"Nobody heard of fucking Howling Dogs. I was fucking living in a fucking packing crate in the alley behind Romanos Pizza. I've been punk, funk, grunge, and R&B. I've been with the Funky Butts, the Pitts, Beggar Boys, and Howling Dogs. I was with Howling Dogs the longest. It was a fucking depressing experience. I couldn't stand fucking singing all those fucking songs about fucking hearts fucking breaking and fucking goldfish fucking going to heaven. And then I had to fucking look like some western dude. I mean, how can you have any self-respect when you have to go on stage in a cowboy hat?" I was pretty good at cussing, but I didn't think I could keep up with Sally. On my best day, I couldn't squeeze all those "f" words into a sentence. "Boy, you can really curse," I said. "You can't be a fucking musician without fucking cursing."
Janet Evanovich in Stephanie Plum
The Fucking F-Word is everywhere. It's hard to ignore with popular culture fucking bulging at the fucking seams with expletives, mainly beginning with the Letter F. My sister Fiona and I are both aspiring writers and recently, we were talking about these words, swear words that fucking crop up when you least fucking expect them and can totally fuck up your view of whatever piece of writing you're fucking reading at the time.
Being the good Catholic girl that I am, dropping fucking words into my fucking writing is fucking liberating. It's like committing a fucking sin and even as I write this blog, I'm checking over my shoulder for a fucking nun to come out and biff me across the fucking ears.
Back in my younger days, 'fuck' really used to be a bad word but I have to confess, it was sometimes heard within the four walls of my home partly because of my dad who had a stint as a truck driver. As a Ceylonese immigrant wanting to speak like the fucking natives, you had to fuck around with the word a bit just to show you fucking belonged.
When I was much smaller and still living in what was still Ceylon, Dad didn't use use any fucking bad words. I used to hear him say "bloody shit" on the phone when he was 'blackguarding' someone (a commonly used Ceylonese word), but the most we'd dare to say was 'fiddlesticks' or 'balderdash', thanks in part to the diet of Enid Blyton books that played a big role in our education. Hey, we even called our folks Mummy and Daddy so WTF - Enid had a lot to fucking answer for.
Nowadays though, the F-word seems to be fucking inescapable and, as both a writer and communicator, I can't help thinking "What the Fuck?" is our language completely fucked? If you have children, just have a look if you can at your child's Facebook or MSN site. It's not just the F-Words these fucking kids are using. There's also the C-word and it's no big fucking deal to them.
Once upon a time, the careful placement of an F-word could add considered colour to a sentence. It was the fucking rarity of the useage of the word that was the source of its power.
You may have heard the "F-word" originated in ye olde England when apparently folks needed a permit to have children with said permit allowing Fornication Under Consent of the King. Sadly though, it's a load of fucking crap.
In fact, the roots of the word "fuck" are derived from its Anglo Saxon heritage. The German 'ficken' and the Dutch 'fokken' both mean 'to breed' while the Proto-Germanic 'fokan' means to copulate. The fucking Dutch do not consider 'fokken' crude, but the fucking Germans and Scandinavians do.
But why would a writer or any communicator choose to use these fucking words considering there are so many other words in our language?
Certainly, at least once upon a fucking time, the type and frequency of epithets (ie. swear words) indicated a certain level of education and breeding. Characters didn't fucking swear willy nilly.
The Queen in Alice in Wonderland did not shout "Off with his fucking head"...Juliet did not cry: "Romeo, Romeo where the fuck are you?"...Hannibal Lecter did not say: "A fucking census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a fucking nice chianti."
Being the good Catholic girl that I am, dropping fucking words into my fucking writing is fucking liberating. It's like committing a fucking sin and even as I write this blog, I'm checking over my shoulder for a fucking nun to come out and biff me across the fucking ears.
Back in my younger days, 'fuck' really used to be a bad word but I have to confess, it was sometimes heard within the four walls of my home partly because of my dad who had a stint as a truck driver. As a Ceylonese immigrant wanting to speak like the fucking natives, you had to fuck around with the word a bit just to show you fucking belonged.
