Pardon My French
by Michelle Gagnon
During our first page critiques, we discussed the danger of incorporating strong language on page 1 of your manuscript. Encountering an f-bomb at the outset of a novel can turn off a lot of readers, so editors are understandably leery of acquiring works with it.
However, I think that strong language does have a place in novels- at least in mine. I frequently get emails or reviews from people who say things like, “I loved this book, but wish that someone had gone through and crossed out all the f-bombs for me.” Equally perplexing to me are the people who claim that they “didn’t mind the f-bombs, but at times Gagnon takes the name of the Lord in vain.”
Here’s the thing: I’m not the one doing it. My characters are, and they’re doing it because in real life, that’s how people in their particular professions and circumstances talk.
I understand that we don’t all approve of strong language- I certainly don’t use it frequently. But then, I’m rarely chasing serial killers, or trying to stop a domestic terror group from destroying Phoenix. When my characters are staring at the timer on a bomb, I don’t think “gosh” is going to be the first word to leave their lips. I try to be judicious with the swearing, but it’s most important to me to remain true to the characters spouting it. From my admittedly somewhat limited exposure to them, gang members and ex-con skinheads tend to have foul mouths. So do many law enforcement officers, especially when they’re talking to each other. I strive for accuracy in every other facet of my books. So why should I be expected to compromise on this one?
Maybe I’ve simply become inured. The places I’ve lived (including San Francisco), it’s rare to get through the day without hearing random swearing (and now that people are constantly talking loudly into their cell phones, they really seem to have lost their filter). I’ll join in on any bemoaning of what that means for us as a society. But since that experience informs my work, I can’t pretend it’s not the current reality, allowing my characters to speak as though they just stumbled off the Leave it to Beaver set.
I was raised a Unitarian, which is a religion that promotes tolerance of all beliefs. So I empathize with people who don’t condone taking the name of the Lord in vain. And yet, I can attest that my characters hearken from a wide range of religious beliefs. Because of that, chances are they’re going to use such terms from time to time. And in the interest of realistic dialogue, I believe in letting them. If I were writing Inspirational thrillers, it would be an entirely different story. But I’m not.
I’m curious to hear what people think about this. Does strong language have a place in thrillers? Does it bother you, or not?
| Michelle Gagnon is a former modern dancer, dog walker, bartender, freelance journalist, personal trainer, model, and Russian supper club performer. To the delight of her parents, she gave up all these occupations for an infinitely more stable and lucrative career as a crime fiction writer. Michelle’s novels have been published in North America, France, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Australia, and have been IMBA top 10 bestsellers.
Her debut thriller THE TUNNELS, about a series of ritualized murders in the abandoned tunnel system beneath a university, has been described as “Silence of the Lambs meets The Wicker Man.” It was followed by BONEYARD, which was a finalist for the 2009 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. Michelle’s third book, THE GATEKEEPER, involves a domestic terror plot by anti-immigration hate groups. |
Entries (RSS)
Entries (RSS)
April 27th, 2010 at 6:16 am
THANK THE LAWD AND HALLELUJAH!!!
It’s about time someone got it right, and Michelle got it right. Characters in novels who do not swear are completely one-dimensional, because in the real world that’s how REAL people talk. Not all of them, but most of them.
I disagree that it says anything negative about our culture because it’s nothing new. Swearing has always been a part of the human experience and always will be. Anyone who is offended by reading it in a novel should stick to children’s literature, say the 4-8 crowd.
School kids also swear, and spectacularly. Every little angel does it, usually starting around the 5th grade, no matter how righteous his parents, so maybe a reality check is due.
Go Gagnon!
April 27th, 2010 at 9:24 am
On the other hand, people go to the bathroom several times a day. Isn’t it unrealistic for your hero to not stop and drain the lizard? If the story takes place over several days, why aren’t these scenes scattered throughout the novel? And what about dropping a log or two. I do it once a day, but don’t feel compelled to include my characters doing it. Unless, of course, it’s important to the story.
I’m not saying that a character that doesn’t poo or wee every other page is a cardboard character and not based in reality. I’m simply saying, why deal with it unless it’s important to the story. Swearing is like that.
Dialogue in a story is a fictionalized type of dialogue anyway, and doesn’t reflect how real-people speak in real-life. So, why include all the swearing, unless it aids in building character? Putting excessive swearing in a story can be like including all of the “um” and “er” words that are useless in succinct dialogue, but are rampant in “the real way people talk.”
Your dialogue has to be true to your story, so a die-hard marine fighting the enemy may need to swear quite often, but a 12-year-old exploring a make-believe world behind a brick wall doesn’t need to say “fuck” on every page, just as he doesn’t need to say “er” or “um” on every sentence. Or, that he has to poo once a day.
April 27th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Folks. This is a public blog. Please keep the actual 4-letter words in your manuscripts and not here. I don’t want to sound like a prude, but one of those 12-year-old’s might read it in front of his mother and then we’ll all catch “heck”.
April 27th, 2010 at 10:04 am
I agree, the language needs to fit the characters. In my books, the cops, special forces guys, and younger adults (college kids especially) are the biggest pottymouths. I don’t advocate littering the text with it, but on our blog someone gave a great example. He was watching THE MATRIX on a plane, and when Trinity realized that they’d been set up and agents were en route to kill them, the dubbed version had her hanging up the phone and screaming, “Darn it!”
It simply doesn’t have the same impact of what she originally said (mind you, I’m not saying that airplanes shouldn’t dub. But what if that had been the original response in the film?)
I’m not a fan of sanitizing work simply because a few people complain. And in my experience, a few people ALWAYS complain about something, sometimes about things that surprise me.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:55 am
I believe that works of fiction are better told with a healthy dose of realism. However, when you first introduce your self in life, you don’t swear, you don’t say it’s so F’n nice too meet you. So I feel although vulgar language and as we were told as kids, “Bad words” are allowable and okay. But, not on the first page of your story, because that’s your introduction.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Brennan makes an interesting point, but taking a dump is something we usually do in private, so it doesn’t need to be described in the average novel. Swearing is something we may do in private or in the presence of others. So while Brennan’s rather humerous point is valid to some extent, I think it hardly merits being taken seriously.
And yes, I have occasionally described someone draining the lizard in my novels.