Watch the language, please

I’m a sucker for a good story.  It’s an occupational hazard for fiction writers, but a great story line wins me over easily. Two of my favorite movies are Moonstruck and As Good as it Gets, both unusual rom-coms, both with Oscars for best scripts. I love a good story in other genres as well.

Designated Survivor seemed like a natural. I loved it—for the first two seasons. Did the show get new writers in Season 3? Or did the producers, seeing their ratings in decline, simply decide it was time to up the ante with saltier language? I put up with it for a couple of episodes. Then, when the F-bomb was dropped four times in the first three minutes, I was done.

Some apologists explained such language was “realistic” in the pressure cooker of the real-life White House. Although I’d love to deny it, I suspect that’s the truth. Who cares? If I wish to be assaulted with obscenity, I’ll take a walk on the campus of our local university. Besides, don’t we all want the people who hold the fate of the world in their hands to be better than that?

To be clear, it isn’t just the language that got me. Characters I had come to care about, even love, were suddenly behaving in uncharacteristic ways, using language we hadn’t heard before, but also changing job titles and love interests, and in one case, moving into a completely new story arc.

Suddenly, instead of watching “people” I cared about, I saw actors reading lines and being moved around on a set. The suspension of disbelief that lets us slide into fictional worlds went out the window. That transition started for me when their version of the White House began sounding like an NFL locker room.

In my first career as an academic, I learned to use ten-penny words when two-penny ones work fine. As a writer of romantic fiction, I’m sometimes tempted to use those words, since they now come fairly naturally. When I catch myself, I deliberately dial it back—not to dumb it down, and not because I don’t respect my readers. I do, very much.

I choose not to use words that draw attention to themselves, words that pull my readers out of the story. I want my characters (and even my narration) to use language that moves the story forward. In effect I’m saying: “Dear Reader, please love my story, not my impressive vocabulary.”

As a consumer of other writers’ fiction, I ask the same when it comes to obscenity. If that’s the natural speech for your characters, I’m not your audience anyway. If you suddenly need to up your ratings, please do so with a fascinating twist in your story line, not with verbal assaults or manipulating your characters. You’ll win me over easily when you do.