Why There's No Profanity in My Books

Some readers have noticed that there's zero profanity in either of my novels and questioned why. After all, foul language seems as common as nouns and verbs in military/espionage thrillers these days, so it's odd to come across one that doesn't have a single curse word in it.

My short answer to the question is: "because my mother reads my books."

My long answer is a bit more involved.

1. I wasn't raised to talk that way, so I don't write that way. I literally cannot remember my father ever uttering a single curse, which is all-the-more impressive given that he was a sergeant in the US Marine Corps and doubtless had heard some choice ones. I can recall my mother cursing exactly once and it was aimed at me — I was a rebellious, whiny teenager who upset her so much one morning that she finally snapped, ordered me to travel on to my eternal destination, and directed me to the less desirable of the two major options. That left a bit of a psychic scar.

Still, despite having better examples before me and like most teenagers do, I experimented with my vocabulary and let some ugly words fly on occasion. That phase lasted for a year or so, but never in front of my parents until the inevitable day that I slipped up. Rather than reaching for the disinfectant, my mother reached for the most potent weapon in any loving parent's arsenal — the expression of disappointment. I don't remember exactly what she said, but I do remember a quote she shared: "profanity is the sign of a weak mind trying to express itself forcefully." That nailed me where it hurt and I've resisted cussing from that day to this.

Some readers of this blog will disagree with that maxim (one friend of mine disagreed and used salty language to tell me so); but this is my blog. Feel free to start your own blog to explain why I'm wrong, but after much thought, I've concluded that that quote was absolutely right. Thus...

2. I believe that profanity is usually a sign of weak writing. Profanity has become so common in modern media that I feel its inclusion almost never adds anything to an artistic work. Profanity has lost its shock value, rendering it useless as a literary device for character development or delivering emotional impact. Think about it -- why is Rhett Butler's profane dismissal of Scarlett O'Hara's desperate plea at the end of Gone With the Wind so cutting? Because it's the only profanity in the entire movie. It might've been the first profanity in a major US film (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Cursing was almost non-existent in film in 1939, so hearing Rhett tell Scarlett in profane terms that he doesn't care what happens to her was so devastating, so shocking, so powerful that the American Film Institute declared it the #1 line of film dialogue of all time.

Compare that to, say, the 2014 movie The Wolf of Wall Street which deployed the f-bomb alone over 500 times (reviewers disagreed on the final tally but the highest reported was 569) which averages to one use of the ugliest word in the English language every 20 seconds ...and that's not even counting the other 120+ non-f-bomb profanities. Think about that -- almost 700 profanities in a 180-minute film, or one every fifteen seconds. If the average person talks at an average rate of ~2.5 words/second, then profanities make up almost 3% of The Wolf of Wall Street's entire dialogue. Throw that much coarse language at viewers and they're so numb to it by the end that it has no ability to move them emotionally—"familiarity breeds contempt." (And that's assuming they weren't totally desensitized to the f-bomb already by the modern media's constant barrage of it.)

With profanity now so nearly useless as a literary device, why use it? Any literary agent will tell you that they reject out-of-hand manuscripts filled with cliches precisely because it's a signal of weak writing, a lack of talent and creative ability to come up with more creative descriptions. Abundant profanity is a symptom of exactly the same problem -- in 99.9999% of the cases, writers who spew profanity on the page are, in my opinion, reaching for the easiest expression to express a character's frustration and anger instead of trying to find a more creative use of the language. A few authors are skilled at using creative cursing as a way to develop characters, but most profane expressions are nothing more than cliched turns of phrase now.

Don't believe me? Since cliches add nothing to a story, try this exercise -- pick up a thriller you know is full of profanity, go through it with a marker, and black out all of the curse words. Then re-read the book critically and see whether the story really loses anything. I'm pretty confident that you'll find it loses a lot less than you might think. If you're an author and you're tempted to throw in some cursing, try taking it as an opportunity to flex your creative muscles and come up with a different way to express the emotion.

