The Art of Profanity

Let's talk a bit about dirty words.  It's been on my mind lately, especially after a #kidlit chat on Twitter regarding swearing.  It's an interesting - and often polarizing - topic.  It's one quite fascinating to me.  Of note, be advised this post contains quite a few, so if you're squeamish or you aren't really old or mature enough for the higher caliber words, please see your way to the door.  This is a discussion for sensibly minded adults.

"Some guy hit my fender, and I told him, 'Be fruitful and multiply,' but not in those words."

- Woody Allen

That quote shows - not tells - a scene far more effectively than if it were written exactly how it happened. We know in one sentence what Allen actually said. We know he swore at the guy, even though he mentioned nothing about swearing. It's a great example of how to create a mental image of the profanity without saying anything bad at all. Masterfully done. If Allen had said he'd told the guy to go fuck himself, it wouldn't have been funny, and furthermore the scene would have been instantly rendered mundane and forgettable - just some guy yelling profanities after a car crash.

So very obviously, we often don't need to swear to get our point across.  Many times the point is made even better without profanity. Actor John Ratzenberger, best known for his role of Cliff Clavin in Cheers, reportedly once said about a project, "There are times over different projects when I've asked the writers why people are swearing for no good reason. I tell them that it would be funnier if there weren't these swear words." That's true. Cussing for cussing's sake is stupid. Sometimes less is more.

But sometimes it's not. Sometimes we need a larger shock to the system. Sometimes our intention is not humor as in the quote above, but rather horror, or revulsion, or any number of the baser emotions. And sometimes the "dirty" words are just the best damn tools for the job.

Consider the scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, where Steve Martin's character, after a horrible debacle trying to find a nonexistent rental car and a journey from the middle of nowhere, across highways and even a runway, returns to the agency counter and has to deal with a smarmy agent who has no desire to help him at all. Watch:

If it wasn't for that barrage of eff-bombs, this scene would have been nothing.
It would have been a forgettable part of the movie that pushed the plot along, and tried perhaps unsuccessfully to endear us to Martin's character and his plight. The swearing not only personalizes his problems to the viewer, but also positions the dialog to enable him to tell her how much he doesn't appreciate the way her company treated him. It also sets the scene up perfectly for that succinct and very vital punchline: "You're fucked." Without it, the scene falls limp, destined to be forgotten with every other harried airport/car rental/bus station/train station scene out there. It doesn't, precisely because of the obscenities. Could the scene have been rewritten to conform to "PG" standards? Certainly. Would it have been as funny and memorable? Hell no!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Lee Ermey) in Full Metal Jacket would not have been nearly the character he was if not for his colorful language. Without the carefully constructed obscenities, the character of Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in Scarface would have been just another two-bit gangster. Profanity was one of the traits that made both those characters living, breathing people instead of cardboard cutouts. The use of colorful vocabulary is not vital to round out every character, but for those it was.

"Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate."

- Bertrand Russell

Obscenity is what we make it. A word is only as inflammatory as people take it to be, and that varies from circle to circle. One person may interpret a word very differently than another person. And obscenity can be starkly different culture to culture. Swearing in most Eastern European cultures is fairly acceptable, and most Slavic languages have a wide range of very colorful swear words. In many parts of Asia, however, it is not. Many Asian and Pacific languages don't even have a direct translation of some of the more vulgar terms.

Really, dirty words are just "dirty"; no word is inherently a dirty word because they're all just words. Though to some we assign more value than others, giving them varying degrees of power and influence. They're given power by those who use them in certain ways, and have power taken away by others who use them differently. If a word offends, it's because of the experiences and prejudices of the reader or listener that it does.

"Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of taste."

- Cyril Connelly

This quote serves to show that profanity is a vital part of language. Like garlic, it adds spice, and like garlic, a little usually goes a long way. There's a fine line between use and over use of any word, and this is particularly the case with words that aren't acceptable vernacular in all parts of society. The more inflammatory the word, the more punch that word delivers, but only if used right. If used wrong, it has the opposite effect, which is a bad thing.

Another aspect of vulgarity is its propensity to lend itself to unique and imaginative forms. Run of the mill profanity is mundane, and as a result, often falls into the category I mentioned above, "cussing for cussing's sake". You can take it out and subtract nothing from plot, scene, atmosphere, or character. The imaginative stuff you can't. Describing someone as an ass-clown, or saying they were engaged in some kind of asshattery or another, evokes images which can't easily be explained with other words. Saying "tomfoolery" instead of "asshattery" isn't quite the same. It's too innocuous, too innocent. Saying they were juveniles engaged in delinquent behavior is similar, but not nearly the same. Not by a long shot. It may convey meaning, but it does shit-all for the tone. And inventive swearing makes for the best insults, by far.

Don't get me wrong; this type of colorful wordsmithing can be done without the use of profanity.  Tom Robbins, one of my favorite authors, applies colorful, imaginative forms to all his writing, but it is truly an art to do it the way he does. Not many can imitate him successfully, and profanity often does in one word what takes a paragraph of polite words to do.

