A new and interesting problem is created when writing fantasy fiction. If you’ve decided that your thief is going to have a foal mouth you still have to decide how exactly is he going to curse. That might seem a simple problem – cursing is cursing right? However just like everything else in writing it isn’t that simple.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense for your character to yell out “God damn it!” if there isn’t a version of hell in your world or if it has a polytheistic religion. However having your character yell out “purple shrubbery!” in anger or frustration will be a hard pill for the reader to swallow even if purple shrubberies are an omen of death.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that every modern curse needs to be removed, some curses are fairly universal. It just means you need to think about the one to use. It helps to look at where curse words come from.
Curse words – and insults – are words that have gotten a negative connotation because they represent things that society see as bad, disgusting, taboo or evil. So a good place to begin is to look at the world your characters live in. Is honor the most important virtue or is the class system highly structured? If so having one character call another a coward or lower class is quite an insult. Of course for this to have the weight you want, you really have to set up the importance of this value in your world.
How about a world ravaged by disease – then maybe decay, puss or blood are a curse words. However, as you can see, these won’t hold as much meaning to the reader and will be harder to build up as culture based insults. A good general rule is if the curse doesn’t directly contradict the world you’ve built then sticking with the original is best. And words like those I’ve suggested are best for insults or low level curses as there not going to have nearly the same impacted as real world curses.
Now based on what I’ve just said it may seem like I’ve limited your selection, but never fear I haven’t. Just as “God Damn it” might be eliminated in your world, other religious curses are open. The name of an evil god or demon would work well for a curse or even the name of a god, if the use of the name as a curse is frown upon. Quite literally a wish for a god to curse something or someone is also a possibility.
But again just like real curse words, the use of made up curse words needs to be thought out. The frequent use of a made up curse word can familiarize the reader with the word and make it seem less bizarre. Just as the sparse use of a real curse word will likely throw off the reader shaking them out of the moment.
There is one last possibility. Changing a real curse word slightly and using that replacement word instead, like “frak” on Battlestar Galactica. It is a viable option for science fiction, which some readers may or may not mind. They might be less likely to forgive a made up curse word in a world where real curse words existed at one point. This option really doesn’t work for fantasy, which should make sense after you read in my blog on the use of made up words in fantasy.
While this advice should keep you anyway from any big blunders, the use of curse words is tricky and the finally decision is in your hands as to what works best for the story you’re trying to tell. Inevitability some people won’t agree with you. I'm going to cite my previous example of the use of ‘bitch’ in Deathly Hallows as an example of this – despite the fact that the use of this word was well thought out and planned, some readers disagreed with it’s use bemoaning the lack of named curse words through the rest of series and arguing that it did not fit the tone of the story. Ultimately, use of curse words is a touchy subject and sometimes there is no clear right answer.
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