Someone asked here the other day, 'I am always looking for authors that can write a great thriller without cussing and swearing in it. Can you give me some idea of where you books fit into this description?'

Ah yes, foul language. You hear it everywhere these days, and read it too. Most newspapers still blank out common swear words. Follow some of their columnists on Twitter and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1243109/Giles-Corens-Twitter-sex-death-rant-12-year-old-drumming-neighbour.html" target="_blank">a few curse like navvies</a>. Should books exercise the same self-censorship? Do we really need bad language in fiction?

<!--more-->

In my earlier work, and the first three Costa books, you'll find swearing, the f-word usually, not used over-liberally I'd say but present, spoken easily by the characters concerned. After that it's pretty much disappeared, though the book I've just finished includes its use just once.

Swearing is a bit like sex, something writers use because they feel it's expected of them <a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/barronseduc_2089_40466665.gifblog/2009/12/01/sex-there-i-said-it/" target="_blank">as I discussed here</a>, and like violence too, <a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/barronseduc_2089_40466665.gifblog/2010/01/14/the-interesting-question-of-violence/">which I covered yesterday</a>. But I also included bad language in the early Costa books for what I felt were linguistic reasons. I moved to Rome for a while to study Italian and observe the locals in order to write books that hopefully reflected a little of the modern city. Contemporary spoken Italian is full of slang and profanities. If you knew what people were really saying out on the street in Rome and Florence your hair would probably curl.

<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2655" title="barronseduc_2089_40466665" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/barronseduc_2089_40466665.gif?w=178" alt="" />Anyone wanting to understand the filthy nature of modern colloquial Italian should track down a copy of Daniela Gobetti's hilarious and compendious <em>Dictionary of Italian Slang and Colloquial Expressions.</em> I can guarantee it will open your eyes about the <em>bella lingua</em> and how it's used in real life. In truth Italian has always been like this -- there are endless filthy sonnets from Caravaggio's time.

I loved this book but it was impossible to translate any of its real-life colloquialisms into something an English reader would understand. One example: any idea what <em>dare acqua alle fave</em> (to water the fava beans) actually means? To kill someone. He's gone to water Giovanni's beans is a slang expression for the poor guy's going to get murdered. Take my point?

The early books, as I will discuss on another occasion, made a conscious attempt to mirror the slangy, colloquial occasionally foul-mouthed nature of working class Roman speech. Swearing was a part of that.

When it came to book four though I'd changed my position on this subject. I felt I was straining to make a point most people never noticed. Also Italian slang seems bafflingly varied and regional. What works in Rome, is incomprehensible in Naples. A great example is the translation of Andrea Camilleri who uses Sicilian slang very freely. Last time I checked he had different British English and American English translations -- and they were very different indeed. Why bother with this minefield? So I elected to write speech that simply sounded natural, like ordinary unaccented English. And I thought... what if I drop the swearing altogether?

As always with writing the best way to test an idea is to back up your original and leap in with the scalpel. I cut out the swearing. It didn't make a blind bit of difference to the text. Even when I needed people to swear I could get them to do it without uttering a single word that might offend someone. They simply curse under their breath or mutter some quiet imprecation. For my books that's enough. You get to know they're cross or under stress, which is why I used swearing in any case. The constant use of the f-word in particular never really suited my style.

That's not to say it's wrong. If you watch the Coen Brothers' <em>Burn After Reading</em> (which I liked though many didn't) you'll find an opening in which John Malkovich's Osborne Cox loses it spectacularly when he discovers, in a formal interview, that his employer, the CIA, is about to demote him because of his drinking problem. Malkovich gives a wonderful performance of a man breaking up in the stiffest and most unexpected of circumstances, and swears with great gusto. No problem with that all. And once it's over it's over.

What grates with me is the constant use of swearing, so much that it becomes repetitive and meaningless. I never did it that much, even when I felt swearing was part of being a modern popular writer. I don't think the f-word has appeared in a Costa book since number three, <em>The Sacred Cut</em>. It does reappear once in book nine, uttered by a character you'd least expect, in pivotal circumstances where I think its revelatory value is essential. Note that word: revelatory. I didn't say 'shock'. Bad language has absolutely no shock value these days. If anything it may have the opposite effect, generating a yawn not a frisson.

My advice to would-be writers about swearing is simple. Don't feel it has to be in or that using it will make you look cool and clever. Do try taking it out to see if its removal makes a difference. As always, if it has to be there, use it. If it doesn't, take it out.