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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30477
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30477
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I think of cuss words in my writing like spices. I don't want hot sauce on everything, and I don't want my carrot cake doused in Habanero Death Spiral.

If you use them too liberally, then like spices you overwhelm the rest of the flavor of the dish. In writing, that includes any poetic imagery, turns of phrase, or anything else.

Like hot sauce, it also just numbs the reader to any shock value the words may have, the just become filler. If 'fuck' is on every fucking page for every fucking character then there is no fucking place to go when something truly fucked up happens out of fucking nowhere.

for this reason, I tend to use cuss words very sparingly, and only for characters in extreme emotional states: grief, rage, hot love, cold hatred.

I am not above the standard fare in my own life, and in real life probably use more cussing than average; often in laughter _(e.g. that's so fucked up! What a shithead!)_.

But I don't write that way. Note that sparing use doesn't prevent one character from cussing frequently, the cusses will still be sparing on the page. If you are writing the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas (an impulsively violent, cruel and out-of-control gangster), you may need it. Like Pesci's character, frequently cussing can be used to show a lack of self control in a character, and aggression in a character: "Fuck you, asshole" is typically used for anger and aggression.

Too much ruins things. Some of it may be necessary in order to comport to reality. If Alice smashes her thumb with a hammer, an exclamation of **"Oh, _Pansies!_ Holy _savior_ I think I broke it!"** makes Alice a pretty weird and repressed person.

In extremum, normal people curse. I avoid everyday cursing for my characters because I want the extremum cursing to stand taller.

As for racial, ethnic or homosexual slurs: I think it is necessary for some fiction (movies about civil rights issues or racism in America would be pretty ridiculous without racial slurs, as one example), but I don't write that type of fiction, and don't consume it either. That is a personal choice, what I read and write is intended for escape and adventure, I don't need any fictive versions to remind me of real life hatred, abuse and carnage.

Remember the Ad writers maxim: If you emphasize everything, you have emphasized nothing. Now they are talking about bolding, italicizing, caps, boxes, bigger fonts, graphical arrows and badges and such. If the page is littered with them, they are ignored and probably the piece is put aside. if there is ONE big red arrow on the page, people will read what it points to: If there are TEN big red arrows on the page, none of them get read.

Cuss words are intensifiers, but if everything is intensified, none of them have any power. If nobody is cussing and in chapter 7 Alice explodes and says "Fuck you, Bill! Fuck you!" and storms out, that has power. If Alice uses 'fuck' on every other page, that scene has very little power; in fact the only power it has is provided by the context of the scene, pretty much as if the book were written without Alice cussing at all. Which means we threw away our ability to intensify that scene, by creating Alice as a non-cussing character that cussed with vigor in an extreme emotional state.

Original score: 4