This leads to my next reason...

3. But, Mark, people use profanity in the real world all the time. You have to include it if you want to be realistic. Well, no. First, it's not always realistic. When is the last you time you heard the f-bomb 500 times in three hours outside of a movie theater or on cable TV? Maybe there are people who talk like that in the real world, but I don't know any of them and wouldn't associate with them if I did (more on that later).

In any case, everything in a movie, television, show, or book is completely fake. Take a look at any scene in any movie -- barring outdoor shots, the sets are fake. The production crew designed, revised, redesigned, re-revised, and built it *just for that scene* and there's not one object in the frame that someone didn't put there on purpose. The lighting was set up by professionals who do nothing but study lighting so they can achieve a particular look. Screenwriters revised and edited the dialogue dozens, maybe hundreds of times. The director planned, blocked out, reworked, and choreographed the actors' movements.

Sometimes this is all done to produce a highly realistic effect. For example, realism is the raison d'être of documentaries and the less of it present, the less valuable the documentary. But for pure fiction stories, it's often done to create a highly unrealistic effect (The Matrix, anyone?) and in almost any case, realism is completely (and brazenly) at the mercy of the story. Ask any movie director — they will happily dispense with realism if they think it will give the story more impact.

If every other realistic aspect must bow to the story set in this fictional world, then why do such fictional worlds always have to be populated with characters who spew profanity at an appalling rate because "that's realistic"? Why can't we make that fictional world a place where people don't use coarse language?

It's the same with books — there's not one word, sentence, scene, description, etc that the author didn't put there on purpose (okay, stuff slips through the editorial cracks, but, in theory, that stuff would be excised if found). Every single word serves the fake creation of the author's mind carefully crafted to elicit a particular emotion or deliver a specific message to readers. Well, I've already established (I hope) that swearing has become pretty useless for the purpose of emotional delivery. What about as a vehicle for some other message? How does profanity help convey a political, social, or any other kind of message?

I can't recall a single case where I ever thought it did. Even if it can, the utility rate doesn't appear high enough to make it worth keeping in my literary toolbox.

4. Profanity turns off many readers. Friends occasionally ask whether I read reviews of my books. I do. My favorite review of all time was this one, posted on Goodreads by a reader named Jackie about my first novel, Red Cell:

"Another one of those almost 4 star (but not quite) books. Although I should, by all rights, give this an extra star just for being clean and devoid of foul language. Thank you, Mr. Henshaw for providing an entertaining read without offending those sensibilities."

Jackie only gave Red Cell three stars out of five, but I think she represents a quiet group — maybe even a silent majority — who just don't appreciate having foul language thrown at them. I've heard a lot of people say they didn't like a movie or a book because it was full of profanity. I've never heard anyone say, "it would've been a better book (or movie) if it just had a lot more cursing in it." I'm writing for the former because I don't think the latter exists and I think most of the rest really wouldn't even notice a lack of profanity if the story was told well enough to sweep them away.

5. I want to live in a more polite society. The fact is that our society (I'm speaking about the United States here) has become far more coarse and far less civil in my lifetime. Our federal government is grinding to a halt because our leaders can't figure out how to disagree on issues and maintain personal respect for each other at the same time; but that's just a symptom of what's happening among the body politic. We've decided that people who disagree with us aren't just misinformed or mistaken; such people must be downright evil, or at least so stupid that we don't have to respect them.

When did I have that epiphany? On Friday, June 25, 2004. (warning: there's profanity in the linked article and audio soundbite).

Do we really want to celebrate our national leaders verbally attacking each other like that?

I don't think so; but can we realistically expect our leaders to behave any better when the citizens who elected them talk to each other the same way? That's the beauty of and problem with democracy — the people get exactly the kinds of leaders they deserve. Swearing in public used to get the speaker shunned as crude and uncivilized. Now we elect leaders who insult each other in open view of the media and celebrate it, and then get frustrated when those leaders can't work together to solve serious problems. Well, it's our fault for putting them there and for creating a climate where those leaders think such behavior isn't merely okay but actually a sign of strength.

