Ever since Norman Mailer used “fug” in The Naked and the Dead (1948), it was only a matter of time before the Berlin Wall between “real” speech, as we know it in everyday life, and “nice” speech, standard practice in “litchra-ture” throughout latter-day Western History, came apart and fell.
Is profanity, including the depiction of profane acts, out of bounds? Not legally, because we have the First Amendment, and extra-legal censorship has dried up. How about morally? Well, in this country, morality is up to the individual, right?
But I’m concerned with one thing only: does profanity hurt or help the story. Some markets will be closed to you if you include profanity in your toolbox–Young Adult, Romance, Christian, to name a few. But some mainstream stories will suffer if profanity is barred: imagine, for example, a gritty Vietnam War combat scene in which the soldiers shout, “gosh darn it” or “phooey”–which is exactly why Mailer fought so hard to keep the real f-word…
Why is profanity so hard to control. In my experience, largely because of the ease with which it can find its way into the speech of certain types of characters. In life, these characters (mostly soldiers, athletes, other macho types) achieve a certain street eloquence by sprinkling almost every sentence with colorful four-letter words and expressions. Try to replicate that faithfully on the page, however, and it’s clearly “too much.”
What’s a writer to do?
When there’s a legitimate need for profanity in a story I’m writing, I’ve developed a very simple, 2-stage method for getting the job done. In the first stage, I don’t edit, I let them flow as profusely and excessively as they would flow in life. In the 2nd stage, I automatically cut 2/3s of them, either replacing them with a harmless expressions or dropping them out altogether. How did I come up with 2/3s? Don’t ask me–it just seemed to work, and still does.
The 1/3 that remains smooths out to just the right level of gutter-speech. But here’s the part I love: the ultimate effect is not to diminish the profanity factor, but instead to enhance its effect by taking away the “too much” taint (a serious reader distraction, in effect) and reestablishing the illusion of authentic realism.
Paradoxical? Welcome to fiction.
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