Love, Hate and Other Four Letter Words

Ridley Scott established that in space, no one can hear you scream. (Alien, 1979) In space, can anyone hear you swear?

In general, I have no objections to any word anywhere. It's along the lines of my own peculiar notion that there's no such thing as evil. There's only energy. What you do with it is good or bad. Words are the same to me. They're only a collection of letters to express an idea. What you do with that idea is what can turn something obscene into a thing of beauty or vice verse.

Given all of that, there are still times when a gal needs to pull all the stops and spew a long and steady stream of filth. Cause if she doesn't, she won't be able to cope with the monster in the hall. Studies have shown that swearing eases pain. Something about bottling up the emotion associated with stubbing the crap out of your toe (or breaking one kicking the door on accident when you meant to kick a cat toy...) increases the perception of pain. If swearing does indeed impact physiology, does that mean that there's a biological basis for having a potty mouth? And if there is, does that negate the cultural and societal disapproval of using profanity?

Regardless. When my mom read my first book, her first comment about the heroine? "She swears a lot." Yes. Yes, she does. I made sure she had reason. But you won't find a single swear word you'd recognize (except bitch which isn't really used as a swear word when it is describing a female animal of a particular species...maybe that's another debate). The nice thing and the hard thing about writing a scifi series wherein the cultures didn't originate on Earth is that these cultures will have developed their own swear words, their own turns of profane phrase. (Remember in your first language class how hard you worked to learn a few of the swear words? If *those* had shown up on tests, how many of us would have aced our high school language requirement?) I say it's a nice thing because I get to make up my own swear words. It's hard because I have to make up swear words that don't all sound the same.

Ultimately, whatever words end up spoken, it's all about emotion isn't it? My sister refuses to let my niece listen to certain musicians because of the 'bad words' in their lyrics. I *like* angry, explicit lyrics because of the stories I hear behind the words and because of the overwhelming emotion that drove those words out of someone in song. I love the sense that there are some things that simply cannot be communicated without the driving beat, the discordant musical line and THOSE specific words. It's something, if I'm going to use recognizable profanity in a story, I want to convey when my characters say the words. At that point in the conflict, I want them driven to swearing in such a way that nothing else could possibly have been done or said. That puts the onus on me to make sure I get the emotional pitch right. And that's damned hard.

F-Bombs Away!

By KAK 

How we speak isn’t reflective of how we write. If it were, "fuck" would appear in every third paragraph. Oh yes, I said it. I wrote it. I did it. 

Fuck.

Fuck is one of my favorite -- therefore well abused – words. It’s not for a lack of mental access to superlatives. I know my fair share of adjectives, verbs, and nouns. It’s not because I developed a secret passion for the flavor of Ivory soap as a lippy pubescent. It is because four letters mixed with intonation and physical demonstration convey a wealth of emotion and meaning.

Fuck + Pronoun

“Fuck it.” “Fuck me.” “Fuck him.” When you hear me, you know if I’m horny, thrilled, or fed up. If you see my expression and gauge my posture, you get the full impact of the word and the meaning I intend. Without the whole of me to support the word, the sentiment loses its value. Without the whole of me to witness the observer's reaction to my use of the word, well, it's like farting in an empty church. You have to be there to really get the impact of it.

Too much fucking is bad.

I say “fuck” a lot in my everyday speech. I rarely use it in my writing. That one word has a power few other English words have. It’s like a wizard’s spell – you can use it once to achieve great impact. After that, it loses its potency. Remember “Catcher In the Rye”? The first two or three times Holden uses it, it’s titillating. He’s such a rebel. He’s dropping the F-bomb. In a book. In a book the school is making you read. By the end of Chapter Two he’s just a twerp with an attitude.

Damn the Bitch to Hell and all that Shit

My characters do succumb to potty mouth when the scene merits it.  Whether the fantasy is Urban or Epic, swearing happens. I’m a big fan of “godsdamnit.” I often have to remind myself that “hell” isn’t blasphemous if there is no concept of Hell or Hel.  If the story involves were-beasts/shifters, a bitch might well mean female dog. If there are no dogs in the world then there can’t be bitches. At some point everybody has to take a dump. An underdeveloped town is probably littered with steaming piles of turds. Dragon crap is never fun. A shit is always a shit. But, much like real life…

If I’m going to Fuck, it better be worth it.

What about you? Are you a serial fucker or does the word make you cringe like nails on a chalkboard? Are you disappointed when it crops up in a story or does it add authenticity to a moment?

Loving and Hating the Process of Writing

by Laura Bickle

Writing a novel is like falling in and out of love. It's a relationship with stages. There's bliss, angst, reconciliation, and letting go. There are beginnings, middles and ends. And also sometimes shouting and tears.

Beginnings are tough for me. Nothing intimidates me more than staring at a blank page. There's absolutely nothing there but a sea of white. I chew on my lip and doubt myself. Can I conjure something from nothing? What if it never comes together?

I reluctantly tap out a first line. A hook. I squint at it, chew on my lip some more.

Is this concept worth pursuing? Is it attractive enough to chase through the next several months, through research and dreams and the flu? Is it going to be one of those easy relationships, with effortless flow? Or will this one be like pulling my own teeth?

There's no way to know. I futz and mumble to myself and stare at the first five pages, dawdle around the first chapter. I fret aloud and talk to the cat about the new relationship. This is one of the parts I dislike: the uncertain beginning.

The cat usually ignores me. I screw up the courage to take the plunge. I decide that I like the idea. I flirt with it a bit, chase it around like a butterfly. I court it. Sometimes, I can be trusted to even put on a clean T-shirt while typing. I'm trying to impress it. I even make an outline.

And it flirts back with me...with snatches of phrases. Images. I type and scribble notes, fearful of losing anything. Typing, typing...

And then I'm suddenly at the middle. I'm all of a sudden in a committed relationship with the book. I can feel it taking shape, developing a life of its own. It starts to have its own moods.  Sometimes, it's cloying. Sometimes distant.

But we fall into a rhythm, greet each other at the same time every day. A standing date.

We talk. We do more than that. The book and I have discussions. In the middle, there are multiple ways for things to go. I try some things that work. I try some that don't. I pull out the note cards, fuss with my outline. I spread cards out on the floor all around me, trying to analyze and dissect what's working, what's not.

Sometimes, it's a test of endurance, pushing through. But I can see to the end. When I have the ending firmly structured, the last ten thousand words fly. It's bliss. I see where all the tendrils of thought and plot threads I had developed in the beginning curve back around. I think I understand the story, now: the hidden symbols, the growth of the character. I understand what it is about the story that attracted me to it. I understand what I'm afraid of about it.

The end is the best part. It gathers momentum, takes wing.

And flies right out of my hands. I type THE END on the last page.

And I feel a pang of sadness. It's gone. It's moved out of my life, out of my mind and my heart. There's still some tweaking to be done. Editing. Smoothing. But that part feels like the post-mortem of the relationship.

The story's gone. I did what I needed to: I gave the story a voice. And it left me. The nest's empty. Lonely. I hate that feeling.

And the only solution is to fill it again, with another egg of a story. Another beginning.