Swearing - do you care?

Excessive swearing annoys me a little in real-life, but in a book I wouldn't mind at all, as long as it fits the situation and the character. Extremely creative swearing, in fact, can be a fantastic bonus to a character.

I've heard all the words and used quite a few of them, so someone coming out with a cuss word wouldn't bother me that much, unless it was aimed at me and/or said in anger. So I wouldn't be that bothered if a character cussed some as long as it was in context and as long as I was prepared for it. That is, if the character didn't swear and then suddenly began on p. 137, that would bother me.

Some groups of people don't seem to have much of a vocabulary beyond F words and the like. It bothers me in person, and it would bother me in a book. Not so much the idea that cuss words are offensive but that it would soon get boring and irritating. If the characters swear, they swear, but I'd say tone it down some so it doesn't get in the way of the story itself.

My 2 cents, which is worth a lot less than it was a week ago.

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If it fits your character, then I think it would bother me more if you didn't use it. As for swearing on the first page...well, better that than get halfway through the book and suddenly start issuing profanitites! Go with the characters, release your inner cusser, lol

:)

I don't mind if the characters swear because that's just the way they are, but if the narrator swears (if it's not in first person, that is), then I'm out of there. I nearly put down The Ruins for that reason. I think a storyteller (who's not a part of the story, of course) should be able to tell it just fine without swearing.

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"Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical."
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Yep, I care.

I personally don't swear, and I won't do it by proxy.

Swearing on the first page -- it depends. Is the character one who swears a lot? Does the character have a good reason? If the character is cursing for what I deem a stupid reason (oh .... I got a run in my nylons), I may lose any respect for that character. Do you want me to feel no respect for your character?

I've also read books where it seems out of character and that makes me wonder why the author put such foul words in the character's mouth. Especially for a stupid reason.

Oh, and people who curse a lot? It's annoying! Especially when almost every other freaking word is a freaking profanity, then it can so freaking easily become freaking annoying. I mean, don't these freaking people have a freaking thesaurus? And it's not just freaking curse words. Any freaking word can become freaking annoying if you keep on freaking using it. Is this a freaking dare where some freaking author suggusted you keep inserting the same freaking word in your freaking story to up your freaking word count?

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Personally, I don't care at all about swearing. I swear, a lot of other people swear, some people swear more than others, whatever. They're all words, and neither their inclusion, their frequency, or the place in which they start in the narrative will make me put a book down.

I don't like it, and I don't read books which have characters that curse a lot. Therefore I wouldn't be part of your audience for the story. :) If it's necessary, and you don't think your target audience would have an issue with it, go ahead.

Swearing in general doesn't bother me, but I totally agree with both of these statements. I especially hate when someone is clearly swearing because they can't be bothered to think of an intelligent way to phrase their argument. They could take a few minutes to think about how they feel and put it into proper words, but instead they say, "Oh yeah? F*** you!" Well! You sure told me a thing or two, moron. :P

I have to admit, though, when I'm really really angry and there's no one else around (or my husband or my best friend are there - they understand), nothing makes me feel better than a good vile string of swear words. And then I can get back to speaking intelligently. I think swearing serves a purpose, but it can be both overdone and misused.

If the swearing is within character and situation, creative, does not detract or distract from the story but enhances the telling of it, and doesn't make up the bulk of character development, then it's okay with me. First page, first sentence, first word, sprinkled on every page, whatever.

However, if a writer expects me to stick around and read a story through, the writing must be of high quality. Lots of colorful cursing does not automatically make a character interesting or the story, any good. In fact, too much cussing places me on my guard, wondering if it's a smoke screen for lousy writing.

In NaNo, producing a draft is all that counts, so go for it. Worry about editing the expletives later.

My advice: Don't show your drafts to readers.* Rewrite all stories or chapters, first. No nurse would present a newborn to waiting relatives while it's still covered in blood, amniotic fluid, and crap (sometimes literally). Clean your babies up before exposing them to the light of day.

*Not until after you learn to write "tight" drafts.

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I think it depends on the character and the tone of the story. If its out of tone or character, it would annoy me, if its in character and with the tone of the story, then no, it doesn't bother me at all.

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I don't swear, but I don't care if other people or book characters do as long as they have *some* non-swear words in their vocabulary. If it fits your characters, then I'd say you should let them say it, otherwise they won't really be themselves. That sounds weird, but there it is.

What really annoys me is when writers leave out swear words.

The protagonists are in a really sticky situation and they're going "Oh damn!"

