title for this phenomenon, but “Climax Creep” sounds pornographic, and “Denouement Creep” sounds either like a chess opening strategy, or something so pretentious that few mere mortals can process it.
The point is, it’s understandable in many cases; the climax or the final scene in our fiction, especially in longer works like novels, is one of, if not the most important parts of our story. I myself often have a notion of the ending of a piece even before I start work on the first draft. I feel free to change it, but I often do not.
Yet I try not to jump right into the ending. I knew how my first novel, Flowers of Dionysus was going to end for years before I finished it, and even before I started it. Not that I have a problem with writer’s who do so. If writing the ending first helps you write something to completion, I am all for it. I’m just trying to say that though I understand the temptation to start early on the end for which you are so fond, especially after you’ve been dragging through the dreaded middle, I don’t usually choose to try that myself.
Just as I don’t choose to do Christmas whole hog until it truly is Christmas time. I’ll admit to listening to a few Christmas songs in the early fall, and sometimes as a gag for a “Christmas in July” sort of thing. But I don’t decorate, generally don’t watch movies, and I don’t put up a tree. (Though my guess is virtually nobody does this months in advance, though one never knows.)
Setting aside the obvious depressing possibilities, Christmas will of course come, whether it creeps into early fall or not. Even in retails stores, people would still begin to spend more liberally come November, even if the Christmas stuff wasn’t out until after Thanksgiving. I look at writing a piece the same way. It may seem like it’s taking forever, and a lot may change in the middle, but the ending will eventually come. You’ll arrive at the exciting part eventually, unless you abandon the piece. (I have no Christmas metaphor for this, however.)
Who knows? Maybe some day I will jump right to the end of something I’m writing, and work backward, or otherwise in random order from there. If this is something you do, I’d be interesting in hearing about your process. But for now, I try to let the calendar of both the year, as well as my creative output, unfold in a linear fashion.
Merry Christmas.
Fall TV Shows. Meh?
Fall TV season has begun, or will soon begin, depending on the show. I read a magazine previewing all the new shows, and you know what? Almost none of them appeal to me.
This isn’t a critique on show business. Well, not exactly. In fact, by most metrics, television has somewhat eclipsed the movies as the place for the most creative writing. (At least according to studies and such. Look them up, they weren’t important enough to my point to track down and link to from here.)
The actual point is, I wonder why so few new shows appeal to me. not just this year but over the last several years. I’m a tad picky, it’s true, but not so discriminate that I have to be blown away by every single minute of television I ever watch. I’m capable of just being entertained without witnessing genius. But I at least need to feel some kind of hook, and generally I don’t when it comes to new shows. The last time I felt something sort of like a hook of interest was a few years ago when Elementary was the new show. Though I’m not riveted to that, I do still watch it. That, and Doctor Who. (Which sometimes goes a year or more between new episodes.) And I’m not a Whovian, as it were. I just watch the show as an escapist thing.
So I watch one current crime show, and one current escapist show. Everything else I watch is either news-oriented or on the various “old school reruns” channels.
Of course, the last few shows that I started watching were cancelled. I don’t remember all of them, but it seems a few times over the last ten years, whenever I would choose a “new show” it ended up cancelled. Maybe I’m not ready for a commitment after so many heartbreaks.
Who cares? Probably nobody. But I write about it now because I’ve been wondering lately if it is the offering on TV, or if it is me that is is flat lately. Not that there’s anything wrong with flat per se, but it’s not the first thing I want to be, of course.
Maybe I’ll just pick one of the shows at random, and see if I get hooked. You can’t always judge a show by its cover, of course, and it would be nice to have something else to talk about on the net sometimes, within the show’s community. Then again, even when I watch shows, I don’t often feel the need to discuss them with other people.
Man, maybe it really IS me.
Short Fiction Contest Guidelines…Wow.
I mentioned last week I have been looking more seriously at short fiction contests between now and the end of the year. I’ve already submitted to two of them, one a flash fiction contest, and another for “regular” sized short fiction, if you will. Today I picked the next contest I’ll submit to, and which story I will polish up for same.
One thing that surprises me a bit as I research appropriate contests in just how specific they can be. In fact, guidelines of staggering specificity may just outnumber those that call for simply a genre, or simply a length.