Use, of course, varies between not only characters, but authors themselves. When you get to know a writer, you start figuring out what you're going to get when you read their books. You understand the words they use, how they use them, and how they work for that author. Consider Chuck Wendig, an author who wields curse words like a samurai wields a katana. It's largely because of his irreverent love of profanity, and dark, twisted writing style that his books are so great to read. Constant swearing works for him, and quite well. It doesn't for everyone, and if it doesn't work for someone, then trying to force it will probably end badly.

No matter if certain words are off limits for you, whether uncouth, blasphemous, racial, or otherwise obscene, they all have a purpose.  As long as they serve their intended purpose, they're a necessary part of a story, even the "dirty" ones. I think so anyway, but that's just one idiot's opinion.

Thoughts?

Deus ex Machina

If you've written a story or two, you're probably guilty of using it.  I know I am.  I hate it, and try to avoid it at all costs, but sometimes it happens.  It's called deus ex machina, Latin for "god out of the machine", and it's a plot device used all too often to solve an issue or problem the author just can't quite wrap up the way he or she desires.  We see it all the time in books and movies.  We get right to the end of the story, and in order to resolve the issues in a satisfying manner, some kind of new event or character needs to intervene and set things right.  Who the hell is this guy, and where did he come from to save the day just in the nick of time?

Shakespeare used it in several of his plays.  Many other famous and talented writers have used it.  It's not just reserved for hacks and less talented writers.  It is common, though, and employed by both the talented and hacks alike.  In fact, it's probably more common than you might think, especially in today's Hollywood, where plot takes a backseat to special effects and viewership numbers.

It's been called pure laziness.  Shoddy writing.  Personally I can't stand it, and heckle it any chance I get, even if I am guilty of using it a time or two.  To me it signifies an author hasn't spent enough time crafting the story to a better outcome.  That the author doesn't care enough about the story to fix those issues correctly, or let the story end how it will.  The characters should determine the outcome of the story, not the author.

I think the problem stems largely from our desire to have a happy ending.  Nobody likes coming to the end of a good tale and finding out the characters they invested so much emotion in during the story die at the end.  Nobody likes being slapped with a healthy dose of reality after reading or watching a fantastic tale that allowed them to escape that brutal reality for a while.  It's inherent in who we are as humans, and it's probably never going to change.

So aside from giving in and settling on an ending that nobody's going to like because your characters got in over their heads, how does one avoid using deus ex machina as plot spackle to make it all better?  If I knew that answer, I'd probably be a lot better off than I am now.  That doesn't mean I don't have a few thoughts about how to avoid it, though.

The easiest way, as I mentioned earlier, is to just let the plot work out the way the characters make it.  It doesn't always end happily that way, but then, neither does life.  Sometimes people die, or get hurt, or get in trouble over their heads.  Sometimes things don't turn out the way we planned them to.  That's just the way life is.  It's not the sexy ending, but it is realistic.

But it doesn't have to be that way.  Your characters are resourceful.  They're well rounded and experienced.  They've probably got the answer somewhere.  You just have to get it out of them.  Experiment with them a little.  Tweak their reactions to something a bit.  Don't just go with the first reaction they might have and write it down.  Follow one reaction to its logical conclusion and switch it up a bit.  Chances are, you'll find some kind of combination that allows the conflict and tension you need in the story and the resolution you need to wrap it all up with a happy ending.

The stakes don't need to be all that high either.  We see more and more stories where all-or-nothing scenarios are played out.  The hero must save the world from imminent destruction in order to set things right, save the girl and live happily ever after.  Or at least until the sequel.  The problem with these types of scenarios is that they don't leave a lot of wiggle room for the writer.  If it's an all-or-nothing problem, the character really doesn't have a choice to make, meaning that the reader should already be well ahead of the game of figuring out how things are going to end.  If the reader has the ending figured out, the story either ends predictably, which is lame, or it has an unexpected twist.  And if the twist isn't set up right at the beginning, enter deus ex machina to save the day.

The same holds true for the fates of your characters.  If the hero and villain are put together in such a way that only one will walk away alive, there again isn't much doubt about how it's going to end.  Creating a storyline and characters who can interact with each other and live to tell about it sets up future conflict.  It also mitigates the need to make more and more bad guys to throw at the good guy as the story progresses.

If the stakes aren't as high, there are probably a number of ways the situation can be resolved, meaning there are far more options to the author, and greater suspense for the reader.  Yes or no questions pose an ultimatum, and create a situation with only one feasible ending.  By using open ended questions for plot construction, you've given the characters more ways to interact and get themselves back out of the pickle they've gotten themselves into.

But what if you really want the stakes that high?  After all, it's more exciting when there's more at stake in the story.  Giving the readers a good apocalyptic tale does have its advantages.  And you can still do that, if you set up the rules of engagement in the future to allow multiple possible happy endings.  You've got to delve into the plot more than just superficially.  You've got to spend some time running decisions in the story to their logical conclusions.  It takes a lot of hard work and careful thought to come up with a good plot that follows through clear to the end.  But doing so is rewarding.  If you're willing to spend the extra effort to avoid letting deus ex machina save the day for you, your story will probably be a whole lot better.