My coworker brought her three month old baby boy into the office yesterday. And as she changed him in the middle of the conference room table (it is apparently this only safe flat surface to change a baby in my office) he began to fuss.
I, of course, defaulted to high pitched googoo-gagas followed by a singsongy “dude kid, what the hell are you fussing about”. At which point I realized I had sworn at an infant. So in the same chuchi-coo voice I told the baby it was a good thing he was so little and didn’t realize I had a potty mouth.
My coworker was peeing herself laughing at this point. Her potty mouth is way worse than mine, as her 3 year old daughter is eloquently highlighting to her, so she thought nothing of what I had said.
Now, I know kids are exposed to all sorts of language now a days. And though I know that h-e-double hockey sticks is by no mean the worst curse in any potty mouth’s repertoire, it got me thinking about swearing in my novel.
My WIP is YA. As in geared toward young adults.
And recently while writing my main character swore. Not a really bad swear word – okay he said shit. And as I wrote it, I circled it and highlighted it yellow.
A potty mouthed blight upon my page.
This lead me to scroll through my texts and realized that the dialogue was peppered with damns and hells. But apparently I am fine with those since it took good ole sugar-honey-ice-tea for me to react to the language I am using in my writing.
In a bit of a totally self-conscious panic I then kept writing using the more g-rated curses. And shoot wouldn’t you know it my dialogue went to heck.
James Dashner, who wrote The Maze Runner, created his own language of curses because let’s face it after a certain age kids use the same foul language we adults do. And it would be completely unrealistic to write a story where teenage main characters never swore.
Wait , I can’t remember did Harry Potter swear? I know Harry must of at least used a bloody or two. Man. Is swearing so normal in my vocab that I don’t even pause when I read it?
I am a little worried that the bloodys, hells and damns are the gateway curses and they opened the door to shit, who will take my hand down the slippery road to fuck.
I know that there is some leeway when you are writing YA, there are YA books with violence and others that cover very adult topics like rape and incest. So is a little foul language out of place?
I guess this is going to have to be another thing for me to consider while I edit…
A Letter at a Time 
I usually refrain from curse words when writing. I have written ‘shit’ though… i think.
I think I am going to try to not swear too much and I will draw the line at shit. Maybe. I still am not sure if I want to include it. It makes me feel like I am being lazy for not choosing a better word.
I have a bad mouth but I try not to swear around my kids. It works some of the time.
I try as well to not swear when I am around kids. Unfortunately, swearing is more of a habit than not swearing.
If writers are using objectionable language in their works I don’t think they are truly contributing anything positive to society. If 100 years from now anyone is still reading those works and no longer finds the language objectionable and perhaps even finds it dated and archaic, then the cumulative efforts of writers did not add anything either and the supposed impact of the language becomes ineffective. Are there better ways to exhibit emotions or make a statement without the objectionable language?
Lee
An A to Z Co-Host
Tossing It Out
I am not sure I agree with you 100%. Language adds to the richness of a character, sometimes foul language is within character and to have anything but that would make the character less authentic. I do think though that I need to look at the places where I have used curses and make sure that is the case and not just laziness on my part.
As to whether it contributes positively to society- even if he was way more creative that I will ever be about it, even Shakespeare used obscene language. 🙂
I’m not sure richness is the best way to put it. A use of profanity for impact or to make a point can be very effective. An example of this is the “fuck you” in Catcher in the Rye–it conveyed one of the essential messages of that novel. The superfluity of obscenities in rap music will probably render those songs forgotten or at most a footnote in history.
The Shakespeare example illustrates one of my points. The Bard was appealing to the baser nature of his audiences for undoubtedly commercial reasons. Now the vulgarities he used sound archaic and make little sense to modern readers. The words because absorbed into the language and muddled to the point where they no longer have impact. The greatness of the works attributed to Shakespeare has nothing to do with his use of base language and everything to do with the themes, the story-telling artfulness, and his poetic use of the language.
I wonder if some of the modern writers who rely heavily on offensive language will be as enduring as Shakespeare.
Lee
An A to Z Co-Host
Tossing It Out
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