Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Words and Writers

Swearing in Literature

swear book

In Better Angels of Our Nature, Stephen Pinker says that swearing is a sign of a civilized society. You’re not going to be hung for comparing a member of the royal family to the back end of a donkey. We have progressed beyond that. There is no doubt that there is an offensive side to the English language but you are free to use it as you please. The question is; when should it be used, and when should it be avoided?

If you are writing a picture book for three year-olds it’s probably best that the talking squirrel doesn’t have speech bubbles filled with expletives. But that’s obvious to anyone so let’s focus on fiction aimed at adults. The reason this subject is on my mind is that I’m reaching the end of writing a horror/thriller novel and as the first rewrite looms I start to think about these things.

There is swearing in my book. It is occasional and mostly in the dialogue. I only paused for thought when I came to edit the moments where the fourteen year-old children in the book swear. To justify this I’m going to drag out two very important words; realism and context.

Fourteen year-olds swear. You might not hear them doing it, and not all of them do, but most, when amongst their peers, use “bad” language all of the time (in fact I’ve questioned my twelve year-old daughter on this and she has confirmed that many of her friends do indeed have potty mouths. She of course is an angel, or so she tells me). You can avoid it in your writing but sometimes avoiding it takes away from the realism of what you are writing. As I’m currently writing horror I’ll use horror as an example. Let’s say we have a fourteen year-old boy named Billy, and Billy has just witnessed the violent death of a parent. Is he more likely to mutter the word, “Gosh.” under his breath, or something more visceral? The word gosh would immediately destroy the believability of the scene. However, if you are writing a scene where Billy is enjoying a particularly good ice cream it would be unnecessary for him to comment on how f***ing delicious it was.

Here’s my dilemma, and the one that got me onto thinking about this in the first place; when is it okay to swear in prose, outside of dialogue? My thoughts on this are straight forward (but I have gone against my own advice a few times as I’ve looked at each individual case). If you take the swear word out no one is going to notice that it isn’t there, and so all should be eliminated. Whether or not swearing is okay in a civilised society there is no doubt that some people find it abhorrent. So take it out. People will happily read the murder scenes in your book and not flinch but as soon as they come across an F-word in the middle of a descriptive passage a big bell will ring in their head. Even if that ringing stops pretty quickly it is still jarring enough to drag you out of the scene.

So why have I left a few in? Sometimes your descriptive prose will reflect the thoughts of whichever character is in that scene, and that’s okay. It helps to clarify the mood your character is in. So you have a scene that goes – Terry stood on the side of the road looking at his smashed up car. The other driver, some drunk moron, was still sat in his driver’s seat, bleeding from the ears. Terry had two options, call a taxi and make it to the wedding on time, or help this stupid fucking drunk.

Alright, so that’s not a great example, but hopefully it illustrates my point well enough. Sometimes your prose reflects the thoughts, or the mood, of the main character in the scene.

swear keyboard

It’s interesting to me that there are no age guidelines with books, as there are with film and television. It is up to the responsibility of the author. But we’re not talking about sex and violence, we’re talking about language. You might lose some readers because they think your use of language is vulgar, but remember, that just makes you more civilised than them. Don’t swear for the sake of it though, the novelty wears off pretty quickly for the reader. So long as your portrayal of life is true then you won’t need to think too hard about whether or not that particular word is necessary.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Words and Writers

And should not be at the beginning of this sentence.

StrunkAndPtah

I don’t know what the key to this whole writing thing is. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to find out. I must have read fifty books on the subject. I think maybe its clarity. So much writing is just filler, or confusing sentence structures.

It becomes a kind of music. I know I break some grammatical standards but hopefully not in a way that jars. There is no sensible reason for a sentence to not start with and. Or begin with or. Here is some dialogue between two students whispering to each other in an English lesson –

“Why can’t a sentence start with and?”

“Because she said so. And maybe she’s right. Fuck it. I don’t know. And anyway, that’s not how we speak so why write like that?”

“But what if we lose marks by writing realistically.”

“You shouldn’t start a sentence with but,” says the Teacher, overhearing the conversation.

“Why?” says the boy.

“Because that is the rule.”

