Blasphemy & Profanity in a Christian Novel

What do you do when it's essential that one of your characters blasphemes God and uses profanity, yet equally essential that you avoid writing out their exact words?

You can use descriptive terms for what they said, without saying it out right. Or you can describe the reaction of other characters after hearing the profanity/blasphemy. Imagine if someone was standing in front of you saying those words and how you would react. Even better, how your pastor would react. Then describe the character listening to those things.

Why not use the words. Truth is important. If the character would speak that way then write it that way. It is one of the best ways to show a change in character as their speach evolves

I think there's a line between realistic dialouge and offensive language, but it really depends on the audience you are writing for. Youth fiction, for example, might need to limit certian phrases more than something for an older , more discerning reader.

If you don't want to use the words, you can write instead "he/she/they cursed/swore" and then, if they are around someone, you can write their reaction to the "harsh language" or "blasphemy" to get across exactly what the nature of what was said was. Or, another tool is at the beginning of the curse, cut the rest off. Like, "This is bull -" you can get away with this if your character is either stopping in the sentence, or is interrupted.

I've had an issue with this before. It's really something you need to pray about. I had a character that was a prostitute who was in a very sticky situation and I had to figure out how to word it without making it sound too offensive. I ended up using round about words after lots of prayer.

I steer clear of using god's name in vain and the harsher swear words but there is just no way that my characters would not swear considering they are basically delinquents. However I never litter their dialogue with cursing. I save it for when they are really in desperate situations, or hurling insults at one another. And I keep it to the more mild cursing. I may even go back through and remove most if it if I find it unnecessary. But I don't think there is anything wrong with it really. Unnecessary censoring will just dumb down a book in my opinion. Look at Francine Rivers, novels. This is more an example content wise than for swearing but she has a lot of questionable stuff in her novels and none or it is censored or ignored but that does not take away from how wonderful they are. But there is a line between uncensored and vulgar that we all have to be careful of I think.

I use a lot of 'he swore loudly," "He yelled curses into the air." mine is a christian ya and I don't feel comfortable having him actually saying the words.

Depending on your setting and your character, you could always make up your own swear word for them to use, or have them swear in another language. It might take the sting out of it if you just want to make sure it's not offensive to readers without making your character unrealistic.

Generally speaking, I think it's good for authors to give themselves permission to write realistic dialogue for their characters if the novel's written for adults. This is because a record of an event is not the same thing as support for an event - something I find myself pointing out quite frequently to my atheist friends who want to attack the Bible because it records some really awful events. Sometimes the awful things need to be written down to document that they happened and to demonstrate why they're so bad, and this is true in a novel as well as a historical account.

I asked a priest about this once and he said that it's art, so it's not really a sin to leave in swear words and phrases that take the Lord's name in vain for, say, characterization purposes or to make it more believable. As long as it has a purpose, right?