I am reminded of Eminem - the real slim shady "Will Smith doesnt have to swear in his rap to sell records well I do, so fuck him, and fuck you too"
The thing is that not everybody wants to write U grade fiction about talking rocks ... its a free country and theres room for a big variation (anti swearing proseltizing is really really tiresome however) End of the day my wip has a a swear word in the first three lines and a blow job interupted by rocket fire in the first chapter - this should be sufficient for any old maids who pick it up in error to realise its not the next ms marple
You are moralizing at this point. This is the exact same argument used by the state in the obscenities trial brought against Allen Ginsberg's publisher concerning Howl and Other Poems. The state argued that since the same ideas could possibly be expressed in terms that did not use what it felt were obscene words and imagery, that the author should have gone that route. The state lost that case. Moralizing against the use of certain words in literature is to rob literature of its purpose. Literature is art, and the function of art is to comment on culture. If the culture makes use of the given language and the literature fails to reflect this out of prudishness, the literature fails in general.
Besides, if you walk into a cave and a huge dragon is glaring at you, I doubt most people's reaction would be "oh deary me, that's unfortunate"...I know what mine would be: "oh fuck my life..."
@yellowducky would like Justice Musmanno. In his dissent in the obscenity trial of Henry Miller, he wrote the following about the book Tropic of Cancer (which he would have seen made illegal). I'm posting a fair amount of the dissenting opinion because - well, you'll see. It would have been awesome if he read this from the bench: "The decision of the Majority of the Court in this case has dealt a staggering blow to the forces of morality, decency and human dignity in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If, by this decision, a thousand rattlesnakes had been let loose, they could not do as much damage to the well-being of the people of this state as the unleashing of all the scorpions and vermin of immorality swarming out of that volume of degeneracy called the "Tropic of Cancer." Policemen, hunters, constables and foresters could easily and quickly kill a thousand rattlesnakes but the lice, lizards, maggots and gangrenous roaches scurrying out from beneath the covers of the "Tropic of Cancer" will enter into the playground, the study desks, the cloistered confines of children and immature minds to eat away moral resistance and wreak damage and harm which may blight countless lives for years and decades to come. "From time immemorial civilization has condemned obscenity because the wise men of the ages have seen its eroding effects on the moral fiber of a people; history is replete with the decadence and final collapse of mighty nations because of their descent into licentiousness and sloth.... "Cancer" is not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity. And in the center of all this waste and stench, besmearing himself with its foulest defilement, splashes, leaps, cavorts and wallows a bifurcated specimen that responds to the name of Henry Miller. One wonders how the human species could have produced so lecherous, blasphemous, disgusting and amoral a human being as Henry Miller. One wonders why he is received in polite society. "I would prefer to have as a visitor in my home the most impecunious tramp that ever walked railroad ties, a tramp whose raggedy clothes are held together by faith and a safety pin, a tramp who, throughout his entire life, always moved at a lazy pace, running only to avoid work, a tramp who rides the rods of freight cars with the aplomb of a railroad president in his private train, a tramp who knows as much about Emily Post's etiquette as a chattering chimpanzee, and who couldn't care less; I would prefer to invite that lazy, bewhiskered cavalier of the road to my residence for a short visit, than even to see on the highway that hobo of the mind, that licentious nomad called Henry Miller, whose literary clothes are plastered with filth, whose language is dirtier than any broken sewer that pollutes and contaminates a whole community; Henry Miller who shuns a bath of clean words, as the devil avoids holy water, who reduces human beings to animals, home standards to the pigsty, and dwells in a land of his own fit only for lice, bedbugs, cockroaches and tapeworms. "So far as American standards are concerned, I would regard Henry Miller as Moral Public Enemy No. 1, doing more damage to the ethic foundations of our Republic than any criminal, whose picture appears in the lobby of postoffices under the heading: "Wanted by the Police!" Those criminals have warred on society but Henry Miller's works, with those of his brother pornographic writers, unless curbed by the law, may eventually undermine the moral foundations of our nation because they are aimed at the youths of today who eventually will be the citizens of tomorrow.... "Henry Miller is not the only foul-minded pornographic writer. There are others whose gangrenous productions raise a stench that would make polecats smell like new-mown hay in comparison. "Cancer" was published by the Grove Press whose printing presses must by now be corroded with the festering mildew emanating from the accounts of human depravity, abnormal relations and Satanic perversion which have passed over its purulent type.... "I regret that the action of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the oldest Supreme Court in the nation, should result, not in Cancer's being consigned to the garbage can malodorously yawning to receive it, but, instead, in Cancer's being authorized unquestioned entry into the Public Library in Philadelphia within ringing distance of Independence Hall where the Liberty Bell rang out joyously the proclamation of the freedom, independence and dignity of man. "I would recoil in dismay if I attempted to visualize the reaction of the founding fathers if they could see this, one of the foulest books that ever disgraced printer's type, now taking a place on the library shelves with the Bible, Pilgrims' Progress, Shakespeare's Works, Plutarch's Lives, Homer's Iliad, Sir Thomas More's Utopia, Cervante's Don Quixote, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and the other immortal books that inspired the brilliant architects, the brave leaders, the kneeling prayers, and the heroic soldiers who fashioned the United States of America. "From Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, from Dan to Beersheba, and from the ramparts of the Bible to Samuel Eliot Morison's Oxford History of the American People, I dissent!"
