Sunday, February 27, 2011

Those Naughty Words

Another tale from Absolute Write's SYW boards.
So there was this short intro someone had posted where he dropped the C-bomb in the first sentence. Well naturally, there was some mixed reactions. Some people were all for it while others said they couldn't even read past the first line. For me, it didn't work because he was comparing a woman's lady parts to a gash. *looks down* Nope, doesn't look like a gash to me.
But it brings up an interesting point: is it in bad taste to put vulgar language in the VERY first sentence?

I'm not sure myself because my characters are the ones that cuss or say vulgar things and I only reserve the "C" word for when bitch isn't enough. To me, comparing the scenery to private parts is almost laughable. Who goes around saying a tower looks like an erect penis? Okay sure, the Washington Monument does look like one, but on the average we don't do it. But at the same time, if the narration is limited 3rd person or 1st person, it does show how the character thinks and some characters have dirtier minds than others. It's debatable whether you should show that in the first line, but hey, if it turns off people then those are probably the kind of people you don't want reading your material anyways.

No comments:

Post a Comment