I have no expectations that my books are ever going to radically change society; but I don't have to contribute to that climate.

6. Because I'm a Mormon and faithful Mormons don't curse. Enough said.

 

That's my long answer. I'm sure that some will say that I'm judging others unfairly, being naive, self-righteous, etc. I hope not. I know that others weren't raised as I was and/or don't believe what I do and don't respect them less when they let an ugly word fly on occasion. I simply believe that profanity adds nothing to the language and detracts plenty. If we want a courteous and respectful society we have to change the ways we think and share our thoughts. We'll never get there if we settle for resorting to the crudest words we know instead of looking for higher ways of expression.

Apple, DoJ Reach e-Book Antitrust Settlement Agreement

"In a court filing on Monday, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in a class action suit seeking damages from Apple's e-book price fixing scheme informed federal Judge Denise Cote that the company has agreed to settle."

This was going to be a separate proceeding from the ongoing anti-trust trial — with Judge Cote having declared Apple guilty of anti-trust violations, she was going to determine whether Apple should pay almost $1 billion in punitive damages. Having settled, Apple will avoid the maximum penalty in the event that its appeal of the original verdict fails. We don't know yet how much the company would pay out in that event, but you can bet it will be a lot less than $840 million.

This isn't an admission of guilt. I don't think there was any question Apple would settle the class action suit. Companies settle such cases more often than not if they think there's any chance they'll have to pay the judgment—and, seriously, did anyone think Apple had a prayer of Judge Cote not hitting them with an almost-$1 billion dollar judgement?

The Weed Agency

Full Disclosure: Jim Geraghty is a friend.

If all comedy is borne of tragedy, then we should lament that Jim Geraghty's The Weed Agency is so funny that it hit the Washington Post's Top Ten Bestsellers list (well deserved) last week. But here's the rub: It hit the nonfiction list. Think about that for a second -- Jim's book, while technically a parody billed as "a comic tale of federal bureaucracy without limits," is such an insightful dissection at how our government works that the Washington Post decided it should be listed on the nonfiction list.

Unfortunately, sometimes you can only tell the truth through fiction and and Jim certainly does that. With fifteen years of federal service under my own belt, I wish I could dispute anything he highlights in the tale but Jim knows whereof he speaks. While he exaggerates for effect as all good satire does, he not exaggerating nearly as much as we should hope. After spending fifteen years in federal service, I can say that his story dredges up more painful memories of bureaucratic sausage-making than I would like.

Jim's a conservative -- he writes for the National Review -- but don't let that steer you away if you're not. Anyone with a vested interest in efficient government -- which should be everyone -- who reads The Weed Agency will find themselves wondering whether they should laugh or cry.

 

Beating up on Time Warner?

"The Everything Store is shrinking again. Amazon customers who want to order forthcoming Warner Home Video features, including 'The Lego Movie,' '300: Rise of an Empire,' 'Winter’s Tale' and 'Transcendence,' are finding it impossible to do so.

The retailer’s refusal to sell the movies is part of its effort to gain leverage in yet another major confrontation with a supplier to become public in recent weeks...Amazon started refusing preorders for the Time Warner movies in mid-May."

Time Warner is one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world. If Amazon prevails, proving it has the muscle to twist their arm behind their back, it'll be time for the Justice Department to take a long, hard look at Mr. Bezos.

"The Crisis in Book Publishing"

James Patterson knows whereof he speaks.

"Right now bookstores, libraries, authors, publishers, and books themselves are caught in the crossfire of an economic war between publishers and online providers. To be a teeny, tiny bit more specific, Amazon seems to be out to control shopping in this country. This will ultimately have an effect on every grocery- and department-store chain, on every big-box store, and ultimately it will put thousands of Mom-and-Pop stores out of business. It just will, and I don't see anybody writing about it, but that certainly sounds like the beginning of a monopoly to me."

Me too...and I think it's well past the "beginning" stages.