I can understand genre and length. Those are basic nomenclatures that weeds out many possible stories from the start. Sponsors may only have expertise in such genre, or have time for such lengths of entries.
Other perimeters I found are almost as understandable to some degree. Contests accepting only Jewish-centric stories, for instance, or those limited to women authors. That’s a tad exclusive to me, but given the overall underrepresented status of many minorities in the fiction world in this country, I can sympathize. A leg up in potential exposure is understandable.
However, when contest start getting into say, five or more demographic requirements for one’s submission to be considered, I think it may do a bit more harm than good.
“The Jacques Noble’ Short Fiction Award considers the year’s best unpublished cozy mystery novella (minimum of 18,000 words and a maximum of 40,000 words) with a distinctly New England setting by Catholic authors.”
I made up that award to make a point, and so as to not mock anyone’s contest. Yet if you conduct your own search for fiction contests I’m confident that in a short time you’ll find some with guidelines very near that specific.
Is there an attempt here to represent the cozy-mystery writing New England Catholic population that is not well represented already? Or is that demographic so tiny when weeded down that far, it by definition it can’t be underrepresented?
Not that I have a great problem with fiction that checks so many boxes before one even reads a single word. There must be enough of such writers to justify the award’s existence. But I can’t help but wonder if by being so specific if the contests are consigning themselves to future oblivion. I also wonder if by doing this, contests for the best fiction are placing anthropology over quality of fiction, thus cutting qualified writers of excellent fiction out of consideration right from the start.
It also makes those who do not fit into so many boxes participate in, dare I say it, the “Everyone, everywhere” type of contests, which of course are the most populated, and probably least likely to be won.
Now, would I submit to a contest whose requirements stated that all entries must be set in the world of theatre, come in under 10,000 words and be written by Progressive Marylanders? Damn right I would. Me, and the other four. Yet I’d gladly do without such a contest, (and believe me, I do) if it meant a few more accessible and affordable contest that were far less picky about content before quality was even considered.
Opinion on Opinions.
I have an opinion on something.
Actually I have an opinion on many things. Believe or not, many of them are actually informed opinions. I wouldn’t have this blog if I didn’t want to share some of those opinions with the general public. As a writer, I do so in writing most often, I would assume.
Here on said blog, I usually write about writing itself, introversion, and a few other things here and there. I don’t think doing so has hurt my author aspirations. Some would, however, disagree with this opinion on giving opinions.
The argument goes that as an author who hopes to become successful, I should express as few opinions as possible about social or political issues. An author shouldn’t alienate and part of their potential fan base, and taking a public position on a matter, especially a sensitive matter, can hurt book sales, or turn people against you.
My first response to that is…too late.
In seriousness, I have via social media expressed already my opinions on various interests that are important to me. One of my jobs is to write a local opinion column for the city’s newspaper. Have I already ruined my fiction career?
I’ll say this; I understand the advice to keep quiet. The notion is not without some logic. There are people who are not going to buy my novel or read my articles once they know where on the social and political spectrum I lie. (If they haven’t figured that out already.) Every person turned away from me is potentially a person turned away from my writing, so why give them an excuse not to buy my book, when it’s difficult enough to get people to buy books these days? It’s not an absurd position to take. Yet I don’t think it can ever be my position.
That’s not to say I need to announce my interpretation of every news event in a public manner, or go trolling on sites dedicated to the opposite point of view. But author’s are people. Responsible, conscientious members of society stay informed on matters important to both themselves and to people in general. Expressing views on those topics, though it should be done in clean manner, is not to me unreasonable for an author. If I lose a few readers, I guess I lose a few readers. (I know, easy for me to say while my career is still emerging, but I like to think this would be even more true when my platform is large, my name well known.)
Besides, once an author is famous enough, he can effect change in his chosen field by use of said fame. I don’ think it’s wrong.
One final note, we may not be giving readers enough credit when we say that they won’t read our fiction when they realize we don’t agree with them politically. Though my beliefs inform aspects of my fiction, most of it can stand alone without my weaving a sermon per se into their fabric. Some people, in other words, may just not give a damn about my personal beliefs if they like my books.
I think I’ll throw this one at him during the book signing.
It’s something to be aware of, as is any behavior on social media. Yet, I don’t expect to refrain from expressing my principles publicly any time soon.
What’s your opinion on opinions? Should authors keep quiet?
Ty Unglebower 