Honestly, I don’t think that anything screams first semester creative writing class louder in a short story or poem than having fuck sprinkled liberally throughout for no damn good reason. It is as if the college level course liberates and validates the spirit to type those four little letters, or expand it to six with fuckin just as we all once practiced the word with our friends back in the eighth grade.
The next dead giveaway of an amateur is the expression of violence or rage that gives voice to our repressed realities. If you want to be a good writer, better you should strangle your sister and get it over with to move on in writing by learning true character development and expression of emotion.
I think the instruction to be free creatively, to be dramatic and explore conflicts of impact is too often misconstrued by the new writer. Climax in story does not mean a successful fuck. Drama does not mean blood and guns. Nor, in the more puritanical sense, does conflict and resolution mean making the blind see again. Leave that to Jesus. He’s a tough act to follow so come up with something different than the short stories that are already covered in the Bible.
While language should certainly be suited to the voice of the character, and I certainly love some of these words myself, in writing, less is more. Less is more. Less is more.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology