Mind your tongue!

You cannot escape foul language these days, it’s all around you, your ears are constantly assaulted by swearing of the most awful kind, parents to children, young people to each other, casual comments and conversation laced with all sort of crudeness and profanity. Even going to buy a birthday card, it is shocking what the so-called humorous cards have on them. As a teacher it was a constant battle to get the students to speak without littering their conversation with f words and worse…

…and yet I use ‘bad’ language too; I don’t use it all the time, I don’t use it when I’m angry, I don’t use it to insult people (or other drivers!) but yes, I do use it. I would not use it to or in front of my children or other youngsters in the family, but in conversation with friends sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s very funny, and sometimes it’s because that’s the only word that will do.

It’s the same in my writing; two adult men having an argument probably would use bad language, two men having a fight almost certainly would. In ‘The Stalking of Rosa Czekov’, Rudi swears pretty much all the time, but that is his character, and it would have sounded silly or arch or unrealistic for him to have said ‘oh bother’ or ‘good heavens’ or ‘that wretched thing’. In reality, and in my head when I was writing the story, Rudi said a lot worse and I moderated and toned him down when his words went onto the page.

When ‘bad’ language appears in my books it is written in very deliberately, not to shock or sound current, but either to make a point or to demonstrate something about the person using the bad language. For example, at one point Aislin, the main character in ‘Loving Judah’ who like me was a teacher and used to very sort of epithet and insult but does not swear herself, does use the f word to Bavol but it was very deliberate on my part to show something about the tenseness of the situation, and her determination to do what she thought was right.

So… I hope I haven’t offended anyone who reads my work… but I won’t make any of my characters into milk sops!