“You shouldn’t start a sentence with because,” says the boy, “It’s a subordinate conjunction that requires more than one clause.”

“I’m glad you’ve been paying attention,” says the teacher, “but my first clause was in the sentence you interrupted when I said; ‘You shouldn’t start a sentence with but’.”

“This is all very confusing,” says a drunk man stumbling into the classroom by accident.

“Can I help you sir?” says the teacher.

“None of this is real,” says the drunk.

Why did I write that in the present tense? The second most difficult tense for a reader after the second tense. I’ve never written in the second tense before. I think I’ll give it a go;

               You walk into the gents at the pub. A man by the urinal is touching   himself inappropriately. You enter the cubical with the broken lock. You drunkenly undo your trousers and let them fall to the ground. You sit down and pee. You would have pissed at the urinal if it wasn’t for that masturbating man. Why did you sit down anyway? Too drunk to stand. You focus on a round convex lens on the back of the cubical door and think to yourself, why is there a camera in here? And decide it’s time to stop drinking in this particular watering hole.

Good. That was fun. You know, as these blog posts get further down the page the empty beer can count on my desk gets greater. It’s no wonder I lose focus.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Poetry, Words and Writers

The Drinker’s Fallacy

Pub where Poet John Berryman (C) is talking to other customers. (Photo by Terrence Spencer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

I might need to apologise in the morning, but…

 

Is this a poem? –

 

I stood in my kitchen staring at the floor,

so many gatherings happened here,

and now I am hungry

and the kitchen is empty.

 

Or just a sentence that has fallen down a stair case? Splitting a sentence up over several lines does not make a poem.

The above is original but it is an example of a lot of stuff that is out there at the moment. It is why I have failed to enjoy poetry when I have tried. I have, for some unknown reason to myself (as I am a novelist at heart), started writing the stuff. I don’t think poetry needs to sit in the romantic teenage angst corner of the literary world, but it is hard for the stoic amongst us to find our way in. I love words, and I think poetry is well suited to them, but the above is just a pointless cop-out.

There is a satisfying cadence to the English language that can be showcased with poetry. Breaking up sentences and pretending it is art is an insult to that. Write better.

 

 

 

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, The Other Stuff, Words and Writers

The Obscene and Criminal Malice Inflicted by Time

End

You know when you lose your TV remote and it drives you crazy. You look everywhere. You search frantically, chucking the pillows off the couch and lifting it up to look underneath. You check under newspapers and lift up the rug. How can it have disappeared? It’s a TV remote! After looking everywhere you finally give up and sit down, defeated and dejected. After your internal tantrum has abated, after you’ve mentally blamed everyone and everything that could have caused it to vanish, including the cat, you finally calm down and look up at the TV. And there it is. Right in front of you, on the TV stand. Of course it is. It’s obvious now. The thing you were looking for was right there in front of you the whole time. For fuck sake.

I have that feeling. I have it all the time. The problem is, that moment of sitting back and finally finding it hasn’t come. I don’t even know what is missing.

It is that feeling that makes you want to travel. The urge to explore. You don’t know what it is you expect to find but you’ll be damned if you’re going to stop looking before you find it. But it’s not just that. And it’s not just travel. It’s everything. You don’t just want to explore new lands, you want to learn everything. You want to try everything. All the food. All the music. All the booze. All the knowledge. Time is being pulled from our veins with each passing minute. Aging us. Every day that passes, every second that tics, every Christmas that zooms past; we are being killed by the calendar, one day at a time. Fill those days before they are rudely taken from you.

You don’t have to pack up all your shit and spend the rest of your life travelling. That would be a form of hell for some. It is a feeling that surrounds everything. You wish you had learned how to play the piano when you were younger. You can buy a second-hand piano or keyboard for £20. Get one. Learn how to play it. You will love it. Want to write a book? It costs nothing. Just start typing. It doesn’t matter if you know what you want to write about. That will come. Just start slinging words together and see what happens.

People have no urgency. People don’t seem to want to do anything anymore. They are content dedicating their life to a career. Have a career, why not, I have one, get promoted, do good work, but be ready to put your foot down and leave work early to go to your kid’s school play. Let your job pay for the things you love. Don’t miss out on life so you can get more money. You want that money so you can have a better life so what is the point if you are giving up on life to get it?

