Please note: This post does contain profanity, so if that’s not to you liking, don’t read on. Otherwise, enjoy the bleep out of this post!
Please welcome Sarah Z. Sleeper to Writer Unboxed today! Sarah is an ex-journalist with an MFA in creative writing. Gaijin is her first novel. Her short story, “A Few Innocuous Lines,” won an award from Writer’s Digest. Her non-fiction essay, “On Getting Vivian,” was published in The Shanghai Literary Review. Her poetry was published in A Year in Ink, San Diego Poetry Annual and Painters & Poets, and exhibited at the Bellarmine Museum. In the recent past she was an editor at New Rivers Press, and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Mason’s Road. She completed her MFA at Fairfield University in 2012. Prior to that she had a twenty-five-year career as a business writer and technology reporter and won three journalism awards and a fellowship at the National Press Foundation.
For more information about Sarah and her work, please visit her website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
What the Bleep Did I Write?! Profanity in Literature
I wrote a short story that’s full of profanity. Well, not full of profanity really, but there are ten or so four-letter words in its twenty-two pages. I gave it to my ninety-year-old father-in-law to read and apparently this was the floodgate he was looking for. When I walked in the door from the gym, he asked, “How the fuck was your workout?” He had never sworn in front of me before, much less to me. I responded, “It was pretty fuckin’ good.” After that, it was on. He swore at me with unrestrained joy every chance he got. After he learned that “I” swear—because to him, my fictional narrator was “me,” at least in some way—he was comfortable swearing too. This made me laugh but it also got me thinking. When is the right time to use profanity in literature? When would it be wrong to do so? Are there rules? With references to Shakespeare, Norman Mailer and others, I will examine these questions.
Of course, most of what we write these days should contain a caveat—compared to the profane situations of the pandemic and racial injustice, profane words in works of literature may not seem worthy of concern. But, that’s not true. How we write things and the words we choose to use matter immensely. Words can create drama, accentuate or deemphasize ideas, and cause emotional reactions. Writers often tackle profane and sensitive subjects. So, while a second-grade teacher may not want her students to read about sexual abuse in Lolita, for example, writers can learn much by studying Nabokov’s use of language. And while a coalition of conservative librarians might want to censor Dennis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son because the protagonist is called “Fuckhead,” writers might study the book for its compelling and powerful style. Profanity, just as much as other words, should be chosen carefully and with purpose.
Dictionaries define profanity as abusive, vulgar or irreverent language. But I have a more workable description that I compiled from a variety of sources: Profane words are taboo because they insult or challenge our religion, our sexuality, our race, or our bodily functions. At the risk of alienating some readers right now, I will assert that there are at least six universally recognized profane words, fart, piss, shit, fuck, cock and cunt. As you read those perhaps you cringe at one or more—I know I do. But I also write stories in which three of those words make regular appearances. I included them because they were accurate to the character who said them or thought them. The tennis player, Maxwell Mantek, in my story “Mantek Mans Up” thinks through a continuous loop of profanity, mainly directed at his opponents on the court. He exerts significant effort to not say the words out loud, and of course, he doesn’t always succeed at such self-censorship. I decided profanity was part of Maxwell’s thought process after considering what the inner life of a hyper-competitive, hyper-masculine athlete might look like. Of course, there’s much more to this character than the profanity in his brain, but the profanity is a crucial part of his character. I believe the story would be less powerful without it. And that leads me to a short list of questions writers can ask themselves when deciding: To swear or not to swear? That is the question. (I don’t have a definitive answer.)
Would this character swear? Why or why not?
In her June 2011 New York Magazine essay, “Ode to a Four-Letter Word, Kathryn Schulz makes a strong case for the word fuck. She writes, “Writers don’t use expletives out of laziness or to shock. We use them because sometimes the four-letter word is the best one.” I would take that a step further. We use them because they are true to our characters. The characters we write, hopefully, speak in style and vernacular that fits. Schulz also points out that “fuck can be “a noun, verb, adverb, adjective or interjection, not to mention in any mood whatsoever, from exultation to rage.” So if a character has the propensity to swear, there are a multitude of ways to be creative about the way he does it.
