1. Kessie says:

    Hee, hee, it’s like all the same people arguing about the same things on both blogs. We’ve got a real echo chamber going, don’t we?
     
    Out in the real world, people like James Scott Bell are willing to let a lot of language slide, but even he remarks that “dropping the f-bomb on the first page of a book will lose you about half your potential readers”.
     
    I notice  that nowhere in any of these arguments does genre come into question. Nobody has posed the question, “Should there be swearing in modern-setting thrillers, where people do, indeed swear?”
     
    Nobody has mentioned cussing in fantasy novels, where expletives are largely made up to conform with the world.
     
    Teenagers cuss. Just hang around outside your local high school at three o’clock. They’re more astonished by the lack of cursing than by its presence. We don’t have to be prudes while writing YA, but neither do we have to drop cluster f-bombs. Sometimes a precision f-strike, one in a whole book, will get the point across nicely.
     
    And if you’re a weaker brother, read the reviews on Amazon, and if you aren’t comfortable with it, don’t read it!

  2. Ahahaha.  LOVE it.

    I understand why some Christian authors employ swear words in their books, I completely agree that it can be useful to portray characters realistically, and I’m not offended by it (unless it’s gratuitous).  But personally I can’t bring myself to do it – especially taking the Lord’s name in vain.  It may be a character actually saying it, but my hands still have to type it!  Happily, I write science-fiction and fantasy and I can invent my swear words all I want… 😀

    • isn’t swearing swearing? why does it make a difference if they are words that are used in our culture or in fictional cultures? there is nothing sinful in words themselves but in the heart of one who would curse another. most of the time it’s just an exclamation with no actual cursing of anyone involved. why do we care if it’s the “f-bomb” or the word “shock” (used in certain future set Marvel comics) or the word “balls” used in the latest Kristin Cashore book. Isn’t it all really the same thing? 

      It’s all a very silly argument to me. Of all the sinful actions we can show villains committing, yet words which are not sinful in themselves get so much attention? Humans have deemed certain words as “vulgar”, not God. And much of the distinction between proper and vulgar is some fairly straight forward prejudice between the groups that used the various words to begin with, or judgement labels we have determined it is not politically correct to speak out loud. 

      Sorry, Bethany- I don’t mean to be aiming this all at you. I just started out responding to what you said and it seemed to turn into a mini general rant about the whole subject.  

  3. Excellent performance, Fred!

  4. Bainespal says:

    That’s brilliant!
     
    Hopefully, it won’t end for us the way it ended in Hamlet. 😐

  5. Brilliant. I rest my case that Fred is a genius.

  6. […] to remove some of the shrapnel the combatants so often use to snipe at each other. But according to Fred Warren at Spec Faith, Sally Apokedak at Facebook, and Mike Duran in the comments to the above post, I […]

  7. Fred, I realize the post you linked to was fairly long so perhaps you weren’t able to make it all the way through. That would explain why you think I took a position on the whole language in Christian fiction thing. In truth, I did give an explanation for my own choice when it comes to what I read, but that wasn’t the thrust of the post by any means. Rather, it was a look at the issue of eating meat offered to idols which I believe has been misunderstood and subsequently dragged into the argument as “proof” of one position or the other.

    Perhaps the following post on Friday–the one I really meant to write on Thursday, but it got too long–paints my position more clearly. That one’s called “Weaker Brothers, Legalists, And Christian Fiction.”

    At any rate, there has been considerable back and forth on the subject this summer, and your Shakespeare parody is very clever! 😀

    Becky

  8. Fred Warren says:

    Just a poor player parroting the words of my betters…it was a little eerie how well   it fit, though. 🙂
     

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