I write because I’m going to look back tomorrow and release that yesterday was thirty years ago and I have left nothing solid to justify the wasted years. I write so I can trap time and keep it there.

Andrew Chapman Short Stories, Words and Writers

Once Upon a Wine (How not to write a fairytale, by a bored and drunk writer)

Fat-squirrel-2Once upon a time, is an overused trope. There are many established and recognised ways to tell a story. This is not one of them. There are accepted literary rules that must not be broken. Speaking directly to the reader is one such rule. You are embarking on an experiment. It might become tedious. Maybe it won’t. But before we start, here is a quick writing tip; you should never begin or end a sentence with the word “but”. But there we are.

This story is a fairytale about a drug addict. And it begins (also, you should never begin a sentence with the word “and”) in a magical forest just outside of Boscombe.

Boscombe was a magical (another thing you should never do is repeat the same word twice in near proximity, i.e. “magical”) place in the south of England. It is a small province in Bournemouth. Boscombe is famous for stabbings, alcoholics, a booming drug trade (they were lucky enough to have the first crack factory discovered in England!) and a happy-go-lucky 30 year-old pisshead called Trev.

Trev was enjoying a peaceful slumber under a sick-looking oak tree just down the path from that tatty little mini-golf course in Boscombe gardens.

“Urgh,” he moaned, stirring from a terrible hangover. He began to cry. Crying in your sleep is a talent one acquires after much practice and hardship.

A squirrel watched him from a branch above. He had a look of trepidation in his eyes. He sniffed the air and twitched his nose. Quietly, and slowly, he scurried down the tree and landed softly on the ground. He crept up to Trev and looked him over carefully. (By the way, if you are reading this and are a writer in the making please do not do as I do. I am making no attempts to avoid adjectives. Avoiding adjectives is very important).

The squirrel sniffed Trev’s nose and took a tentative nibble. “Could this mysterious thing under the tree be a giant nut?” the squirrel thought. Probably.

Trev was startled awake. His eyes opened wide. In his mad half asleep state he perceived the squirrel as some kind of small fury monster. He screamed. The squirrel panicked. Trev reacted without thinking and slammed his fist heavily down on the beast. He punched the poor thing into the ground. It lay still, sunken into the dirt. Blood seeping from its ear. It twitched and then vomited. (Jesus Christ. This is a horrible fairy tale. If you haven’t stopped reading by now there is something really very wrong with you).

It is said that every time the fourth wall is broken, and the writer addresses the reader directly, the illusion is destroyed and any kind of drama or suspense built up is shattered. If you decide to address the reader directly, in your own writing, you should make sure it pays off and has at least some relevance to the story. If you are writing in the first person it can be used as a way to give a quirky insight into the narrator’s mind but it is rarely done well and normally just pisses people off. What I’m doing now is just self-indulgent and awkward for both of us.

Trev pulled himself to his feet and brushed bits of twigs and dirt from his clothes. (A quick note about adjectives. I could have just said, “Tev stood up. His clothes were dirty.” But “dirty” is an adjective, and as I said earlier, they must be avoided. It’s all about showing and not telling, so they say. Building a picture for the mind’s internal cinema to follow).

Fuck. I can’t remember what this story was going to be about. Princesses maybe? Drug addled princesses. I don’t know. That will do. Fairy tales should have villains shouldn’t they? Yes!! (Exclamation marks, let’s talk about that. They should be used sparingly, and never more than one, ever). Right, let’s get a villain on to the scene.

A shadow fell over Trev, our prince. Trev looked up at the figure standing over him, shielding his eyes from the bright sun that was eclipsing around the figure, causing him to appear as a featureless silhouette.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The figure leaned forward revealing his identity. “Ello, ello, ello,” he said, stereotypically.

“Good morning Constable.”

“You just murdered that squirrel.”

“I want to marry your daughter.”

“Well, well, well,” said the constable (who had a recognisable trait of often repeating words three times just because the author doesn’t have the adequate skills to create a more distinct character and wants to avoid saying the words “he said” by letting the verbal tick do the work for him), “Doesn’t that add an interesting depth to our relationship. You’re nicked.”