Today is the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion

6 June, 1944 — American troops preparing to land on Omaha Beach

6 June, 1944 — American troops preparing to land on Omaha Beach

On 6 June 1944 — 70 years ago today — 160,000+ Allied troops ferried by 5,000+ ships and supported by 13,000+ aircraft invaded French at five different points along the 50-mile Normandy coast in the largest seaborne invasion in history. Codenamed "Operation Neptune," the Allied troops faced over 50,000 Nazi defenders; 4,414 lost their lives in one day and estimates of total Allied casualties range from 9,000 – 12,000.

By the end of June, 875,000 Allied troops had landed along the coast and began the hard push to Berlin — the German "Atlantic Wall" had been breached. The Nazis would not surrender for another eleven months, but the liberation of Europe and the destruction of Hitler's regime — one of the most evil dictatorships in human history — was finally within reach.

Click here to listen to the full-day CBS radio broadcast from June 1944.

Click here to visit the US Army's official website documenting the D-Day invasion.

Tiananmen Square was 25 Years Ago Today

This is the 25th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

I published my thoughts on those events from June 4, 1989 in my first novel, Red Cell, telling the story of that day through the eyes of a Chinese student who would go on to be known as Pioneer —

"A political revolution is a living animal, conceived in outrage, fed with anger, and born in blood more often than not. In its early life, there comes a moment when its parents must decide what kind of animal their child will be. Some are allowed to run free and become wild predators that can only be killed by rising tyrants. Others are restrained to become loyal guardians who protect their children’s lives and liberties until those children can protect themselves. Washington, Lenin, Mao, Gandhi, Castro, and Khomenei each raised their own, and those revolutions, like all things in nature, looked and behaved like their parents.

The Second Chinese Revolution was killed during delivery by its grandparents on June 4, 1989 in the streets around an open ground called 'Heaven’s Gate'—Tiananmen Square.

 

Pioneer had been a student then. In the spring of 1989, the Iron Curtain in Europe was crumbling, rusted out from the inside by corruption and a half-century of oppression. The Soviet Union had built the Warsaw Pact through violence and was forced to watch its handiwork come apart at the political welds and economic rivets. In Gorbachev, the students saw the reformer that Deng Xiaopeng only pretended to be. When the Russian president agreed to come to China that May to discuss his programs of perestroika and glasnost, the student leaders anxious for democracy saw a singular opportunity to push their cause on the party elders. As if divine favor were behind them, Hu Yaobang, the venerated old former Secretary General and true reformer died in mid-April giving many a reason to mourn his passing by joining the crowd and calling for real change.

For his part, Deng wanted the world to see a summit where the two great communist powers were going to close ranks. He opened Beijing to the US media and they came in droves with their portable satellite dishes and microwave links by the hundreds. It was a mistake. On May 12, the student leaders called for a hunger strike before Gorbachev’s arrival. The following morning, four hundred students dressed themselves in white with headbands inscribed in Chinese characters with the printed protest “No Choice but to Fast.” They made their way to Tiananmen Square and before the day was over the number of strikers had grown to three thousand. By May 15, over one hundred fifty thousand people filled the Square, some protesting, some there only to see the protests, but even that was an act of courage. 

Pioneer was one of the latter at first. He was not one of the true believers in democracy, at least in the beginning. At first he came and went, not staying in the Square overnight but going home to his soft bed each evening. But he did come back. He watched as the student leaders gave their speeches unmolested by the uncertain police at the crowds’ edge. The more he saw and heard, the more he believed in the cause until he found his own faith in the vision of a democratic China. By the end, Pioneer was sleeping on the ground with the rest, chanting slogans during the speeches, and wondering whether he could become a leader in the movement. With no resistance from the government, it was easy to cultivate the seed of faith he had planted as a new convert to the cause.

Deng’s humiliation was mounting fast. The official reception for Gorbachev had to be staged at the airport instead of the Square. An official state visit to the Forbidden City, which was in full view of the unruly Square, was cancelled. Gorbachev was ushered into the Great Hall of the People through the back door.