you have to wonder what Justice Mussanos own life was like - i'm picturing either a starched up tight life with no sex whatsoever or a starched up tight life punctuated by regular visits to a discrete whore house where he was regularly shackled and whipped with wet celery by whores dressed as governesses, while telling him what a filthy boy he was
One of the two certainly seems likely. I just love the last line. Most legal opinions (and I read a lot of them) bore the pants off me (which Musmanno would object to). ETA: I should note that some of the dissent is a play on wording in the very book at issue, as I recall.
I like how he doesnt want it disgracing the same shelves as the bible - a book in which there is an enourmous ammount of sex and violence (particularly in the old testatament)
@yellowducky I don't like swearing either. I don't swear myself, I find it crass and (most of the time) unnecessary. I don't love reading excessive swearing any more than I like reading gratuitous sex scenes. Call me old fashioned, I guess. But here's the thing, just because I personally don't care for it doesn't mean other people shouldn't do it. I think it is disingenuous to your story and characters if you censor their language because you, the author, don't care for it. Especially if you ask others to do the same. If your character is particularly uncouth, it would be a little silly to give them some complicated roundabout way of expressing displeasure, if everything else about their nature suggests they'd prefer a simple dirty word to convey meaning. That's a little more obvious example, swearing doesn't need to be limited to the rough type. I don't think you as the author are endorsing your own approval of that type of language just because your characters speak that way. I think it also depends on the audience you're writing for. Obviously you wouldn't want to include a lot of swearing in a book meant for children or middle readers. Adult novels are fair game. One of the funniest use of by-words I've seen is in the Maze Runner series. I only read the first book, but I found the various instances of "clunk your pants" and such more than a little amusing. Definitely took me out of the narrative. Although, let's face it, a lot of that book took me out of the narrative.
You don't have to apologise, you have a right to have the opinion you do...I'm just curious why you feel so strongly against swearing.
I love swear words. We call 'em cuss words. . I like this thread! More later when I get home from work! Hate typing on an iPhone!
Because I use Romance Languages in my fantasy story, I sometimes just act lazy and use real world cursive. It's pretty fun actually when trying to use the 'proper' version of whatever language is involved.
I was thinking about watership down in relation to this thread... in that book richard adams introduces various new words in the course of the narrative , -rah a suffix for the chief rabbit , silflay - grazing, hraka - the hard pellets rabbits produce after their second digestion (as opposed to the pellets they chew after first digestion), embleer - stinking, the smell a fox makes. this comes together at the end when Bigwig is facing down Woundwort and tells him "silflay hraka, embleer rah" - eat shit, stinking cheif
I like the way you put this, appreciate your point of view on it, and agree with you. I don't mind swearing or sex in a story as long as it is used to further the story or characters. I personally do use swear words in my writing at times because it could be considered a normal reaction under the stress of what the character is dealing with. Plus writing "Blood hell" is just fun. Words are words. The use of swearing in a way that would be realistic and within the personalities of the characters is fine. I swear in real life and that doesn't mean I am a lesser person due to it, nor are my characters. I'm sorry, but after some of the things they deal with and see, they are not going to be saying "Oh dearest me". It's one thing to not like it and thus stay away from the novels or stories that contain it. It is totally different to try and push that agenda on another writer. Feel free not to have sex or swearing in your own works, but to tell someone they shouldn't use it in their own is just not right.
When I was doing the initial work on my WIP, I took some time to look up insults in other languages. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), insults and curses are pretty uniform across all languages, because we all find the same things as disgusting or taboo to discuss in polite company - sex, excrement, genitalia, etc. This site has a broad range of curses and insults in various languages, and pretty much every one has some version of the standards: fuck, damn, cunt, shit, eat shit, suck a dick, etc. etc. So yeah - I see nothing wrong with including them in a fantasy novel. However, it is nice to see some culture-specific insults as well, as long as the reader can comprehend them well enough to know they're insults.
