To Swear or Not to Swear?

"Oh?  You want to lay down the law then on whether I should swear or not?  Go ahead then.  Hit me with your best shot.  Because I have my own strong opinions about the subject and you're not going to change them."

Sigh.

Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles by [Correia, Larry]No.  This isn't about a person's choice to swear or not.  That's their own.  This is about an author's choice to have their characters swear in their books.  Should you have swear words in your book, or not?  There are a lot of different factors that lead authors to one choice or another.  I want to talk about a few of those factors.

It can be said that it's the character's nature to swear - their personality, their heritage, their upbringing - and so not writing out the swear words would be detrimental to establishing their nature.  For example, "Hard Magic" by Larry Correia starts with a Polynesian farmer who has more than a few firm words to say about his situation.  The farmer's character would have been found lacking if the swears weren't there.

The Mountains of Mourning (Vorkosigan Saga) by [Bujold, Lois McMaster]Or would it?

In "The Mountains of Mourning" by Lois McMaster Bujold, the people in an isolated village don't use the same crass language, and we still understand their frustration at their own situation.

Was one right?  Was the other wrong?

Children of the Promise, Volume 1: Rumors of WarBut wait!  Those were different genres!  And different genres have different expectations for their use of foul language.  "The Dresden Files" by Jim Butcher is urban fantasy and is loaded with swear words.  "Children of the Promise" by Dean Hughes is historical fiction and has no swear words to my memory.  Children books contain no swear words, YA has some, and adult has many.  These are the expectations and readers might be thrown off balance if an author subverts those expectations.

When it comes down to it though, there's one deciding factor which outweighs them all.  Do you consider swearing to be morally wrong, or not?  If you think it's not that big of a deal to swear, then let your characters swear.  You should know your audience, and can make your own choice of if they'll approve of the swears or not.  But if you think that swearing is morally wrong, then don't try to find excuses to put swear words in your books.  Stick to your standards and don't let what's popular sway you from what you believe.

What about me?  What do I think?  When my debut novel is available in June 2019, read it.  You'll know.

Comment below your thoughts and reasoning.  I'd love to hear about it!

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