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It’s no secret I have a love-hate relationship with my first novel. Published as James R. Winter (later shortened to “Jim Winter” because the former sounded pretentious), Northcoast Shakedown was published by a small press in 2005. Part of my ambivalence toward it comes from the press’s implosion. It cost me an agent (I should have waited three weeks), and pretty much pegged me as… Well, it didn’t do me any favors. But another problem: I did readings on the air a couple of times, and it was a pain in the ass to find a passage I could read without violating FCC regulations. 

That’s right. I wanted my writing to sound tough, and so 90% of the pages had the ever-dreaded, ever-popular F bomb on it. The follow-up, Second Hand Goods, had no such problem. Bad Religion would have been right at home in today’s thriller environment. And Road Rules, my Elmore Leonardesqe caper, suffered only from being too short. But NCS, as I’ve shorthanded it over the years?

Yeah, try standing up in front of a bookstore crowd and reading that when you’re parked next to the kids’ section. Not happening.

But how do we handle language? And as an editor, how do I deal with swearing?

Well, first of all, the author needs to deal with that at the developmental stage. If they do it themselves, great. That means they put some thought in their story before tossing it over my transom for clean up. I’ve flagged spellings of swear words. Every editing tool I’ve seen wants “son of a bitch” written as one word if it’s not spread out as a phrase. However, while I seldom see it these days, “sumbitch” is also common, and I have to smack the tool’s hand for getting in my way. The oddest one, though I’ve seen it three or four times in projects, is “sunuvabitch,” or some variation on that. But you probably read that with no problem. There were a couple of authors who wrote it in such a way that I had to sound it out every time. Now you’ve crossed from giving your editor pause to giving your reader permission to put the book down and not finish. The reader is all, and thou wilt consider thy reader in all things, world without end. (Maybe I need to quit watching Shakespeare and RobWords. That’s another post.)

And to that point, how do we handle swearing? There are multiple schools of thought on that. Some say swearing conveys a lack of intelligence. Others say those who swear tend to be smarter. Neither is true. It’s all preference. But tell that to the reader who wants all her romance novels to sound like Hallmark, where it’s Christmas all year long, and Lacey Chabert solves more crimes than the NYPD Homicide Unit. She wants no swearing in her stories. On the other hand, we have the gent who wants all his stories to feature six-foot-four manly men as protagonists as they rip aliens apart bare-handed and drink gallons of whiskey to shake off their exertions. Swearing is not optional. It’s a requirement. So, how to communicate that to a reader without slapping a trigger warning on it. (The fewer, the better. Look at movie ratings. Those of you who still go to movies.) 

I recommend putting your first swear word in the first two or three pages. As readers tend to skim, they look for things: White space, what is referenced, how graphic or genteel, and yes, language. It doesn’t have to be an F bomb. In fact, if my characters’ language is coarse, I, as a writer, do an F bomb check. Author Marcus Sakey once told me he took out one out of every three. I can see two out of three. When it’s seldom used, you have to think about it in the writing. When I wrote Second Wave, I abandoned the conceit this was a YA series. The character of JT and his companions have disobeyed orders and joined a mission to reach a fallen starship. The mission’s leader, Suicide, is angry and says, “Fuck your loss, little boy! We all lost people!” (I’m doing this from memory, so I may have added exclamation points. I use them, but I’m not a fan.) This was not only war, but JT was mere weeks beyond qualifying as a child soldier, and his companions were child soldiers. Politeness went right out the window. Plus, Suicide is a war veteran who lost one spouse in battle and another to a terrorist bombing. She’s not going to talk to him like an Asian Mr. Rogers.

In the scene where that occurs, context carries the meaning. Already, several of Suicide’s more questionable subordinates demonstrate why they were considered war criminals in the previous major conflict. By the time she loses her temper with JT, it doesn’t matter. But what about crime fiction?

Police and criminals can get pretty salty. I know crime authors who believe you can avoid it in dialog, but anyone who’s ever been in a tense situation knows that doesn’t really happen in real life. On the other hand, Law & Order avoids it while The Wire had one seen where the dialog consisted entirely of F Bombs. One is on broadcast, the other on HBO. As always, know thy reader, thy audience, and thy platform. And quit using “thy” like it makes you sound smarter. 

What about slurs? They exist, and people use them. They can convey a person’s prejudices. But they can also throw a reader out of a story. When I’ve had to write them, I’ve often cringed. It should be obvious this character either lived in a certain environment or was bigoted. Still, too many people conflate the author with their characters. Unfortunately, like singers, actors, and even artists, a writer is performing for an audience. If you want to keep an audience, you have to be aware of the consequences. People are under no obligation to like you, so give them a reason to like you.