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How to Use Profanity and Other Raw Talk In Your Fiction

OlgaGodim

Scribe
I write traditional fantasy and I dislike it when people curse in traditional fantasy the way they do in real life. It seems off somehow. Recently I found a list of Shakespearean insults floating on the internet. It's creative. There are 3 columns, and you combine one word from each column to manufacture your own insults. It's fun to use, the variations are plenty, and the resulting insults fit the medieval fantasy setting. Example: 'You fobbing, fat-kidneyed giglet!' They are not regular profanities either, so the profanity level watchers should be satisfied as well. Take a look, if you like: Creative Insults | Worlds of the Imagination
 

MVV

Scribe
This is quite nice. Yet, I'd be maybe afraid if it won't make the reader laugh instead of feeling what you might expect them to feel.
 

Nameback

Troubadour
My fictional world is Greco-Roman inspired, but especially Roman, so there's plenty of cursing. The Romans really did love their profanity, at least based on what they left behind. Of course, they used some terms more than we do today, and some less often. So, for example, I use a lot less "sh*t" than, say, I use it in my life, but a lot more "c*ck" and "c*nt" which aren't as banal in modern America but the Romans used quite often. I think this furthers my goal of evoking a certain time and place with my writing.

I also use some made-up curses, but they're also actually profane. Again, in the Roman style, I write things like "Politor's c*ck" or "Pona's c*nt" as curses, the names being names of gods/goddesses. I also have a hell-equivalent, which is "infinite hells," or "boundless hells" or some variation thereof. As in, "what in the Infinite Hells is going on here?"

Roman vulgarity was pretty rough, though; check out some of Catullus' poetry: (NSFW) Latin profanity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm not sure how often I want my characters to be that crude, so I think I tone it down a bit from ancient authenticity in my writing.
 
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