What circumstances would cause the character to swear?
Consider Tim O’Brien’s, “How to Tell a True War Story,” and the character of Rat, a warrior in the direst of circumstances. He says, “Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fucking letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back.” Does this seem like something a soldier on a battlefield might say? I think so too.
What is the tone and voice of the piece? Nihilist? Impoverished? Snooty?
I have not done quite enough drugs to relate fully to Denis Johnson’s protagonist in Jesus’ Son, his book of linked short stories. The scenes and the characters are disturbing, sentimental, smart, sadistic, amoral, kind, cruel, immature—in other words, real, uncomfortably real. Johnson’s prose is minimalistic, especially in the first five or six stories. His protagonist—mainly because he’s blacked out or hallucinating most of the time—experiences a series of disjointed incidents. His actions are illogical, arbitrary and frightening. Yet, he has bursts of insight into himself and others, fleeting moments of empathy and understanding. Much of the prose is harsh and sparse, and Johnson’s decision to refer to his unnamed narrator as “Fuckhead” seemed utterly fitting for the circumstances.
Will the reader be offended? (Do you care?)
If you write children’s books, profanity probably will not be part of them because readers or parents of readers might take exception. Profanity could kill your book sales and alienate your potential audience. (With respect to the exception, Go the Fuck to Sleep, by Adam Mansbach, which is a “children’s book for adults” and a best seller.) In my novel, Gaijin, which is for adults, the word “fuck” appears. It’s part of a protest movement and written on a sign directed at the American military in Japan. “Fuck Off Americans” sounds quite harsh outside of the context of the story, but in fact it accurately represents the feelings of the sign maker. You might not like the word, but I don’t care because it’s true to the story.
Will someone—an editor, a library, a school—try to censor your book if it contains profanity? (Do you care?)
Years ago I wrote a piece on censorship and in doing so I interviewed the inimitable Judy Blume, who told me that her books were often censored by libraries and schools. Why? Not because of profane language, but because some readers consider discussion of bodily functions, such as menstruation and sex, to be profane in themselves. An author friend of mine who writes middle grade fiction told me that she was the target of a concerted censorship campaign started by readers who disliked her use of the word “damn.” It’s tempting for me to say I can’t believe people are so provincial, but I know that some are, including some avid readers. One such avid reader and friend (a second-grade teacher) who read my Mantek story told me that she “couldn’t believe” how much “I” swore. I gently reminded her that the character was not me and asked her to recall that in our decade of interactions “I” swear very little. It’s worth noting that The American Library Association often fights the battle in favor of no censorship.
Mary Norris, copy editor at The New Yorker, wrote on June 28, 2012, “It no longer occurs to me to query the use of four-letter words, even when they are used gratuitously, as in ‘I missed the fucking bus.’ I used to be a prude, but now I am a ruined woman. We had a discussion in the copy department a few weeks ago about how to style the euphemism: Shall it be ‘f’-word, f word, f-word, ‘F’ word, F word, or F-word? I don’t like any of them. Fuck euphemisms. Get on the goddam fucking bus.” I couldn’t agree more. And while you’re at it, write the fucking best word!
Here’s a final question to ask yourself when deciding to use blue language or not. Is profanity appropriate in dialogue, within the text, or both? In his 2010 essay, “Gratuitous Profanity in Literature,” posted on his website, writer Reynold Conger put the issue like this… “My opinion is that the only place where profanity should be allowed is in dialogue, and only used in dialogue when the profanity tells us something important about the character who is speaking. Certainly the thug who is snatching a purse is not in character if he says, ‘Please, ma’am, may I be allowed to carry off your purse?’ any more than his victim, the wife of a preacher, would be in character if she replied, ‘You fucking bastard. Keep your God damn mits off of my mother-fucking purse.’” I appreciate this example, but I’m not entirely in agreement with Conger that profanity should only be in dialogue. It’s a question that merits thought.
