Swearing in Narration | Renegade Novel Writing



Swearing in Narration | Renegade Novel Writing

Swearing in Narration | Renegade Novel Writing

>>So I was writing a scene that takes place in a market, and this happened (a rough translation, I don't write in english): "The air was filled with a wide spectrum of smells, including everything from freshly baked apple pie to horseshit." And I'm not sure if I should leave the swear in. To note: the narration isn't really told from the perspective of just one person (the main character would definitely refer to it as horseshit), the story is not only told through the eyes of many characters, but the reader also gets peeks to scenes and information that the main characters don't have, therefore the narration has no motive to reflect the way someone thinks. Therefore the ONLY reason to swear in this part is because it makes sense. Horse-feces is referred to as shit almost exclusively, and the swear swells the wanted contrast between the first and second smell. But then again, swearing is usually considered a person-specific habit, which wouldn't fit a neutral narrator. Thoughts?

Actually... shit is only a swear when it is NOT being used to describe actual feces. In your example, it's not being used as a swear.






>>Depends on which character is narrating. I've written books where every other word is an F-bomb because F-bombs are a part of the narrator. So, you know, If shoe fucks, wear it.

I want to give this post a 1,000 upvotes

:)




>>I’m going to preface this by saying that I come from a culture/background where swearing is fairly common and less taboo as I understand it is in other places.

I do as well.

Around here, the word "fuck" is used in place of "very" and every adjective is turned into "fuck"

Did you hear I sold my fucking car?

That's fucking great.

How the fuck you doing?

I'm fucking fine!

The whole town talks like that. 5 year olds talk like that in school. Teachers talk like that in school.

So, EVERY character in ALL of my books talk like that, including the narrator.

Then people who are not from Maine, read my books and send me hellfire in my email inbox.

They can't understand why my characters swear so much, and here I am thinking... wait, my characters are swearing? Are they?

Definitely makes a difference where a person grew up, I think.

So, I was over on Reddit, you like I often am, and found this question. And answered it, like I do. However, the answer I initially gave was a simple generic answer. If you want to read my original answer unaltered, simply click on Reddit's embed feature links which Reddit provides for webmasters to be able to post their answers on their websites, while linking back to the original thread on Reddit (if you didn't know Reddit offered and encouraged the use of this feature, look for it in the "share" features underneath every post, comment, and reply on Reddit).

I am answering random questions today about world building, over on Reddit and decided to take my answers from there and expand upon them even further over here. So that's what this page is. Me rambling on about various aspects of world building techniques I use when writing the Quaraun series. The questions I am answering are embedded here. Clicking the link in the embedded question will take you to the original Reddit page where you can see the original answer along with other people's answers. If you wish to comment, you can do so on the Reddit page where a place to do so is provided.

In any case, as with all of my Reddit answers found on my site here, my original post on Reddit is much shorter then the article here.


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