Personally I like using swear words in my stories. My stories are usally aimed for people around my age, sometimes a bit older. I mean, I want my stories to be relatable. Would saying, "Crickey!" be relatable to many 13-year-olds? Not really. I think tis fine to use swear words unless, of course, your books are aimed at younger readers.
Give your character a variety of phrases to use including swear words so that they never get old. There is an antagonist in my project that the MC grows to dislike more and more each time they come across each other, so first he'll call her "sick" or "twisted" then as the story goes on and on he invents stronger ways to address her ---> "Horrible person" ----> "Evil Temptress" The point is that the MC could just call her a B&&&& each time and get the same point across, but that'd get boring quickly, so it's more entertaining to switch it up a bit.
You can do that in alternative world fiction -- "Belgum, man, Belgium!" (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), "Suck an elf!" (10th Kingdom). It's not so easy in naturalistic fiction. I've met people in real life who use f--- more often than they use the words that convey meaning. I might write a character like that in a story, but once I'd established their mode of speech I wouldn't quote them much because they'd be a useless way of moving things forwards; I'd just mention that they were cussing away in the background. The rest of the time, if I feel a character needs to swear then they will swear. And I'll decide whether it's more effective to actually put the swearword or just report that they're swearing. If I recall correctly, Neil Gaiman's "Stardust" has just one instance of f---, and I think its use is absolutely perfect and wonderfully effective. I wouldn't normally censor the word, as I have been in this message, but I'm not sure what goes on this forum and what doesn't. I know we have some younger members, and wouldn't want to get this forum blocked for them. What are the rules here?
I'm not sure of the rules, either. I sensor my swearwords too-just in case. But don't feel like you need to hold back just for me.
I've been wondering about this too, and a simple "He swore" seems a good solution to use once in a while... I agree with the "less is more" thing, if you want a swear word to have a strong effect, make sure it's only used once or twice in your work. If you see the first F-word after 150 pages, it'll have more impact than it will on page 1.
And try to avoid the effect that Douglas Adams described -- one of his characters went around proudly clutching the award he had won for "the most gratuitous use of the word 'f---' in an otherwise serious screenplay".
Yeah, I think that's a little overdone - can't agree more. All interesting suggestions which I will try and implant in my next book.
well, when i want someone to make an explanatory statement without actually cussing, i just think of the strangest word set imaginable: 'Oh sh**' becomes 'Oh, shniz biscuits.' it both gets my point across and is very humorous. Ps, this one is taken.
A lot of it depends on what you're writing, surely. I can't imagine that working in a tense urban thriller, but I can see it working well in a kids' humorous family story.
I always thought it would be interesting to have a character who stressed someone's name when he or she was mad. It would be kind of like how a mother gets mad at her child and says their full name. It's not exactly a swear word but it definitely gets the point across. Maybe if the character had a particular enemy and would use his or her name as a scapegoat for everything bad that happened.
Hey. I feel like some of the replacement word options may seem a bit like its your character being cautious instead of you - it may break the mood of anger/frustration/sweariness he/she is in. This thread brought to mind the TV show FireFly. A brief explanation in case you haven't seen it - it is the FutureTimes, and English is pretty much the galactic standard language. However, everyone swears in Chinese. Its really effective as there's no break in the characters' moods and it can still be delivered without them sounding odd or breaking character, but its not totally explicit, and you're not like 'heehee, he just said ****' all the time. That would be my suggestion.