My current project has come to a point where I need to make a decision. It's a decision I faced while writing Crystal and Sin. The use of swearwords. Or profanities. Or cursing. Or whatever you choose to call it.
This article from Writer's Digest caught my attention when I was searching for advice on the subject. And I came to consider how swearing ends up being used, and where I hear it the most.
Some movies like to use it a lot. Like those created by Quinten Tarantino. Tarantino seems to use violence and swearing as a crude longhand for a character's struggles and warped worldview. The kind of thing another director might do with a single artistic contrast shot, or abstruse monologue. He also sometimes uses it as a joke, part of a network of black humour running through his work.
Ian Fleming's Bond novels make use of strategic swearing. Not the movies so much. The books, definitely. The first book alone has Bond quite candidly referring to deuteragonist and love interest Vesper Lynd as a "bitch". There are also other of his Bond series, such as Diamonds Are Forever, where our favourite spy can get quite colourful. And given the situations he's put through, I don't blame him. Here, the swearing is used to show that this normally cool and snarky character really is feeling it.
In The Burglar Diaries, a book that's basically the blackest of black comedies without meaning to be, swearing is used so much that it entirely put me off reading it after a few chapters. The whole style was so cynical that the swearing hit me very hard. I don't know the intent, but it had a similar effect to Tarantino's work; it acts as a medium that cuts down on descriptives, and is a weird kind of humour. The kind that is derived from the less blue and more polished work of Monty Python.
Swearing in all its forms can be either shocking or gratuitous. Mrs Weasley's famous words to Bellatrix during the final battle of The Deathly Hallows are so effective because swearing is barely used at all in the entire Harry Potter series. Cinema history was made by Rhett's infamous put-down from the finale of Gone with the Wind. John McCain brings the screen to a halt with his famous salutation to every villain in the series, even if later iterations lessen its impact.
I have a mixed opinion on the use of swearing. I have tried using it in my work, specifically Crystal and Sin. In there, I use it for the character Aiden to show his cynicism and bitterness, in addition to his slight instability. But my original draft had about twice as much swearing from him. My other characters also swear from time to time, and main lead Crystal swears strongly once when pushed beyond her emotional limits. I'm not that eager to use swearing, as I want my stories to be accessible and not rely on profanities to make something mature, which is something that happens. But I'm not above swearing myself, so I guess I don't practise what I preach...
I really enjoyed writing this, because it got me thinking. I hope it got you thinking too.
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