Shut the F*ck up!: Lazy Writing and the Art of the F-Bomb

Many moons ago, while flipping through the channels in search of mindless entertainment, my wife and I happened across a movie which happened to be of the variety known as “chick flick.” Which renders the term “mindless entertainment” redundant. (Go ahead, @ me.)

Anyway, the scene we landed on involved a feisty young woman haranguing a hapless young man about one feeble plot point or another. In her diatribe, she fired off the word “f*ck” with fervent gusto and in great abundance in the span of two sentences.

My wife muttered, “Why do they have to use that word so much?”

“What it is,” I said, “is a sign of lazy writing.”

Now before you go all “WTF?” on me, please don’t take me for a prude. After all, I was once a teenage boy and I also served in the U.S. Navy for seven years, and I am often called upon to perform various fix-it tasks around the house. As a consequence, I am well-acquainted with “f*ck” and its many permutations and conjugations. And let’s face it, f*ck has a long and glorious history and is a staple in languages the world over.

My issue with the use of “f*ck” in the aforementioned movie, however, was the fact it felt out of context—as in, if these characters were real people, I doubt they would be spouting “f*ck” at one another every 2.7 seconds. Unlike, for example, a teenage boy, a sailor, or a weekend warrior.

In writing and movies, and TV for that matter, I am all for profanity as long as it is used strategically and in context. That is, if the reader or viewer can buy into the character uttering said foul language, and not just for shock value. If, for example, an otherwise milquetoast character unleashes a string of “f*cks” out of the blue, without the reader or viewer being presented with any indication or build-up that he or she is predisposed, then the reader or viewer has every right to question the writer’s credibility. At that point, it feels like the character is saying “f*ck” just for the f*ck of it.

Then there’s the flip side. Take the movies of the great Martin Scorsese: In 180 minutes, The Wolf of Wall Street drops 569 f-bombs, a rate of one every 20 seconds. The f*ck count in Casino is 422 in 178 minutes, while GoodFellas drops its f*ck payload 300 times in 146 minutes. Keep in mind, that’s just the f-bombs, and doesn’t include other forms of expressive dialog.

Also, let’s not forget Quentin Tarantino, who when writing movies can be a f*ck-bomb laying motherf*cker—although statistically, his output pales next to Scorsese. The colorful baddies in his Reservoir Dogs let their f*ck flag fly 269 times in 99 minutes, while Jules, Vincent, and the rest of the Pulp Fiction gang recite the word 265 times, per IMDB.com (or 255, depending on who’s counting) in 154 minutes. No squares there, to be sure.

But I’m OK with these movies’ well-earned reputations as verbal f*ckfests. They’re about bad people who say bad things while committing bad acts. Years ago, when my wife complained about the language in Casino, one of her co-workers—who was well-acquainted with the mob during its Las Vegas heyday—told her, “Hey, that’s how those guys talk.” So, it’s real and not contrived and true to the characters and the story. And therefore, credible.

Still, this has had me contemplating how often I use f*ck and its variants in my own writing. And I am paradoxically proud to report, it’s on the decline—while my use of the word still hones true to context and the characters who utter it in each of my books.

In The Kona Shuffle, the f-bomb falls 32 times, primarily from the lips of three characters—all of them low-level mobster wannabes who, by and large, are idiots. In The Hilo Hustle, I typed the word (and its ilk) 15 times; in The Pahala Twist, a mere six times; and in The Waimea Two-Step, a paltry three. However, the word pops up 12 times in The Volcano Shake—albeit, all within the space of three paragraphs, when uttered in frustrated rapid-fire succession by one character. The remainder of the novel is f*ck-free. (The word appears five times so far in my WIP, THE WAILOA WALTZ; but there’s still plenty more writing to be done.)

This is not meant to say I will avoid f*cking things up in the future. On the contrary, if a character or characters aren’t very nice, and are prone to salty language, or if something sets them off, I will not hesitate to put the word in their mouths. Ironically, though, my main character, Noelani B. Lee, only swears professionally (by her own admission), while her sidekick cousin Wanda Tess Fong eschews profanity completely.

Bottom line: Don’t use profanity gratuitously, but don’t be afraid to put certain words in certain characters’ mouths in certain situations, should doing so be appropriate. And if your readers complain, well, just tell them to f*ck off.