No.

Even most people who don't swear normally will swear when confronted with an army of ninjas/the Antichrist/driving a truck through an aeroplane. And some people will turn the air blue.

I realise some people refuse to swear, and say things like "Oh, sugar." and this is perfectly realistic if the character is that type of person. If a character would swear, let them.

When it comes to guns, don't trust 'facts', 'science' or fancy 'logic'. Listen to stories, anecdotes, and 'my friend told me', like REAL MEN do.

Swearing's never bothered me.

I'll put a book down un-read for only a handful of reasons, and swearing will never be one of them: actually, a complete lack of swering will sometimes be more off-putting for me that someone turning the air blue.

I manage to write without swearing.

I don't swear myself.

I don't like searing around me, but if I'm at work and they swear, I can only do so much about it (it's not my place. In my car they don't swear, it is my place.). Most know how I feel about it and reduce it. If they don't , I don't let it bother me.

In books, if there is a lot in the book, I'll not bother finishing. I can find enough books that don't have it, I don't need to read what has it in it. I won't be bothered by a few words if it's apprpriate for the character. (A crude person gets hit in the nose a uses a word or two because that's how he is. At other times, I'll have an idea of his response already.) If the narrator just mentions that "He let out a sting of words that would make a sailor blush" I get the idea of the type of person the character is, I don't have to read the words. There are other ways to get the idea across other than using the exact words.

If a book had a lot of swear words per page, why would I read it when I don't like hearing it in life. I like to read about a world with less swearing than I hear already.

I have a used bookstore. If a book is mostly about cussing and crudeness, I don't even have it on my shelves. It's either in the back room buried in a box and forgotten, or in the trash. I want parents to feel that their kids won't be coming into my store just to read the language in 'those' books. That's my choice, others may think different.

Hope this helps.

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It depends somewhat on what's being said. There are a few "swearings" I just can't stand in real life, and if a book had more than a couple, I'd probably put it down.

It doesn't really bug me, but it doesn't strike me as necessary, either. The way I see it, it tends to detract -- what more interesting word could the author have used? :-)

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I swear all the time in real life and so I'm personally not against characters swearing. And honestly, if they're teenagers...most of em are gonna be using horrific, where did you get that mouth?! words. A way to off balance them or add some humour to the situations in which they are all swearing is to have one of them adamantly refuse to swear in ANY situation-so while the other characters are saying "OH SH-T!" they're saying "oh, sugar"(like someone suggested). There could always be a running joke of them trying to get that character to say a swear word ^^

Swearing in real life or in a book doesn't bother me much. If it fits the characters, then that's just part of getting into character.

I work around teenagers -- some of whom I'd classify as criminals.... -- so I'd have to say, though, that if your characters swear as much as they do in real life, I'd put the book down. Boys, especially, seem to feed off each other. Random unnecessary F-bombing is irritating to read, and I think it detracts from the overall quality of writing. Using swear words to the point of desensitizing the audience distracts the reader from the content. There are other ways of indicating a person's personality and characteristics than using swear words, which I find oftentimes are used as a convenient cover for what a person actually thinks/feels.

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If the swearing was correct for the character, if the characters had depth beyond being a vehicle to deliver curses with, it wouldn't phase me in the least.

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Swearing doesn't bother me at all. Most people swear, and it just adds a sense of realism to a book, especially if the main characters are young. I can't see my 20-year-old bad boy saying "shoot" or "darn," but I'd never go out of my way to add unnecessary expletives, just for the sake of it.
One way to handle swearing without necessarily typing it is adding little notes like "He let out a furious stream of curse words," or something among those lines.

I'd get annoyed if character(s) were cussing up a storm constantly, but it'd be for the monotony in dialogue. If Bob and Fred have foul mouths but are interesting guys with good writing around them, I'm not going to be putting down the book.

Like the various "um", "er", and "so, you know..." little speech fillers people use a ton in real life, I'd cut a curse-happy character back a bit so it doesn't get repetitive. Leave in the bits with honest impact that add to the tone. And if you have multiple swearing-happy characters, give them different speech patterns and different favorite words and such, so people don't get distracted from their unique personalities by four letter word overlap.

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I agree with pointytilly. If the dialogue is written well, I'll read it, but at a certain point the swearing becomes monotonous. On the other hand, if you go through all kinds of contortions to keep them from swearing, that gets annoying too.

Write the first draft however you'd like. Then go back, consider your audience, and edit.

