In the cacophony of f-bombs and mother expletives that permeate daily conversation, one cuss word from me would largely go unnoticed. Except…well except by me. I’ve never liked cussing, even the minor curse words in the hierarchy of profanity, cause me to cringe. Now I could write a post just on profanity and police work but I’m not going to, at least not right here. This post is going to be about profanity in writing.
Several years ago I turned an early draft of my novel over to some critique readers. I wanted to know if what I had written made a lick of sense. One critique I received took me by surprise. He told me my writing reminded him of something from the 1950s. He had noticed the lack of curse words in the dialogue and that people today do not talk that way, especially for the genre I was writing in, action/thriller.
Was this faceless man (or woman) right? Was my writing something from Leave it to Beaver or The Donna Reed show? My story is a thriller for for Gosh sake. So the gears turned and unfortunately I allowed the opinion of one person to take hold. These are my characters speaking, not me. Maybe they could cuss. Maybe I was being too up tight. It would immerse my readers. It would make my characters feel real. After all, Mark Twain said, “under certain circumstances, profanity provides relief denied even to prayer.” And who was I to contradict the venerable Twain?
So, I dabbled. I read through the dialogue, interjecting cuss words where they seemed appropriate, if appropriate cussing is a real thing. Once finished, I read over my work. It was edgy and grit laden, and dagnabbit, I didn’t like it. I scrubbed the profanity from my work like a mother washing out a child’s mouth with soap.
I asked my friend Google, Show me authors that do not use profanity. Google obliged, and son-of-a-motherless-goat, I was surprised by the number of fiction authors who abstained mostly, if not entirely, from profanity in their works. Most notably was Lee Child who writes the Jack Reacher series. Noah Boyd and Terri Blackstock rounded out the list of non-profanity writers in the action/thriller genre. I’m sure their are many more and if you know of any published authors, in any genre, that shun profanity in their books, please let me know. I had a renewed fervor. I was in good company and If these published authors could do it then so could I.
So, as I crack open my laptop and continue on my writing journey I will be leaving out the profanity and one day, Google will tout me as an accomplished ‘clean’ author and a literary genius.
The Latent Man 