I’d like to leave you with a short, final anecdote. Norman Mailer wrote the 1947 novel The Naked and the Dead about his combat experiences in World War II. The dialogue contained profanity and his publisher, worried about censorship, changed the word “fuck” to “fug.” The novel was a best-seller that launched Mailer’s career. Shortly after the book was published Mailer met the sassy actress Tallulah Bankhead at a cocktail party. Miss Bankhead commented, “You’re the young author who doesn’t know how to spell fuck.”
An Incomplete List of Literary Swearers and Writers of Profane Subjects
- David Foster Wallace—“Fiction’s about what it is to be a human fucking being.”
From an interview in The Review of Contemporary Fiction. - Lorrie Moore—“And for a fleeting moment everything felt completely fucked up.”
From her story, “Thank You for Having Me,” from her collection, Bark. - Erica Jong—”The zipless fuck is absolutely pure.”
From her novel, Fear of Flying. - J.M. Coetzee—This Nobel Prize winner is known for tackling subjects that some see as profane— racism, rape, animal cruelty—more than for using profanity in his writing.
- Peter Carey—Profanity is somewhat watered down and consistent with the dialect he writes in, but still apparent in words such as “effing,” and “adjectival.”
From his novel, True History of the Kelly Gang. - Ernest Hemingway—“F**k. You want to know why I fired my f**king rifle? I saw that f**king rabbit over there so I shot it.”
From For Whom the Bells Toll. - John Steinbeck—He used the term flop in Of Mice and Men, which at the time meant sex with a prostitute. He’s quoted in a letter to his godmother, “To the men I write about, profanity is adornment and ornament and is never vulgar and I try to write it so.”
- Chaucer—“But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers….” An example of almost writing “ass,” but readers know what he means.
From “The Miller’s Tale,” Canterbury Tales. - Shakespeare—In Much Ado about Nothing he makes reference to a “thing,” meaning a penis, and “nothing,” meaning a vagina. Natalie Angier of The New York Times also points out that he writes “zounds” and “sblood,” offensive contractions of “God’s wounds” and “God’s blood.” Shakespeare is also an amazing sexual punster.
- The Bible—Interestingly, the Bible contains words and phrases that can be equated to today’s profanity. In I Samuel 20:30, an angry King Saul called his son, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman,” which sounds an awful lot like son of a bitch. In Nehemiah 4:2 the question, “What are those feeble Jews doing?” seems like a racial slur to me.
It’s all about the characters and who they are. In my arcane mystery set in an alternative 1957, most of my characters don’t swear. But the mc – the youngest of the cast – does because of who she is and the things she’s been through. Sort of like real life, ie, some people don’t swear at all, others occasionally, and some use profanity to the extent it loses all it’s meaning. I believe profanity in literature is up to the author because they know their characters best and whether they would say ‘fuck off’ or ‘please leave.’
Totally agree! Thank you!
Hi Sarah, great post today. I think we probably don’t speak about this subject enough. I had a reader of one of my novels write a review on Amazon that they had to put down the book because one of my characters, a rebel street-priest, used the f-word. He didn’t use it a lot, but enough times to be authentic in his work in dealing with drug dealers. I don’t mind reading profanity if it’s character appropriate and not overused. But some writers just go overboard and it does become offensive. I notice you didn’t mention the HBO series the Sopranos, where nearly every character used the f-word as a matter of daily language about everything. That to me is offensive and grows weary. I actually stopped watching the show for a while.
I agree about the deadening effect of too much swearing, even though most of my characters (and I) use profanity where I think it would be appropriate. I was immediately turned off two highly recommended TV series, Deadwood and House of Lies, because of the immediate and continuous torrent of profanity in each case. It was like being assaulted.
I was particularly annoyed by the language used in Deadwood, because it was also inaccurate. I was born and raised in the west and am old enough to have known several former cowboys from around the turn of the century. They would never have talked like that, even though they were rough and relatively uneducated. In their own youth, to call someone a “dirty dog” would have been enough to start a fight.
Oops. I’m having a geezer attack.
Hi Not That Johnson! I agree. Overuse is like assault on the sensibilities. And you are not a geezer!
Hi Paula! Thank you so much for your comments. Of course, I agree. I don’t watch a lot of TV but I do agree that overuse of profanity is not good. Should only be used when it fits the character and scene.