Trev was taken to the police station and the author decided to wrap things up because this whole thing, whatever it is, is pointless and stupid.

The constable’s daughter beat her teenage fists on her dad’s manly chest and begged him to let Trev, her lover, go. He agreed and the teenage couple had sex resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. They got marriage even though they barely knew each other because Trev wanted to prove her dad wrong, and is a bit of a dick. They lived happily on benefits ever after.

 

The End

 

Epilogue.

The squirrel that Trev punched survived but due to an unusually warm winter, making it easier than usual to find food, got fat and was killed by a cat because he couldn’t get away quick enough.

 

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, The Other Stuff, Words and Writers

10 Simple Steps to Getting Noticed on Wattpad

10 Simple Steps Cover

Step one

Write a book called, “10 Simple Steps to Getting Noticed on Wattpad.” (Like I did right here – https://www.wattpad.com/story/51458336 )

Step two

Use said book to give helpful information. Slyly mention your main book as an example. Just like I’m about to do in step three.

Step three

Have an excellent cover with a very funny sticker in the top right-hand corner (Here’s a good example of what I mean – https://www.wattpad.com/story/41481274-the-accidental-scoundrel )

Step four

Sell your soul. Here’s a helpful guide to get you started –

1) Put your book in a shoebox along with a lock of your own hair, some toenail clippings, and a picture of Hellen Mirren.

2) Go to the middle of a crossroads and bury the shoe box. (Depending on the type of road surface you may need a pneumatic drill and a fake stop sign, especially if you intend to do this at rush hour.)

3) Say the words, “Unbiwattpadio garnethme readerworms ignitio soulio.”

4) Wait.

5) Apologise to the traffic and go back home.

6) Consult a psychiatrist.

Step five

Consider packing the whole thing in.

Step six

Having consumed quite a lot of whisky remember how brilliant a writer you really are and get straight back on to Wattpad.

Step seven

Endlessly follow other authors and pretend to like their books so they will pretend to like yours in return.

Step eight

Wonder where exactly this staircase is leading to. Do you have an attic? Look back at the previous seven steps and try and remember exactly what it was you came up here for in the first place.

Step nine

Lean against metaphorical banister and call psychiatrist and say you’re having a metaphysical meltdown and could he please recommend alcohol as you think it would do a lot better than any time spent on a chaise longue. Remember that “chaise longue” is French for “long chair” and chuckle at how unsophisticated that particular piece of furniture now seems.

Step ten

Put your finger in your ear and wiggle it up and down. No really, try it. Doing it? It sounds just like Pac-Man doesn’t it?

Step eleven (damn, I’ve miscounted somehow)

I don’t know how to get noticed on Wattpad. It’s really hard, man. I’ve been on here for like 4 months and I’ve only got one vote. You are really asking the wrong person.

Thank you for reading. Now, go and read The Accidental Scoundrel and, if it makes you laugh, do please vote for it.

Oh, and – Step Twelve

Never directly ask for votes.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, The Other Stuff, Words and Writers

Comedy: the runt of the genre litter

I think there should be a movement in literature. Humour needs recognition. Movies, television, theatre, music, they all have a legitimate genre section. So why not literature? I went to my local branch of Waterstones to find something to tickle my funny bone. It’s not easy. Where is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? In the Sci-Fi section. Terry Pratchett? – Fantasy. P. G. Wodehouse? – general fiction. Dave Wong? – horror.

And the TV and Film version of the above? They are in the comedy section. And nobody frowns upon it. So why not books?

And it’s fine if you know the author you are looking for. But if you want to discover a new comedy writer you can’t do it. You can’t browse and leaf through the comedy on offer because they’ve all been dispersed randomly throughout the shop.

With television and film comedy is put with comedy regardless of the genre. You don’t need to hunt through the horror section to find Shaun of the Dead, or trawl through Sci-Fi to find Red Dwarf. They are all bundled together. “You want something funny to watch? Here it is,” say the nice people in DVD shops. But books? “We’re too proud to have a comedy genre. This is literature darling.”

