Profanity

Profanity is a difficult subject to handle in writing. On one hand, writing should capture the reality of life, and people swear in real life. On the other hand, writing is a crafted work and profanity sticks out like a sore thumb.

Personally, I don't use profanity in my writing. I think it detracts from everything. It wrecks flow, throws the reader, and steals the spotlight. I remember reading Jurassic Park as a kid and being so shocked to see some profane word in it (I forget which one, but it rhymed with either spit or suck) that I lost track of what I was reading and had to go back a few pages to remind myself what was going on.

More importantly, though, writing is one medium that really shows that profanity means you can't think of anything better to say. If I want to show a person who is at the height of his fury, profanity only goes so far. If I can find a way to properly articulate a feeling or action, that will have a stronger impact on the reader and will make me look quite brilliant for not swearing, despite how easy it would have been.

As I said before, writing capture reality and real people swear. Many of my colleagues use profanity when a character naturally would swear. I respect them for being true to their characters. Sometimes characters do things that you yourself are not comfortable with, but you have to let them be who they are. If you are in the situation where you have characters that swear, then doon't have them use pseudoswears like frick or fudge. (Still, if you could find a way around it without betraying your characters, I would respect that too.)

I think the line to draw is with dialogue, though. Narrators shouldn't be swearing. That's only acceptable if the narrator is one of the characters in the story. If you have a third person narrator in your story, there should be no profanity in the narration. Such narrators are androgynous and emotionally and politically neutral. They have no reason to swear throughout the entirety of a story.

However you handle profanity, so be it. As a writer, it is your decision, since there is no wrong answer. However, I will issue a warning that profanity's power to detract could overwhelm your writing. Run your stuff by some readers and see how they respond to it.