Always a relevant topic, Sarah. I’m always surprised by how many are still offended enough to stop reading or to post a negative review based on this one issue alone.
I write adult historical fantasy, and have never shied away from using profanity. I have a growing fondness and admiration for the historical fantasy of Joe Abercrombie. His most recent trilogy, The Age of Madness, opens like this:
—-
“Rikke.”
She prised one eye open. A slit of stabbing, sickening brightness.
“Come back.”
She pushed the spit-wet, dowel out of her mouth with her tongue and croaked the one word she could think of. “Fuck.”
—-
The word fuck is the last one on the opening page, which made me laugh out loud. Turns out, it’s the perfect introduction to one of his POV characters, Rikke. But I think it accomplishes something else. Right off the bat, it sorts out most of the readers who’d be offended, perhaps enough to write a negative review just for this one issue. I imagine it often sends them fleeing before they even purchase the book. Now that’s what I call effective use of profanity.
This topic is sort of near and dear to me, as it’s the one that first put me into contact outside of the blog comments with our fearless leader, T Walsh, about a decade ago now. (We were both pro-profanity regarding the instance in question.) Thanks for raising it again. Good luck with the book!
Hi Vaughn! Ha! I love the passage you shared. Now that’s effective use of profanity. I really appreciate your appreciation of my essay and this topic. It’s interesting how provincial readers can be. As you say, possibly those who are that easily offended might not be the best readers for that work. Anyhow, carry on with your cursing, when called for! What is your latest work, by the way? Can you point me to a link? Also, thank you for your well wishes about Gaijin! So far, so good. :-)
My first book was actually in the process of being printed when someone looked at a page to see how it was printing. Their eyes fell on the word “damn” and production was immediately stopped. I was asked to remove all profanity from the book. Since my main character was a teenage boy with an abusive alcoholic father I couldn’t see him instead using phrases like, “Gee whiz” and “Gosh darn.” I pulled the book and found another printer.
Good move! So silly how some people are soooo provincial, to the detriment of art. Good luck with your new printer!
I found this absolutely delightful (I do relish some creative and germane cursing)–and also illuminating. Thanks for a terrific (and fun) post, Sarah!
Hi Tiffany! Thank you so much. I’m soooo glad you enjoyed the essay. It was fun to write and knowing that others were amused makes me happy! Best to you!
I read your article with interest, because reviews of the books in my mystery series often reference the profanity as a reason for not giving a better review, or for not reading further. I try to make my dialog as realistic as possible and can’t imagine an outlaw biker or most truckers saying “Darn it” or “Gee whiz”. I don’t insert four letter words as much as such characters normally would, but just enough to give the dialog the appropriate flavor. Overuse becomes tiresome, much like using dialects or foreign accents to excess.
I guess it boils down to “you can’t please all of the people all of the time”, and I’ve made the choice to use realistic dialog rather than give in to a minority of readers.
Thanks for a thought provoking article.
Ruth
Hi Ruth! Your judicious, yet realistic, use of profanity sounds like a good way to go. I completely support your choice of sticking with dialogue that your characters would really say. As you so accurately point out, how silly would it be for a mafioso, for instance, to say, “Well, golly gee!” Art requires honesty. Good luck with all your work!
Timely exploration about one of our writing tools. How much is enough? How much is too much?
I’m old enough to remember when it raised questions if you said “four letter word,” You wouldn’t want anyone to know you knew about Tropic of Cancer, and William S. Burroughs WAS a four letter word. Today an absence of profanity in speech or writing suggests that the expression is unrealistic, timid, prudish. or dull. An excessive use of it is often considered sophisticate, hip, realistic, or bold.
Sometimes, I find profanity, even invective (which I think always represents a breach in civility) effective, sometimes it seems excessive. In my writing, I try to treat it like I treat adverbs.
Adverbs are suspicious characters, and deserve to be challenged. “What are you doin’ here? What do you contribute? Is this contribution the best way to accomplish what I’m trying to do? Have I painted the picture I’m trying to paint in the colors I want it in, or is there a better way? What, if anything, might be better?”
