One of the things I’ve noticed in a lot of adult fiction, is that authors tend to have their characters swear way too fucking much. Now, I’m not opposed to swearing. I think that it adds flavor and personality to dialogue that would be missing otherwise.

The problem is that it’s overused. Like with exclamation points, using the word “fuck” over and over again dilutes the message you’re trying to portray. Now, there is an exception to this. If the character is a potty mouth, then it’s fine. But having all of your characters swearing like sailors all the time? It just makes the words mean nothing.

The story I’m reading right now (an online original to break up my monster reading list for this month) has made the f-word irrelevant. There are paragraphs that the author uses it four or five times. It’s worse in the little bit of smut that’s in there. The two doing the deed apparently didn’t know any other words to use to express how good things were feeling. Constant shouts of “Oh, FUCK!” really lose their meaning after the fourth time you’ve used it. It’s actually a good story, and fairly well written, but goodness the constant swearing just pisses me off.

I’ve seen this a lot, and I don’t get it. It feels like it’s a writer who is writing for adults for the first time. They used to write YA, so they think that adding in adult language somehow makes the story more adult. But they overdo it, because obviously more is better, right?

So, if you’re a writer, take it from me: let your fucks stand alone. They’ll mean more.