[Sticky] *@*&%$^ Language -- A Post from Jody Lynn Nye

@watt_writes Yes, I lucked out seeing the warning about which words are verboten. As a noob, I cause myself enough trouble already.  

FYI - New Policy for profanity and offensive language

RWC (Rejected with comments): Any single use of the F-bomb, the n-word, the c-word (rhymes with punt), and other racial & ethnic slurs. Repeated use of lesser profanity ($hit, @ss, the b-word, etc.) will also be RWCed.

DQ: Excessive use of any of the above, alone or in combination.

We've been creeping up on this for awhile, so it's time to make it official. Yes, in times gone by, you could still win with an f-bomb in your ms., but we'd make you take it out before publication. Then we decided that you could still earn HM, Silver or Semi with profanity in your manuscript, you just couldn't win.

With the contest growing as it is, we don't have time to count how many of this word or that word and make an individual distinction. If we see certain words at all, and if we see more than a bare few of the lesser ones, we will reject (RWC or DQ) your story for language. If that happens, you are welcome to edit the story and resubmit. In fact, we hope you do.
Cheers!

Kary

Maybe this is dumb, and if so, I apologize up front. For stories set in time periods that used different polite terms that might now be considered racial or ethnic slurs what would the judges like writers to use? I don't worry about this when I write in secondary worlds, but if I'm setting a story in our past, this kind of thing can come up. I don't need or want to fight about terminology, I just want to know how best to please the judges.

Posted by: @babooher

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Maybe this is dumb, and if so, I apologize up front. For stories set in time periods that used different polite terms that might now be considered racial or ethnic slurs what would the judges like writers to use? I don't worry about this when I write in secondary worlds, but if I'm setting a story in our past, this kind of thing can come up. I don't need or want to fight about terminology, I just want to know how best to please the judges.

 

It's not dumb. I think it's a legitimate concern. I choose to write accurately for the context.

@babooher 
Would you like your 13 year old to speak frivolously words that USED to be neutral, but now aren't, because it was OK in the books?

I'd relax the historical realism for better market fit.

@vrlass, I see your point, but I also see that Mr. Shoemaker contradicts it. And therein lies the rub. There are plenty of markets where realism is expected. There are others where politically correct language is valued more. Kary English has been ever so kind as to clarify some language expectations for WotF, but this is a bit of a gray area. I'm hoping to get a definitive ruling. I'm not advocating one side or the other. I'll write what I want. But I'd like to submit what the judges want or at least I'd like to avoid what they don't want.

@babooher All that I am saying - Mind your market. WOFT is pegi 13. 13-year-olds in general can't distinguish what USED to be ok, and what is ok now (and the last thing you want is I guess to put your little readers in trouble with your writing). 
Apart from PEGI 13 market, I agree with Mr. Shoemaker.

I had a load of problems with this issue to begin with. Before I started getting the SHMs (see below) I kept getting Rs. The stories were just as good, but then I found out there was this 'PG-13' thing going on. So then it was like 'ah, yeah, all those (in-character) f-bombs is what did it!'.

Given my timeline of results since then, clearly that was the issue. So thank you, Jody & Kari, for making the guidelines really clear. To spend a whole load of loving hours on what is, essentially, a great story, only to end up 3 months later receiving a 'R' with zero explanation is something that, well, it warrants a swear word, actually!

One question - I am English. We English say 'bloody' a lot, as an adjective, e.g. 'bloody hell!' - where does this word fit in the PG-13 spectrum?

To conclude - when I discovered this PG-13 thing I thought, in typical postmodern fashion, I would write a story about a system known only as 'PG-13'. It's generally considered a boring system in which sex, drugs, n rock n roll have been outlawed. But then, predictably, an outsider comes along and starts kickin' things up a bit. I feel ok to mention this story idea on the WotF forum seeing as in order to make a story like that work this outsider character would have to F-bomb his way through the entire narrative. Thus, the idea of actually submitting it to the contest is, well, poodoo, for want of a better word.

Just for the record, though - I am staking my intellectual property rights to that story idea. Just in case any o' you pesky [shush - ed.]

Posted by: @eviekb

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One question - I am English. We English say 'bloody' a lot, as an adjective, e.g. 'bloody hell!' - where does this word fit in the PG-13 spectrum?

The only explicitly forbidden words are the f-bomb and racial slurs. They used to let the f-bomb through on the condition that it would be removed in editing. But that could lead to a case where a winner was selected, they refused to edit, and the Contest had to go through extra steps to choose a new winner. So that one is one strike and you're out. (Curious: does "one strike" idiom translate for Brits? I know cricket has similar game mechanics, but I don't know if the words translate.)

