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@xonos-darkgrate I agree with @kate-flournoy
I really dislike things that are blandly clean, and I stories that tackle dark questions and themes, but I don’t think as Christians, we should rely on swear words to drive a story forward. They can easily be implied, and we don’t need to write them directly into the story. That said, I don’t mind made up swear words at all, and I use those all the time in my fantasy writings. Okay, it may be spineless, but I don’t want to get in the habit of writing real cursing, especially when some people may take offense at it. And in-world, made-up curse words can be made to be effective for demonstrating coarse characters, as well. You can have some characters never use them and make it seem rough when one of them does.
*Giarstanornarak tries to melt chair*
Also, Daeus has 22 turtles in his signature.@xonos-darkgrate And my opinion on your excerpt is… no, I don’t think it’s too dark. Although opinions may differ
*Giarstanornarak tries to melt chair*
Also, Daeus has 22 turtles in his signature.@Xonos-darkgrate what @Daeus and the rest already said, basically, on the general subject.
I did, however, find your excerpt slightly disturbing, which is odd, because I’m not usually disturbed by that kind of stuff. It may have been because it lacked subtlety and I kind of just felt like I had my face shoved in a pool of blood for no reason and that made me want to choke. You might almost have been making too much of a point of how violent it was, with no other purpose or layer to the scene; at least none that I could see or that gave me something else to focus on.
‘Including darkness’ does not mean writing ‘dark scenes’ that are there for nothing else is acceptable (even just from a writing standpoint). If the gore is the point of the scene, the scene falls flat on its face after hitting the reader in their face with a lot of sticky details. No scene should be one-dimensional, violent scenes least of all.
Nope, the whole scene there was supposed to connect to something, but I didn’t post that part. I don’t really do scenes like that for no reasons.
Life's a cruel joke, so you have to laugh at it sometimes.
I didn’t mind that section, but I definitely know some people who would be bothered. As long as you have a connection, cause yeah, like Kate said, it kinda did feel drop you random in the middle of gore and evil for no reason, out of context like that.
About the swear words things. Obviously, top swear words are out. Then you get into the picky area, where you have to decide if words like ‘dang’ and ‘darn’ are bad words, or merely slang. I use dang sometimes, sporadically, and I don’t mind other people saying it. But then you get to words like damn and crap… those are even pickier.
I, personally, do not include any of the above mentioned words in my writing, even the ones I say myself, like dang. I am fine with darn and dang, much less so with damn and crap. But none of them go into my writings, because of other people, though, not because of the reason that they don’t believe swear and semi-swear words should be in a book. Because, you know, someone, somewhere, will always have a problem with what you write, and you can’t please everyone, and I do believe that squeaky clean never showing anything wrong or evil books can be very ineffective sometimes. Some people think romance shouldn’t be in books, at all. Or any gore. At all. But I don’t include language more for the reason of 1st Corinthians 8:9 – “But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak.”
A lot of people have good intentions about not using swear words when they talk, but it can be extremely hard to break a habit of years. I worked hard to get a word out of my vocabulary that I picked up when I was eight. I don’t want other people to read words in my book, even coming from the mouth of a bad guy, even a very minor exclamation like ‘dang’, if they’re trying to stop using those words for personal reasons. I don’t want to be a stumblingblock to them. What we read in books and see on TV has an extremely high influence on what we think is okay to do.
Also, I agree with @kate-flournoy I am fine with ‘he swore under his breath’, etc., but it could be hard to deal with that in first person. I think ‘I swore under my breath’, etc., would be the easiest way to do that without spelling out the words.
ENFP - "One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
@xonos-darkgrate It seems okay then. I mean I as a reader don’t like that mean guy at all. I mean here he is beating up someone and making his family watch. Appalling. So it could work in a book.
What they said too.IMMA KAPEEFER! Til we're old and gray!
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