Picking slang and slurs for a fantasy novel

[norabarnacle007]

Sorry if this isn't the right forum for this topic. I'm curious how other writers in fantasy (and sci fi!) choose slang for their world. I've noticed a trend in YA and crossover where everyone just uses modern-day words like "fuck," to great response. But I think it's a missed opportunity to know the world better by the ugly words the characters use within it. How do you guys approach this in dialog?

 

[Jodihenley]

Sorry if this isn't the right forum for this topic. I'm curious how other writers in fantasy (and sci fi!) choose slang for their world. I've noticed a trend in YA and crossover where everyone just uses modern-day words like "fuck," to great response. But I think it's a missed opportunity to know the world better by the ugly words the characters use within it. How do you guys approach this in dialog?

Take this with a grain of salt, but I thought the same thing (although in my case I'm talking romantasy (or a fantasy romance) back in the day when fantasy romance wasn't a thing. I spent a lot of time thinking about how swear words and slang would play out (in the context of my world), avoiding the overdone ones (you know, references to the "goddess" or "gods" or weird words that start with "z" and stuff like that. And I kept things that seem to be universal across a few centuries (like damn), and looked at the time period my fantasy was based on (many fantasies fit within a broader grouping like medieval-esque , pioneer-esque, renaissance-esque etc) and how they handled it during that time period. Then...yeah, I got it wrong and picked words that I still think work and fit, but taken out of context (these are not bad words intrinsically) people didn't like them and gave me a lot of one star reviews for "how I referenced things" So why do people use "fuck and shit" and words like that to signify swearing? In my opinion it's like putting a palm tree on the cover of a book about Hawaii. There might not be a palm tree in the story, but it "signifies" Hawaii to people looking for a story about Hawaii, in the same way "fuck" is a swear word pretty much across the board, and it's understood to be a swear word so it fades into the background (you know how some people in real life use it as an exclmation point or just punctuation in their dialogue?) and it really isn't visible anymore than "and" or the" or using "said" as a dialog tag. You can use anything you want and think would work for your story, "but" there are always going to be literal readers or readers who don't understand, or just don't like what you pick. And like the saying goes, "is this the hill you want to die on?" If it's important to your characterisation, I'd say go for it. I mean, it'd add to a character if he has a unique way of swearing, or if it illuminates your world in some way, but if it's just to address an opportunity you might want to consider (and I am not trying to be rude here, but just asking a genuine question) if this is something important to your story or important to you.

 

[TMSellers]

I think about this sort of thing a lot in my fantasy and sci-fi writing. I really liked how in Firefly they used the word "goram" in place of "god damn". And it worked because they used it consistently across multiple episodes, so the viewer was able to pick up on it. Now, in the case of that show it was most likely done to beat the ratings board for TV standards of the time, but it did inspire me to think more about slurs and cursing in non-realistic settings. In my fantasy series, there are slurs that people use for different races (as in elf, dwarf, giant, human). And characters also use the more cliche "by the gods", but I think it makes sense in my world, because religion is a major thing in the world for many characters. In my sci-fi novel, "by the goddess" is used, because the MC has literally met a goddess. I think it doesn't so much matter what words are used as long as it's consistent throughout the work(s). The Dark Tower series plays around with this idea a lot, because it's clear that the real world and the fantasy world are linked in various ways, but they are not direct 1:1 mirrors of each other. So some things are consistent between them and others are wildly different, including how language is used.