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Swearing, like any words in a novel, should not be used solely as filler. (Well, er... NaNo might be an exception. *grin*) In a good story, the words have a specific purpose. I think swearing is even more so since it has so many negative connotations to so many people. I've read some novels where it seemed like the swearing neither lent power to a specific situation, or defined a certain character - it just became "edgy" to include it. If I feel that about it, it bugs me. Other than that, I have not a lot of a problem with it in books.

Actually, many teenagers communicate without swearing. I've tossed aside book that had more swearing by the third page than I'd heard in a month. If you're going to have a lot of it, be up front about it by putting it on the first page.

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I think that the main thing is that most people, even those more conservative minded, wouldn't be *too* bothered by swearing as long as the swearing fits in with the characters and it's not just randomly thrown in everywhere but that whoever the character is, their swearing level is appropriate to *them*. Like me, I swear a *lot* but only in certain kinds of situations and only around certain kinds of people. I try to be more conservative in my language around my parents, say, and my professors and most adults and anyone who I know is a church-goer, but I don't exactly keep my mouth clean around some of my friends, in fact it gets worse around them.
On the other hand, my sister is a little tougher than me, though she rarely swears. She just doesn't uses curse words unless she's beyond furious at someone. The more realistic you can make the swearing, the better I think. Just making teenagers swear because that's 'what they do' is about as bad as having them all never swear.
Dunno if that helped...

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Dude, laugh out loud. That was hilarious.

I don't care and I actually enjoy when authors get creative with it. c***muffins is a personal fave I found in a novel... I don't remember its title or author or plot though, so swearing can't carry a novel. duh. :D

I swear a lot (I'm 16), although around younger people I have a tendency to say things like: "Oh shhhhhugar!" and "Oh fffffruitcake" as I derail my sentence. Some of these people are on a year or two younger than me and I know they must swear, it's just an automatic reaction. I swear a lot less than my friends and I don't use swear words "needlessly" (although that's my opinion) - as in, I'll swear when I'm annoyed, angry or in a touchy mood and if I'm joking about with somebody (I am actually one of the people who if they know they've lost an argument, says: "Oh yeah? Well . . . **** you!"); I don't say "It was ****ing hiliarious!" or "You're ****ing me."

I don't care how much characters swear in a book, and I certainly wouldn't put one down because of it. In fact, in some situations, a swear word just seems like the only thing that can be said. At times like that, dodging the issue by saying "Fred swore" annoys me and tends to detract more from my enjoyment of the novel than anything else.

Basically: be true to life, and true to your characters. If some people don't want to read your story, then too bad for them. There will be plenty of others, though, who will. :3 Hope this helps you in some way.

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Well, on the one hand, having clean mouthed gang members and criminals seems extremely unlikely. I would expect some swearing from those characters. However, I think it's possible, and important, to keep them from swearing as much as they might in real life. I absolutely hate reading novels where it's just a constant onslaught of the f-bomb. Once or twice? Sure, if it's needed. 10 times? Well, sure, maybe the character's life really sucks.... More than that I start to feel irritated and will put the book down. I read books with swearing, but I don't read books with -excessive- swearing. So I'd use your own judgment with that. I mean, I think in your case you need to include some, or your characters are going to seem unbelievable. Just watch yourself, and use other creative means of expressing that your characters are swearing. (I often use "[Character Name] swore/cursed/cussed/uttered expletives/etc". How simple.)

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It doesn't offend me. I swear sometimes. But I don't like it when people swear in order to deliberately make other people uncomfortable, or because they can't think of any better way to articulate themselves. But when said jokingly or without anger, swearing doesn't bother me at all.

In the context of a novel, I would get annoyed if: swearing was used in the narrative (believe me, I've seen it. Not good), or if it was used as the sole way to lend personality to a character. There are characters that I can't remember a thing about, except being one that swears a lot.

I don't care as long as it's the characters swearing. Not that I've ever read anything where the author/non-character narrator did, but I imagine it'd be really irritating.

I'd put it down if everyone used extremely strong or sexist language (the f and c words spring to mind). If one character does, I assume it's their nature. If they all do, I assume the author is a sexist person who doesn't know how much is too much. I don't mind swearing in life or literature, but if I get the idea it's just there for the sake of it and not to express legitimate frustration/anger/etc, it really bugs me.

I think a mild swear word on the first page would actually be a decent warning for someone who doesn't want to read it - let them go before they get at all attached and then feel resentful for not being able to read it.

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