There is a “humour” section in most book shops but sadly this is full with novelty books and joke collections. I want to go into a store, in the mood for a funny novel, and to be able to browse through authors I’ve never heard of. There are enough of us to warrant it.

Or am I just being a pedant? What do you think?

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Words and Writers

Hermes, the Forgotten Blog Master

Hermes

Basic things seem unbelievable when I transpose them into prose. How can I possibly be believed when life is so absurd?

All I want to do is recount my life. This is impossible. Even if nothing worthwhile has happened it still seems strange and unusual. I defy you to write about your day without seeming like some white lie is forming the basis of your humour. If you do manage to write about your day and find it mundane and humourless (and so proving me wrong) then you have failed to live a day worth taking note of.

Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I create a situation knowing my actions can lead to absurdity. I don’t know anymore. I remember hearing a stand-up comedian trying to explain with all seriousness this bizarre thing that had happened to him and he said, “I used to allow things like this to happen, maybe I encouraged it. I knew, no matter how weird things got, after the danger had passed I would have a good story to tell. And if it went bad I could trust on my wit to get me out of it. And if not my wit I could say, ‘Hey, I’m a writer, this will all end up in a book someday. Don’t kill me.’” Or something like that. That’s my version of what I heard anyway. Maybe I made the whole thing up. I think I did. It still holds true.

Weirdness happens naturally. It is up to the writer to capture it for prosperity. Life is weird. Get used to it. Embrace it. Chase it through the normality and wrestle it to the ground. You will learn so much more through your mad moments than you will through your sane ones. Sane ones pass by like a series of red crosses on a fridge calendar.

It is not routine that we really crave. It is the broken routine that excites us. It is the moments when you look back at that calendar and see that a red cross is missing. What happened to that day? You weren’t there to cross it out that’s for sure.

If you’ve managed to get this far through this post then good for you. I’ve had a lot to drink and it is entirely possible that the above will turn out to be a gibberish series of incoherencies. If that is the case I will write another blog post tomorrow explaining how late it was and that it’s a miracle the laptop survived the night. Violence follows inane drunkenality. (Take note! Drunkenality is a new word, write it down and inform the authorities).

Tomorrow I will have had some sleep and some coffee. I will be in control of my intelligence. I will no-doubt mistrust my drunken instincts to write such rambling nonsense. Or maybe truth lies somewhere in the whisky sodden words of the writer trapped in his natural habitat.

See him. The writer. There he is. In his cage. He is drunk. He has a cigarette hanging from his mouth. There is no plot in his mind. There is no character waiting to be created. There is only the page and his incessant nonsense.

Goodnight. Farewell. It is up to Hermes, the Greek god of wit, literature, and poetry, to determine if these words are worthy of an inconsequential blog post.

Andrew Chapman Words and Writers

Mellifluous Ramblings

Dictionary 4

The problem with reading dictionaries is that you find yourself writing words into your prose that you are certain you would not understand yourself if you came across it in someone else’s book.

But that’s how vocabulary grows so you should never shy away from it. The context should carry the word anyway. And if you read in the way I do, and come across a word you don’t know, google is at your fingertips with all the meanings and definitions for all the words and things in every language in all the world. Smart phones are magic impossible devices sent to us by aliens.

(I just want to say quickly that I am aware that using the words “but” and “and” at the beginning of a sentence is technically wrong. It is a matter of grammar that I dispute. If it is used widely in common speech it is acceptable in prose. I might expand in this point at a later date).

Anyway, I was talking about words you wouldn’t normally use. I wrote the following sentence –

She made a wonderful mellifluous sound.

In the interest of context, the girl mentioned in the above sentence was enjoying the intimate company of the protagonist (Ghastly isn’t it? Sex has no place in comedy, the scene will probably be deleted). Mellifluous is a word no one knows naturally. In fact it’s a word I didn’t know I knew until I wrote it and had to look it up to see what it meant and if it fit the sentence, which by chance it did. Osmosis in action. Mellifluous. I’m not going to tell you what it means (you may already know). If you don’t, think about what you think it means and then google it.

On this occasion I actually decided not to use the endlessly helpful Google (or the brilliant and underrated Wikipedia) and instead I took the opportunity to flop open my massive and beguiling Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. It has all of the words in it. Look at it. It’s enormous –

Dictionary 1

You see, it’s big isn’t it. Let’s open it at random and see what new word we discover.

