You are reading.
The book is great.
Riveting- you can't put it down!
When all of a sudden...
BAM!
A burst of completely inappropriate language (swearing) bursts in the scene and you feel as if you have just been slapped across the face with a wet dish rag. You reel back and squint hard at the page. Surely you just read that wrong. Your glasses were fogged up or your eyes were tired from reading for three hours.
But no.
You did indeed read language and suddenly your high opinion of this book and its author has dropped lower than can possibly ever be recovered.
There is a debate floating around cyber space about swearing in fiction. Some say it doesn't bother them, it gives them a glimpse of the real character. It is reality that people swear, so why not let it be in fiction?
Then there are those that don't cotton to the swearing. It grates upon them like finger nails on a chalk board, they find it offensive and completely uncalled for. I myself am a member of this group. The one thing that will make me put a book down faster than anything else (aside from offensive sex scenes) is swearing. I don't even like the slang that so many authors put in books. I simply view it as a politically correct way of saying the real thing.
So... does our fiction need swearing to be realistic? How do we refute the argument that "swearing is a normal part of everyday life, it is expected"?
First of all- in Christian fiction we are called to be separate from the world. We are in it, we should not be of it, as Jesus instructed us in His Word. We are called to a higher standard and in that standard, we have a responsibility to show our reader the love of Christ. Not preach at them, but show them that we do not answer to the evil the world swims in.
Second- does swearing show or tell? That is an huge argument right now. Our characters are bad, we need to show them through their language.
Um... I beg to differ.
If you have a villain, or a person who is just not a great person all around, you are not going to win any points with your reader by making them swear. Actually, you are cutting corners and telling when you swear in fiction. You are telling the reader by their use of poor language that they are not a godly person in your story.
Your villain or unsaved character in your story, will come across stronger in your story if you show there actions. How do they handle a situation? How do they act in their lives, around those that annoy them? And it doesn't take long for a reader to catch onto that person's character and you did it without salting their eyes with bad language.
So what about those occasions when you have to have your character swear. Yes we have all read in fiction, something to the effect of "an expletive burst from his lips" "a blue word burned the tip of her tongue, begging for release."
Isn't that telling, you ask? Yes it is. And really those statements aren't really necessary a great deal of the time. I mean, really if you are showing your character's well... character, why tell them anything else? But in those moments of the need for colorful language, a statement such as those above works just fine. Your reader gets the point without being offended.
So, what is your opinion on language in fiction? Do you mind the slang in fiction, or do you even hate that? Do you feel it is necessary to swear in fiction to get your point across?