Other cursing can get you disqualified if it's "excessive". What's excessive? Ultimately that's Jody's call. My personal opinion is you can get away with a lot of "hell" and "damn" and maybe even "ass", not so much excretory functions and reproductive/excretory organs. But I'm not the authority here!

And even if it's not excessive, we may get back to the case where Dean wants to edit it out and the author refuses. Ugh.

As for "bloody"... That's an interesting case. Brits use it a lot, as you say. As an outsider, it seems to me that it's even casual. Is it still even considered cursing? My opinion only: There's a long tradition of using foreign cursing to slide past American standards. I'm told that Firefly fairly bristled with Chinese cursing. So I suspect "bloody" would slide on by.

Language is one of the subtopics under a new topic that I just created: Martin’s OPINION on the Unwritten Rules | The Contest – Quarterly Topics, and Other Items | Writers & Illustrators of the Future Forum (writersofthefuture.com)

Posted by: @eviekb

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One question - I am English. We English say 'bloody' a lot, as an adjective, e.g. 'bloody hell!' - where does this word fit in the PG-13 spectrum?

I've had HM, SHM and SF stories with a few 'crap', 'bastard', 'damn', 'double damn', and 'shit' in them. I've left them in since it fits the character, but other than 'shit' I don't see them as bad. I'm from Michigan and F-bombs were used in practically every other sentence when I was growing up.

PG-13 is so loose definition these days with taking the lord's name being acceptable, even if it's offensive to me. Kind of like sex scenes that don't move the plot along, but are just there to show partial nudity and still qualify as PF-13.

Honestly, in 99% of cases it's more interesting to let the character express their frustration in their own way than to use a pedestrian curse word like everyone else. 

Ursula K. LeGuin offers good advice on the use of the word 'f***ing' in her book Steering the Craft. She writes "...used in narrative to lend emphasis and colloquial vigor, the word does just the opposite. In fact, its power to weaken, trivialize, and invalidate is stunning."

Wise words from a masterful storyteller.

@martin-l-shoemaker 

I don't think we'd really use 'one strike' for cricket. We do have rounders, which I played a few times at school, which is kind of like baseball (just a bit more sissy - sorry, is 'sissy' something Americans use? it sort of means 'silly girly' - usually applied by teenage boys to other teenage boys as an insult - nothing to do with the prefix 'cis' btw). Of course American pop culture has found its way into English idiomatic usage so certainly 'one strike' or 'three strikes and you're out' is something that wouldn't seem odd in the UK. When it comes to sports-related idioms though we would tend to go for the two main sports being football (sorry, soccer) and cricket. Cricket doesn't really have 'discipline' type rules, like yellow cards and red cards in football. And it is somewhat impenetrable to anyone who doesn't play it.

Yeah, 'bloody' is so common it isn't really thought of as swearing. Like we would say 'bloody weather!' all the time (for obvious, somewhat stereotypical reasons) and no one thinks of it as an expletive. I think the American equivalent would, indeed, be something like 'damn'? Also, interestingly, it's the kind of word an upper class Englishman could get away with, though they'd never drop an F-bomb. Yes, we Brits have class-conscious cursing!

I think on another note, it's usually clear as to the intention of an expletive - that's to say it's - to me at least - a completely different thing to use, say, effing as an adjective compared to an obvious insult directed at someone else, like 'eff you'. In the eye of the beholder, so to speak. Whereas one, as an impersonal, is only 'rude and upsetting' to someone who routinely washes their mouth out with soap, rather than to another person who swears equally frequently, the other, as a personal insult really is intended to be upsetting.

I do, however, all in all, think a lot of ratings are a bit silly and pointless, seeing as it must be a very closeted and isolated person indeed who doesn't know all the swear words well before they reach the age of 13. And no ratings have ever stopped 'children' from growing up and being adults who swear! So clearly it's not working!

Having said all that, it is possible to do a gritty story without swearing. Now that I think about it, for example, I'm not sure I can remember a single F-bomb in 'Alien' (Aliens, sure, but not the first movie). Despite the fact the characters are supposed to be working class labourers! Mind you it's been a while since I last saw it, maybe I'm wrong...

Thanks for your response, btw! Much appreciated. Cultural differences are quite interesting in this regard, indeed...

thx for the tip.  I tend to use a lot of these so I will have to clean up my act!