It went on for weeks and the Politburo began to grow nervous. They knew a revolution when they saw one. Many of them remembered Mao’s revolution. Many of them had helped stage it. If Communism had only drilled one precept into their old, corrupt heads, it was that revolutions were inevitable in states where the masses were oppressed by the bourgeoisie, which the Party leaders had become. Now they were riding close to the edge of a historical trend they didn’t like. They were losing control of everything in full view of their own country and the world. Their private meetings devolved into vitriol and invective. They sent representatives to the students, pleading with them to leave Tiananmen Square, and were refused. Quite the opposite, protests emerged in other Chinese cities far from Beijing. Hunger strikers were collapsing and being taken to hospitals by their comrades, which generated television images and more sympathy for their cause. It seemed like the whole world was behind the students.

The crowd in Tiananmen Square surged to over one million. Common peasants and workers were joining the students, not as curious bystanders but as active protesters denouncing the Politburo and calling for democracy.

On May 20, the Politburo declared martial law in Beijing. The protests in the other cities were smaller and easily handled, but the Tiananmen Square mob refused to disperse. Journalists were banned from the Square and forced to stop their broadcasts. The students were ordered to evacuate. They refused. The PLA ordered divisions from the Beijing, Shenyang, and Jinan Military Regions into the city, totaling more than one hundred eighty thousand soldiers. When PLA commanders showed any reluctance to use the Army against the citizens, they were immediately removed from command and replaced. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang opposed the use of military force, for which he was removed from office and put under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

The soldiers began harassing those at the crowd’s edge, but the masses were too large and too determined to hold their ground. They fought back, building barricades to block vehicle traffic around the Square. Where they couldn’t build barricades, they laid down in the roads. The PLA fired tear gas into the crowd. Pioneer still remembered how his own eyes had burned when a canister had landed near him. Pioneer had picked it up and thrown it back at the soldiers but not before inhaling a full dose of the gas. He had gagged his breakfast onto the concrete. He had wanted to claw his own eyes out of his head as his lungs burned, a feeling that was refreshed every time he drew breath. His new friends held him on his feet as he recovered and he watched other protesters scuffling with the police in the streets. The People’s Armed Police were unprepared for the defiant response and retreated. Civilians had always treated them with deference and even fear, but there was no fear in these people.

The stalemate held. The Politburo and the students each squabbled amongst themselves as to the next move. The threat of military force seemed to fade and over the long days the number of protesters dwindled. The students finally decided it was time to go home, but they couldn’t agree on when or how. They argued and finally settled on June 20 as the day to walk away.

The ultimate irony of the Tiananmen Square massacre was that Deng decided to use force to break up a protest that was in its waning days. 

Other members of the Politburo pleaded for restraint but old Deng still had too much influence. Mao once said that political power flowed from the barrel of the gun. Deng held that gun. On June 1, he declared that the students were terrorists engaged in a counterrevolutionary plot against the socialist state. He ordered the PLA and the People’s Armed Police to clear Tiananmen Square by any means necessary.

The PLA soldiers began moving through Beijing to the Square and the citizens of Beijing flooded into the streets to stop them. They set up barricades, screamed at the soldiers, and threw rocks and debris at the marching formations. Some of the soldiers returned fire with live ammunition and wounded citizens in their own apartments. The 27th and 38th Armies fought their way to the Square, demolishing barricades and arresting and killing citizens. Mobs erupted, pulling soldiers into them and tearing them to pieces. Students threw Molotov cocktails. PLA vehicles burned in the street, filling the air with the smoke and stench of burning rubber, but flaming vodka bottles are a poor match for machine guns. Finally, the PLA troops turned their weapons on the crowd and fired with abandon.

Pioneer heard later that PLA troops had even fired on other army units that got in their way. With tens of thousands running in all directions, neither the student leaders nor the army commanders had been able to maintain order. The battle raged for three days and it was a slaughter. At least hundreds died, maybe thousands. If the Party had ever tallied a count, it hadn’t made it public and Pioneer had never been able to find it even in the private records.

