…especially when you, yourself, tend to curse like a sailor when in pain or frustrated.
I never knew it would be so difficult to write dialog when a character doesn’t curse. I think the worst thing Tayce has said so far is “goddamn” and “hell.” That’s not because she’s prudish, it’s just not something that she naturally falls back on to voice her frustrations (like I’m known to do :P). After all, the character was born in Victorian times, when nearly everything even remotely scandalous would equal “there are ladies present!”
Although, I shouldn’t say it’s difficult, it’s just annoying at times because my gut-reaction is: In that situation, a lot of people would lay down the F-bomb. I know I would. And by Tayce not cursing, it seems to draw attention to the fact that she’s…well, not cursing.
Or maybe I’m over-thinking it? This is a possibility, I have been doing that a lot lately.


February 12th, 2010 at 9:55 am
ok…so this doesn’t apply to Tayce since it takes place in a “real” place and time, but you could invent curse words for books that take place in alternative worlds…i’m sure you’ve already done that…but i love it when authors do that.
February 12th, 2010 at 11:52 am
@Rory: I’ve tried doing that before when I was working on a sci-fi story, but I never could come up with anything good. I really like “frak” from Battle Star Galactica and how Firefly used Chinese swear words (those are TV examples though).