Dictionary 2

Cock-horse. Well, there we are. Who was expecting that? Definition –

(In the dictionary the definition is long and exhaustive so I’ll break it down) A Cock-horse is when a child rides an adults knee. Like a game. Pretending she’s riding a horse.

The massive dictionary makes for a nice light bedtime read for the kids too –

Dictionary 1

I mean, who has ever used the word mellifluous before? I know I haven’t. Well, I have now, 4 times. But you know what I mean. I don’t think I’ll be using cock-horse any time soon.

I seem to recall having some kind of point when I started this post. Until I got distracted by the dictionary. I might start doing a word of the month (or whenever I come across an interesting one). Here’s a good word – Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. It’s the name given to the fear of long words. There’s a psychologist somewhere with a sense of humour. Some people add an extra “p” in the “…quippedalio…” bit. But that’s just silly.

Do feel free to share any interesting words in the comments.

If you liked this post you might also like this one – https://andychapwriter.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/paradise-lost-hobby-gained/

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Words and Writers

I Left my Words at the Airport!

Lost WordsI wrote a couple of paragraphs for my next book on my work laptop yesterday morning. I was on a small propeller plane on my way to Manchester. It was early and the flight was short. I took out the laptop and got typing. I liked the words that fell from my fingers. They were interesting observations about the waitresses in Las Vegas casinos. I think they were interesting anyway. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote.

I was there for a meeting but after it was done I had about 4 hours to kill before my flight home at 10pm. So I got a train from the airport to Oxford Road to meet a friend. We went to a pub. Had a pizza. Went to another pub. We drank lager and all kinds of different ales. Then it was time for me to go.

I was swaying a bit at the security check in at Terminal 3. I was the only person there. I had drunk some water and eaten about 15 Smints so I was more sober than I could have been, but not sober enough to pay attention to what I was doing.

In my bag was about 15 ink cartridges that had been taped together. They looked suspiciously like a bomb that had been disguised to look like printer cartridges. I was made to separate them and put them into small clear bags. My laptop was put in a separate tray.

I went through the scanner. It didn’t beep (a first in the history of Andy).

“I think you’ve missed your plane mate,” said the security guard on the other side.

“I don’t think so.”

“Let’s see your boarding pass.”

I gave it to him.

“That plane is about to take off, It’s due to leave at 9:25.”

I checked my watch. It was 9:22. “Shit, I thought it left at 10. Or there about.”

“You better run mate if you want a chance to get on it.” He pointed at the screen at the end of the room that listed the flights. “It’s at gate 144.”

I grabbed my jacket, put on my belt and slung my bag over my shoulder. I ran for the gate and arrived panting.

“Have I missed it?” I said, chucking my passport at the guy and slumping over his desk.

He looked at me like I was some kind of delusional mad man. “No. We’re not boarding yet.” He tentatively picked up my passport and handed it back to me. “Why don’t you take a seat.”

I turned around and there were people sat in the waiting area, staring at me.

“That fucker was messing with me.” I said, mostly to myself.

I sat down and looked at my ticket. The boarding time is 9:45. This is how these sick fuckers get their kicks. Watching people run at full speed away from the security check in fear of being stranded.

It wasn’t until I landed in Bournemouth that I noticed my bag felt a bit light. I had left my laptop and ink cartridges in Manchester. Fuck. My boss will not be happy. How will I do my job?

I called the airport security in Terminal 3. They seemed to be expecting my call.

“Hi, I’ve just landed in Bournemouth and I –“

“Forgot your laptop?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve got it. You’ll have to call lost and found tomorrow afternoon. They’ll arrange to have it sent to you.”

I got in a taxi and met my sister for a beer. I’m not really concerned that I can’t get much work done without it, I can work around that, but those few paragraphs about the casino girls in Las Vegas. I need to get them back.

The first thing I did when I got up this morning was back up all my writing (I have two laptops, one that stays in the house and is used just for writing, and the work laptop which is used begrudgingly to do the things that result in money being in my account at the end of each month).

Losing words is far worse than losing a laptop.