To his unending shame, Pioneer had fled the battle. He’d never found comfort in the thought that thousands of others did the same thing. 

He remembered the supersonic crack of one bullet that passed close to his head and the wet noise it made as it punched through the soft body of a young woman standing by him. It severed her aorta and spilled her blood in great gushes onto the cobblestones. A second round took a young man’s face and life in the same instant with a gory display that had cost Pioneer at least a year’s sleep over the two decades since he’d seen it. His nerve and faith broke in that instant and when his friends held their ground and threw firebombs, he abandoned them on their field of battle. The PLA lines broke and the protesters flooded the streets. Soldiers started firing in self-defense to protect themselves from a mob that was far beyond obeying orders. Pioneer had jumped over the fallen bodies of trampled soldiers and revolutionaries alike, even climbed over a tank to get out.

The students had stayed too long, overplayed their hand, and it was too late to walk away. They asked to negotiate a voluntary withdrawal like the ones they had rejected so many times when offered. It was their turn to be refused. Most were arrested. The protest was broken. The PLA controlled Tiananmen Square and the streets of Beijing.

Pioneer was never identified as being present in Tiananmen Square. The Party could never identify everyone that had been a part of the event but that wasn’t considered a problem. It didn’t need to punish everyone. True leadership is a rare skill and they only had to punish those who had shown that talent. Many of the student leaders had died in the battle and the Party hunted the rest for years after. The government handed out lengthy sentences to many after trials that lasted only hours. 

No protest of significant size had occurred in Beijing since June 4, 1989. The Politburo banned any anniversary memorials and refused to conduct any investigations into its own conduct. As far as it was concerned, the massacre never happened.

Unarrested, unmolested, Pioneer’s cowardice had bought his life and freedom when his friends’ bravery bought them prison and death.

 

Two years later, Pioneer earned his Qinghua University degree. Then the MSS summoned him to a meeting after his graduation. At first he had thought that the Party had finally connected him to the protests. It took him a moment to realize that had it been so, the People’s Armed Police would have dragged him from his apartment instead of issuing him a polite request, really an order, for a private meeting.

The Party didn’t know about his place in the protests, but it did know about his then-rare skill with computers. Qinghua University was China’s MIT. It offered guanxi more potent in China than Harvard could offer graduates in America and the faculty had connections to people who needed to solve certain military problems. The Americans had just finished a war in Iraq using precision weapons whose efficiency frightened the PLA. The Iraqis had assembled the fourth largest army in the world, supplied with Soviet equipment and trained in Soviet military doctrine, very much like the PLA’s own forces. The United States tore that army to shreds in weeks. Computers had changed warfare to a degree that the PLA and the MSS had not appreciated before. Guns weren’t enough and that needed rectifying. 

Listening to the MSS bureaucrat talking about the glorious career he would have in the service of the Party that had gunned down his friends, Pioneer wanted to choke the man. Then, to his shame, the emotion passed in a moment, his cowardice reasserted itself, and he agreed to the request he was not free to turn down anyway. The conversation ended and he left the office. 

Perhaps his dead friends had talked to him or maybe the unknown God had whispered to his soul. Whatever the source, a thought entered his mind. There would be a better time and way to exact revenge than assaulting a bureaucrat who could be replaced without a second thought. He just had to learn patience and recognize that revenge truly was a dish best served slow and cold.

...

[T]wenty-five years came and went and he still hadn’t found peace. His friends still haunted him. Pioneer hadn’t set foot in Tiananmen Square in all that time but he pressed on for the cause his friends started there. If he had earned nothing else, the cowardice had been burned out of his soul. So, if he could not have peace, he had decided that under the Party’s law his inevitable execution would be well deserved. If the PLA took him to some nameless gulag, stood him before a brick wall and shot him, then maybe then his friends accept him as worthy to stand with them again."