How Many F Bombs Are in the Book the Art
I recently binge-watched a show called The Adept Identify. It's light-headed and profound, hilarious and heart-breaking—my favorite kind of entertainment. In the offset episode the main character Eleanor (played past Kristin Bell) is told she'south dead and now inhabits "The Skilful Identify" in the after-life. She also chop-chop discovers that bad words are non allowed to exist spoken. Then every fourth dimension she tries to say "fuck," it comes out every bit "fork," "shit" becomes "shirt," and in one especially funny moment, she yells, "Holy motherforking shirtballs!" The viewer knows exactly what she ways to say, only it's cleverly (and thinly) disguised in a way that's acceptable for primetime boob tube and in no manner offensive. It makes perfect sense that Eleanor would curse. And yet she never really curses at all. Genius. Authors don't accept to worry most the FCC, and so we tin can pepper as much bad language into our fiction as we desire. I happen to believe that cursing commonly adds color, humor, and oomph. And yes, sometimes it's complimentary and unnecessary. But practise we intendance if we offend a reader here or there? I take certainly used my fair share of bad language in my writing (every bit well as in my daily conversations). Only how much is too much? And is that fifty-fifty a question worth asking? Obviously so. I recently received a respectful but very stern email from a reader. She told me she was a big fan of my showtime novel Pocket-size Admissions and that she recommended information technology to all of her friends. She rushed to the bookstore, she said, to buy my adjacent novel Limelight. Only having read it, she felt compelled to write and make certain I knew how very disappointed she was: The excessive utilise of swear words prevented her from enjoying the story. She was shocked, appalled, offended. It's easy to dismiss an email like this. But I couldn't. In her rather long bulletin, she made 2 comments in detail that have stuck with me and made me recollect. "No ane I know talks that way." This first annotate was very confusing to me considering, frankly, all the people I know swear a lot. My dad is 91 years old and swears. My son was only three when he came downstairs crying and said, "I fell my damn cocky out of bed." I was so proud (he split a reflexive pronoun!) that I wrote information technology downwards. I live in New York City, and pretty much everyone I meet cusses, both frequently and creatively. Merely the other day I saw a adult female in a subway station who couldn't locate her Metrocard, and she was excavation through her purse and shaking her caput, and said, "Why am I such a cockwaffle?"—I understood her perfectly (and swiped her in). I honey nothing more than than a creative swear, especially one that packs a wallop for how unexpected it is: "assclown." "douchenozzle." Whatsoever adjective whatsoever (tired, cold, lazy, stupid, influenza-ish, supercilious) "equally fuck." The angry reader conceded that she kind of understood why ane of my characters cussed so oftentimes: Carter is a celebrity popstar who didn't receive much parental guidance in his childhood. As a result, he is rude and crude throughout the novel. Simply still, the reader told me, I should have cutting back. She said she "got the indicate" later the first several times he uses the word "asshole" and then why, she asked, did I take to hit her over the head with it? And did I also take to bombard her with "the f-word, the c-discussion, and the d-discussion????" What, I wondered, was she then angry most? I hadn't called her an asshole. Bad words, when used to jazz upwardly a sentence, don't bother me, in fiction or in life. I don't like being chosen names, of class, but that's another story. If the woman in the subway had called me a cockwaffle, I might take had my feelings injure. Or perchance not. Context is everything. Simply calling herself a cockwaffle? Well, that's just funny. I wondered what makes some people react so negatively to profanity when it isn't being directed at anyone or, if information technology is, information technology's being directed at a character in a work of fiction. What if I create a character who casually refers to herself equally a cockwaffle? Or to her husband? Why bother getting offended? Maybe my encephalon and the angry reader'south brain are wired differently. Lucky for me, I'g married to a neuroscientist who has scanned my brain and tells me it'due south a-okay, or every bit he put it, in that location are "no missing parts and no extra parts." My frontal lobe, for example, does non seem to underlie some kind of pathological disinhibition. So that's good. At that place are many studies, he told me, on the effects of swearing on the brain. I wasn't in the mood to read them all, and then he pointed me to a lecture in which Steve Pinker discusses the time Bono got on stage to take a Golden Earth award on behalf of U2, and said, "This is really, actually fucking