Like adverbs, profanity, in some characters and situations, serves a good purpose and is appropriate, effective, even when there is lots of it. In others there is probably a better way to achieve my purpose. And that way, I believe, is worth looking for.
Bob! This is so well-stated! And I love the adverb analogy. So apt! You have a great and useful approach to profanity and I will employ it. Always use the best word, whether profane or not. That’s what art calls for. THANKS and best to you!
I personally swear like a drunken sailor who hasn’t seen shore in months. At least, I do outside of work. (I’ve often shocked work colleagues who encounter me outside the office for the first time.)
My characters, however, only swear as appropriate. If I were writing a cozy mystery, I doubt any of my characters would use profanity. It wouldn’t fit them, the setting, or the usual readership for that type of story.
My half-elven cat burglar swears when her plans go awry. Not a lot, but enough to make it clear that she’s been thrown into a mess she didn’t expect.
In another story, my protagonist—a former preacher’s kid who was cast out when she came out—sometimes swears. But that’s only when she’s alone and she usually feels guilty about it.
As you pointed out, it depends on the character and what fits their personality and situation. I certainly wouldn’t change my wording if I felt it wasn’t authentic to the character.
Ruth, your work sounds original and authentic. Your thought process behind deciding to swear or not sounds like a solid tool. Thank you for your kind comment and best to you in all your writing!
To add to the Biblical swearing, in Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi he writes “everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as σκύβαλον, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.”
The closest English equivalent I can think of to σκύβαλον is “crap”. Not a word one often hears from the pulpit these days (though I have used “half-assed” in a sermon).
The thing about swearing is that it affects people differently. Some readers may not even notice that it’s there (so it loses its intended impact) and others may feel scalded by it and withdraw from the story.
Deborah, great example, thank you! And to your point about how profanity affects different people differently, I have faith that there are readers who appreciate honesty in artistic expression. Just like you target your sermons to your audience, writers target their characterization and dialogue to their expected readership. Can’t always bat 1,000, but most writers try to be real. Thank you so much. Best wishes to you!
Fucking great post, Sarah.
Dee
HA! At the risk of taking this too far, it’s fucking awesome that you took the time to reply, Dee. :-)
Excellent post. I love the F word and it’s in my current WIP…in what I hope is a deliberate and appropriate fashion. I feel like there’s nothing else that compares to using fuck, to express a character’s ultimate frustration. Like others here, I’ve been concerned at turning readers off, esp with those of a religious bent…and religion is a theme in my story! We shall see. In the meantime, this was reassuring. Thank you!
Hi Ellen! I’d ask yourself if you are writing to please people or because you want to create realistic emotions in readers. If the answer is the latter, there may be times when blue language is required. Even if your story has religion in it, as long as you’re not writing a marketing piece for a religion, I think it’s always okay to write characters’ dialogue in the most realistic way possible. Carry on and best wishes for your WIP!
Great Post, Sarah.
And sometimes the only word you ever need in a scene, which would normally be heavy with exposition, is fuck as illustrated in this scene in The Wire:
https://youtu.be/DS6pE88Xg3s
Love this example! Such a good illustration of the point. Thank you, Lindsey!
I enjoyed your thoughtful post. s has been said already, I think swearing reveals character in fiction and as long as there is a context it works. As a British writer of predominantly working class characters I would add “bollocks” to your list!
Ah, yes! Bollocks! That’s a great word and so appropriate for specific characters. Can you share a link to your work? I’d love to read bollocks in action. Thanks, Derek!
I’m writing a novel for my dissertation, and the first 15,000 words contains maybe half a dozen swear words. The story is centred around two warring teenage girls and their rather nice parents. In the meantime, I’ve had a 2500 word story accepted for publication that is littered with the F-word, two C-words, two uses of the word Bollocks, and a few Shits and Pisses in there for good measure. The second story is a dialogue between two Manchester gangsters who are facing certain death. It all depends on who’s saying what and why they’re saying it. Great fugging post by the way.
With a principal character dubbed Foul Mouthed Frank, I didn’t have much phukkin’ option.