PART IV

Rule Three:

Here are suggested ways to describe swearing or steamy sexual scenes without giving offense, but still conveying the message, and perhaps even doing so in a manner that brings a knowing smile to the reader. Much of this will be by examples.

※He was unable to get through two consecutive sentences without a smutty double entendre.
※You look really hot! (meaning either sweating or attractive)
※I’d love to see your melons! [meaning either fruits or remotely possibly, breasts]
※Mr. Halloway keeps touching his organ. [meaning either a keyboard musical instrument or the masculine pendent member]
※Juvenile court to try taking out the defendant. [meaning removing, dating, or—in criminal parlance, killing]
※A drunk gets nine months in a violin case. [meaning either imprisonment for theft, or I guess it could mean pregnancy]
※Is that what we’re calling it now? [meaning either a genuine question or a sarcastic remark]
  As you can glean, it is usually better to avoid being clever or cute, especially in serious writing—fiction or nonfiction.
Here are a few examples of the way I do it:
※When writing about a surprisingly vigorous honeymoon first night: “To his surprise and pleasure, his new bride proved not only to be bright, vivacious, and humorous, but athletic as well.”
※One of my characters was profane: “His vocabulary of cursing, blasphemy, and obscenity, was truly epic.”
※There was a scene of exceptionally gruesome violence in one of my books. “In the aftermath, the previously OCD neat and surgically clean apartment now looked like nothing more than an abattoir.”
※My description of the dialogue of a swearer: “He said, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ [I may have tightened up on the translation a bit.]”
※In describing a woman who was soon to become one of my main characters, a religious man commented: “I would have to say she has a ‘well-tabernacled spirit’.”
※My description of a particularly nasty verbal encounter between two women: “The encounter devolved into a vivid collection of purple prose and language inappropriate for times when ladies, men of the cloth, or the young, are gathered.”
My publisher–a fine judge of good literature, and proud to be in good standing with his religion–eschews bad language and refuses to allow any such from his authors. In the books published by Publication Consultants of Anchorage, Alaska, you will not find slurs including all racial, ethnic, religious, and gender-based insults, or slang including jargon used to describe sexual acts, body parts, and bodily functions.