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  • C. J. Korryn

Making Believably Irate Characters Without Actually Cussing.



I wrote about the Christian and cussing in fiction a few posts ago. This post can be considered a "part two" of that, if you will.

So, if you are a believer who has decided not to incorporate cussing into your fiction, you may come across the difficulty of making a believably angry character without him or her cussing... or...you may not have. One thing that I have learned, even from myself, about having a good character, is that they need to be more real than fake. I will touch more on this in a later post, but right now, I will focus strictly on cussing.....or should I say....not cussing and still having a believable character.

So, you might be asking how will not cussing create an unbelievable character? Well the answer is simple, yet might seem less obvious than we think. EVERYBODY cusses. Even the most devout of men and women cuss. At least, that is my belief. Now, it probably isn't in front of the congregation or even other people in the church, but I'll bet if you asked your pastor, youth pastor, worship leader, or whoever in a leadership position in your church, if they have ever cussed, they will have to admit they have on occasion. In the deepest corners of their personal life, home alone, or just with immidiate family they let one of those four letter words slip out.

With that said, if your character is to be more real than fake, how do we have him get angry, even so angry he cusses, but not actually have cussing in our reading. Not only that, how can we explore the full depths of his anger without causing another brother to stumble - as the scriptures would say? There is no simple answer to this. I am sure that there are many people who would COMPLETELY disagree with me on this, but that is okay - you don't have to agree with me. I would say, however, that, sometimes to make a character believable there needs to be some sort of foul language. For instance it is unrealistic to have your hero get his arm chopped off and simply say "ouch" or "aaaagghhhh". Now, that can work, but lets think about ourselves......would all we say is "ouch" or scream? I don't think so....most people would probably let a harsh four letter word out....and as I try not to cuss...I would say getting a leg or arm chopped off would be justified. I mean who would say "Chris, now that is no reason to cuss." I would disagree. I mean, just think about when you stub your toe on a tree or wall, or accidently kick a solid box, thinking it was empty....I'll bet you at least thought some foul words.....maybe not.

So, I know it sounds like I am an advocate for cussing, but I am not. I don't recall ever having the actual cuss word in any book I have written - however - I have replaced the dialogue with something like "She blurted out a slew of cuss words" or "He cussed". These are good ways to replace cussing with your character - especially if they are villains, mainly because a villain who kills someone probably doesn't care if he offends someone by cussing. Some would say this is the same thing as writing the actual cuss word - I disagree, we aren't penning the words, so we are clear there. We aren't giving an opportunity for someone to read the actual word, so we are good there, too. We can't help what other's think. If they want to think on what words the character uses, then that's on them. Now you could say we presented the opportunity for them to dwell on the words by saying "he cussed", but I would counter that if we simply said he got angry, maybe the reader would add some additional narrative in her mind as to what that anger entailed - probably not, but whatever. I know in comic books symbols are often used - which to me doesn't really do much to pull back the cussing because we - well at least me - are always trying to figure out which word the symbols are saying - counting how many and figuring out which word fits best there. Not that much different from actual cussing, but then again you could argue that neither is just informing the reader the character cussed, but at least we aren't guiding them into which words were used.

So this is my part two on cussing, if you want to look at it that way. I think that commenting on the character cussing is good for keeping the character more real than fake. Keep a look out for a blog coming soon about other ways how we can make our characters more real than fake, and I'll be criticizing my own work about a character I have in one of my fiction stories.

Hope you enjoyed the read.

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