: Re: Swearing in a book, within a context. Too offensive? I am currently writing a science fiction novel. The characters are almost uniformly pirates and/or miners in the asteroid belt. Having worked

@Lengel543

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Swearing can be tricky and in general it's not a great idea to over use it. However, I think that if you do it in context and use it sparingly then there isn't a problem with it.

The opening line of the book, "The Martian," uses the F word, and it's not having any problems with sales and was turned into a movie, but you should be aware that by including swear words in your work, you're going to limit your audience to some degree.

Another problem you might run into by including cursing is if your over use of it becomes so annoying to the reader that they are pulled mentally out of the story, then they'll be unlikely to recommend your book to friends. That's not what you want. A good way to find out if you've gone over the line is by getting a good cross section of people to be your beta readers. Find out what they think. Not everyone will like it, but if the majority think there's no problem, then you're probably OK.

And don't forget, even Tolkien used swear words in "The Lord of the Rings" when he had the orcs say the word, "garn."

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