Coarse language

I'm not shy with my use of profanity.  There are times when I can prevent myself from using it, such as when I'm in a classroom, a job interview, or any number of examples.  However, I have nothing against it.

So, my use of profanity is not an accident, and neither is the absence of coarse language in speech or writing.  It's a choice.

I wrote three military thrillers under another name for Berkeley Books, and although there is horrific violence in those novels, there is virtually no profanity in them.  It was a choice I made, which doesn't really reflect my experience with how people speak in the military, but it was a creative decision.

I wrote an historical novel, titled THE TWIN, which is supposed to be the translation of a 1st century document.  Obviously, street profanity from a modern American city would not have been a fit.  However, a supernatural thriller, like my coming novel ABSENCE OF GRACE, has quite a bit of it.  If it was natural, in my mind, for a particular character to swear a blue streak in a particular situation, he did.  

In my novel ALIENS, DRYWALL, AND A UNICYCLE, early on in the book, there is shouted profanity that has nothing to do with characterization, but instead is actually part of the setting.  It signals something to the reader about the nature of the main character's new apartment when, as he's unpacking, he hears someone roar obscenities down in the parking lot beneath his open window.  

The book I'm writing now, titled PARIS, CALIF., features the point-of-view of a mild-mannered retired dentist living in a small coastal town.  If I had him dropping F-bombs constantly, it would be initially jarring, and maybe entertaining, but it would also be a completely different character than the sober judge-of-changing-surroundings I need the person to be.

It's been said that profanity is like salt, or hot sauce, its use changes the dish (making it less or more palatable depending on tastes of the consumer), and its overuse can ruin it.  

But no matter what, it's simply another choice.  No story requires it, but it's equally true that it can be used in any story.