Crimes Against Profanity

Swear Words Should Be Seen, Not Earned

My creative writing students have a policy about swearing. Apparently, the retired teacher I was hired to replace told them that profanity must be earned, and they have taken her autocratic directive straight to their earnest hearts. As a result, every time we workshop a story with a curse word in it, we waste time arguing about whether or not the expletive was earned.

I feel it is important to tell you that in real life, I have a surprisingly foul mouth. I also maintain swearing is an effective form of literary expression. For example, if my character says “cut the shit and pass the goddamn sugar bowl” my intention is to show, don’t tell that they/she/he has an irreverent, impatient nature. The last thing I want to do is to pull the reader out of the story to dither over whether my word choice was worth a shit or a good goddamn.

The irony of being an old lady English teacher defending the use of profanity against a group of teens is not lost on me. It’s like I’ve shown up at a YA book-burning wielding a bucket of water. But then, I truly believe expletives can make a narrative feel grittier, more genuine. I like to think of swear words as seasoning in a stew, and the writer gets to decide the right amount to add. For some, a liberal sprinkling is appropriate. Ultimately, though, the choice belongs to the writer, not some pedant on a pedestal, or the lemmings she somehow got to follow her.

Back-and-forth curse word justification wastes time that could be spent on issues of plot, style, characterization, writing-wise, you name it, all of which are way bigger components of a story and truly worthy of group examination.

As I told the students, I don’t give a flying fuck what your old teacher said, because this earned swearing thing is bullshit. Or wait, that’s what I was thinking. What I said was I’d rather table the workshop profanity debates, because they use up time that could be better spent on other aspects of your craft, which illustrates a way more useful and inarguable rule of writing: know your audience.