CURSING
Teens curse. Heck, even my 8 year old daughter sometimes lets out a "damn" or "ass." She gets in trouble for it, but she still does it. And the older kids get, the more they curse and the more inventive they get with it. There are also adult characters in YA (parents, teachers, bad guys, etc.) and adults are also known to curse. So if I want to write a realistic novel with realistic characters, do I have to put cursing in?
Some writers I know say to use substitute words, and if you have a character that is deeply religious or just chooses not to curse (like Zoey in the House of Night series) that works. But to have ordinary teens saying rats and golly just seems ridiculous to me. I'm not saying that the characters should cuss up a storm. I think a lot of it depends upon the age range of the readers a writer is aiming for. A book for tweens (10-13 years old) should have extremely sparse cursing in my opinion and no really bad words. For the 14-18 year old range, I think it should be realistic. Curses should be sprinkled in where they are appropriate. Or it can be handled the way J.K. Rowling did it in the Harry Potter series. She often wrote that Ron "said a word that would have made Mrs. Weasly blush and start yelling." (Not sure if that is an exact quote but words to that effect.)
Since the books I write are aimed for the 13-18 years old range, I've come to believe that having some cursing in my books is acceptable. Though it was a difficult decision to make. Mainly because I feel that by putting it in there I am subtly condoning it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think teens should curse.
And there I am caught in the Catch-22 again. Argh!!
SEXI have the same problem with sex in my books. In my YA #1, the female main character is attacked by a pedophile and is saved by the male main character. Some of the sexual contact must be shown in a situation like that, but how much is too much? In my YA #3 that I am writing the rough draft of right now, the main character (a ghost) inhabits the body of a 15 year old boy who is experimenting with sex to find out if he really is gay or not. How much of his experimenting do I show? How much is it going to offend the general readership to have gay sex in the book? And once again, does putting sex in the book show a tacit approval of teens having sexual relationships?
So many questions I don't have the answer to. Every expert I've heard from says to do what feels right in these situations. But I'm one of those people capable of seeing, understanding, and to a point agreeing with all sides of an issue. I can see the plus side of putting sex in and I can see the down side.
I is all confuzzled on this topic.