When I was much smaller and still living in what was still Ceylon, Dad didn't use use any fucking bad words. I used to hear him say "bloody shit" on the phone when he was 'blackguarding' someone (a commonly used Ceylonese word), but the most we'd dare to say was 'fiddlesticks' or 'balderdash', thanks in part to the diet of Enid Blyton books that played a big role in our education. Hey, we even called our folks Mummy and Daddy so WTF - Enid had a lot to fucking answer for.
Nowadays though, the F-word seems to be fucking inescapable and, as both a writer and communicator, I can't help thinking "What the Fuck?" is our language completely fucked? If you have children, just have a look if you can at your child's Facebook or MSN site. It's not just the F-Words these fucking kids are using. There's also the C-word and it's no big fucking deal to them.
Once upon a time, the careful placement of an F-word could add considered colour to a sentence. It was the fucking rarity of the useage of the word that was the source of its power.
You may have heard the "F-word" originated in ye olde England when apparently folks needed a permit to have children with said permit allowing Fornication Under Consent of the King. Sadly though, it's a load of fucking crap.
In fact, the roots of the word "fuck" are derived from its Anglo Saxon heritage. The German 'ficken' and the Dutch 'fokken' both mean 'to breed' while the Proto-Germanic 'fokan' means to copulate. The fucking Dutch do not consider 'fokken' crude, but the fucking Germans and Scandinavians do.
But why would a writer or any communicator choose to use these fucking words considering there are so many other words in our language?
Certainly, at least once upon a fucking time, the type and frequency of epithets (ie. swear words) indicated a certain level of education and breeding. Characters didn't fucking swear willy nilly.
The Queen in Alice in Wonderland did not shout "Off with his fucking head"...Juliet did not cry: "Romeo, Romeo where the fuck are you?"...Hannibal Lecter did not say: "A fucking census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a fucking nice chianti."
And as Calamity Jane, Doris Day certainly did not say: "What fucking excitment? Why I got more fucking arrows in the back of that coach than a porcupine's got fucking stickers." No siree.
How times have fucking changed. These days, even if the use of swear words is true to the fucking character, its overuse can be truly nauseating and even distressing. Frankly, my brain tends to flat-line after the first 20 or so F-words because those fucking words can hammer the joy out or your reading or viewing experience, for fuck's sake. Why do characters need to swear so much?
My advice to anyone who writes anything - whether toilet graffiti or Academy Award winning dialogue, is therefore to use the F-Word with caution. Less is more and the best example is the opening to the cinematic hit, "Four Weddings and a Funeral". After an opening where Hugh Grant's character, late for a wedding mutters: "Fuck, Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck! Fuck, fuckity fuck fuck... fuck-a-doodle-doo", the rest of the movie was fairly tame with barely an F-Word showing its foul-mouthed fucking head. There were enough swear words to raise a smile without overdoing it.
Remember that, unlike a James Bond martini, you want your audience stirred, not fucking shaken.
If you're still seeking guidance, let me leave you with this vignette from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I hope you'll find it instructive as Kirk and Spock converse aboard a bus:
KIRK: Excuse me! ...Excuse me! Would you mind stopping that noise? (a punk turns up his ghetto blaster sound)
KIRK: Excuse me! Would you mind stopping that damn noise? (Spock gives the punk a nerve pinch, stopping the noise and gains a round of applause from the bus)
SPOCK: Admiral, may I ask you a question?
KIRK: Spock, don't call me Admiral. ...You used to call me Jim. Don't you remember? Jim. ...What's your question?
SPOCK: Your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with, ...shall I say ...more colourful metaphors. 'Double dumb ass on you' ...and so forth.
KIRK: You mean profanity. That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you if you don't swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period.
SPOCK: For example?
KIRK: Oh, the collective works of Jacqueline Susann. The novels of Harold Robbins.
SPOCK: Ah! ...'The giants'
rof(f)l :-) very nice i enjoyed that. Two points i would like to make if i may: One: 'blackguarding' is not used anymore, maybe not since the late 80's, and is now listed as 'archaic' in the dictionary of sri lankan english. (Yes, it's recognised as a legit variety now and codified :)) Two: Romeo Oh Romeo where the fuck are you sounds so very good :-)
ReplyDelete