How much cursing should I use?
How much bad taste is tasteful depends of your taste. Er.
To put it more clearly, everyone has their own, personal ratings board inside their heads that determines how much cursing should be permitted. To some people, simply muttering, "Dern it!" requires washing the mouth out. Others say things like, "Fu** that sh**!" more often than they say, "Hello."
If you're looking to avoid offending your readers, then kill all the cursing in dialogue except for the occasional damn or hell. This will appeal to the most amount of readers. You can use sh** once in a blue moon, but never use fu**. People say and hear fu** a lot, but we rarely read that word and they tend to stand out when we see it in print.
A donkey by any other name is still an ass
It also depends on who your characters are. It's pretty funny when South Park kids curse, but you'll want to avoid having children use such language. The general rules are:
- kids almost never curse, teenagers often curse, and adults curse whenver they want
- people rarely curse in formal settings (graduation, boss' office), but are more likely to do so in informal settings (fishing, in a bar)
- cursing happens more among equals (brother and sister, or colleagues) as opposed to unequals (mother and daughter, or boss and employee)
- all things being equal, all races, classes, etc. curse about the same
But you really need to ask yourself something. Why are your characters cursing? What purpose does it serve? Remember the writer's mantra:
Only put what the story needs to survive.
Make sure you have a good reason for a character to curse.
What's my reason? Fu** you, that's my reason!
For example, characters can curse to show how upset they are. "Aw, shucks," doesn't portray the same intensity as, "Mother fu**er!" However, there can be other ways to describe intensity. When people are upset, they often do more than just curse. They pace, break things, stomp their feet, and more.
If you replace cursing with this show-don't-tell technique, people will respect your work more. Trust me. Yes, it's more difficult that cursing. That's why it's more professional. Here's one last point. Pick up your favorite book or story and start counting the curses. I guarantee that unless you pick up something from a porn website, it will be mostly devoid of curses.
That's because publishers won't print something that sounds like it came out of a drunk sailor's mouth. If you hope to be published one day, then drop the curses or your editor will drop them for you. And you do NOT want to see what that editor will replace those words with.
"Sgt. Coldkill grabbed a rifle and charged the enemy, screaming, 'Go to heck, you poopy-faced mother sleepers!'"
There's a reason this sh** is called fiction
Yes, there are times when normal, everyday people curse 'til they're blue in the face. Go back to the writer's mantra. Don't write how people talk! Write dialogue that does one thing and one thing only: it helps move the story along.
This isn't a newspaper report or a documentary. This is fiction. You control everything that happens in the story. You don't want to write dialogue that's too much like how people really talk, because it would be chock full of "Ummm ...." Where's the fun in that?
So, even though a lot of people say things like, "Move this sh**, will you?" or, "I have no fu**ing clue where I am!", if the curses aren't important to the plot then drop 'em like a sack of sh**.
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