brilliant," setting off a firestorm across the land. The network wasn't fined because the FCC determined that "fucking" was only an expletive being used "to emphasize an exclamation." This loophole infuriated bourgeois viewers and politicians, just as my language upset my reader. The politicians set out to change policy; my reader wrote me an angry electronic mail. I'm nonetheless struggling with what everyone is so worked upwards about. What's wrong with an expletive being used for emphasis? I work especially hard on my dialogue. My groundwork is in acting, and I care about writing conversations that ring true. I always read my books out loud to myself and make endless adjustments. While writing Limelight, which admittedly is replete with offensive language, I acted out many of the popstar scenes with my 20-ii-year-sometime son until I was sure the dialogue sounded realistic and hitting me the right way. But was I incorrect? Could I have cut dorsum? Should I have? Would my book have been better if I had deleted every other "asshole"? Should I effort from now on to strike some kind of compromise between the way people I know talk and the way the people my reader knows talk? How seriously should I take the scolding of a cocky-described "Midwest conservative mother," who told me that "NO teenager would Always use the f-word"? Her email concerned me, not only because I'd offended her, only besides because I know plenty of teenagers who use that word, including my ain 3 kids. Now I felt like a terrible person and a terrible mother. Holy motherforking shirtballs, I thought, I'k going to The Bad Identify. And then I came to the 2d line. This ane, I admit, hurt even more: "I will never recommend Limelight to anyone." Ouch. Authors depend on word-of-mouth endorsements. When a friend says, "You have got to read this volume," I add information technology to my TBR pile. So naturally I notice it unsettling to hear a reader vow that she will never recommend my book to whatsoever human being on the planet. I felt slightly panicked and wondered if I needed be more than restrained. Clean upwards my act. Wash my mouth out with lather. Would I be willing to call my editor and have the give-and-take "assclown" out of my forthcoming novel? No, I wouldn't. Is in that location anything I am willing to practise to win back a disgusted reader? I went on Goodreads recently and did this completely twisted thing I sometimes do: I think of some book I truly revere, and then I read the ane-star reviews. I notice it fascinating, and—bonus—I always experience meliorate about my ain bad reviews when I read criticism of a book that I discover flawless. This time I looked up a wonderful novel I'd just finished and found the following 1-star review: "I quit reading subsequently affiliate 4 because I don't care to read the 'f' word consitently [sic] (it seemed to be at least once on every page)." And this one: "the sheer number of F-bombs was distracting." And on and on and on: "the arable utilise of the 'F' discussion was unnecessary." I hadn't fifty-fifty noticed that this author had used the word "fuck" often, so I was surprised. And I couldn't believe that her use of a give-and-take (i that these reader-reviewers couldn't even bring themselves to type) had prevented them from enjoying the brilliance of this book, characters who were so perfectly fatigued, a family story that was so compelling. Wow, I thought, their fucking loss! I like bad words. I tin't change that. And I certainly tin't get dorsum and expurgate my already published prose. (And, speaking of bad words, how is information technology possible that the word "expurgate" doesn't mean something filthy every bit fuck?) But I will always give my vocabulary proper consideration, like is "expurgate" really the best word to make my bespeak here? Should I cull ane that's less pretentious? Does this give-and-take (or that phrase) work the very all-time, out of all the endless possibilities. In other words (pun intended), is at that place a better way to make my point? This isn't innovative thinking, of class. Information technology's called writing. Well, forkity fork, I thought to myself when I finished the reader'southward email. And I answered her: "Dearest _______," I wrote. "Give thanks you for your email. I'm so sorry to hear that Limelight disappointed you. I capeesh that you lot got in bear on with me, and I respect your point of view. My third novel Musical Chairs is coming out this summertime, and because of the cast of characters in this detail story, you lot'll discover at that place is not much swearing, other than the occasional use of colorful words, such as 'assclown' and 'cockwaffle' and an f-flop or 2, used for accent and humor. I hope yous volition give it a chance." I was grateful for her feedback; she cared enough to write. And while I may curse a lot, I'thousand non a monster. __________________________________ Musical Chairs by Amy Poeppel is available via Atria. 
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