The subject of fiction is life, and life at times is pretty grim and nasty. How you deal with that nastiness in your story will have a strong influence on the voice of your book, and may limit or increase its appeal. ‘Dealing with adult situations’ – as if these issues only rear their heads when everyone under the age of eighteen has left the room – is something most writers will have to confront at some stage. Do you take the graphic route reluctantly? Do you dive in and wallow joyously in acts that, in real life, would have the police knocking on your door?
I can’t tell you. That’s an author’s individual decision. All I can do is tell you how I approach this subject – and try to knock down a few of the ‘adult situation’ myths out there.
From time to time I get an email from a reader saying something like, ‘I do so admire authors who can write a great thriller without cussing and swearing in it.’
Ah yes, foul language. You hear it everywhere these days, and read it too. Most newspapers still blank out common swearwords. Follow some of their columnists on Twitter and you’ll find a good few there who curse like navvies in ways they’d never be allowed in print. Authors have been known to swear too, honestly. Should books exercise self-censorship? Do we really need ‘bad language’ in fiction?
In my earlier work, and the first three Costa books, you’ll find swearing, the f-word usually, not used over-liberally but present, spoken easily by the characters concerned. After that it’s pretty much disappeared.
Swearing is very like sex and violence, something writers use because they feel it’s expected of them. I also included bad language in the early Costa books for what I felt were linguistic reasons. I moved to Rome for a while to study Italian because I wanted to write books that reflected a little of the modern city. And contemporary spoken Italian is full of slang and profanities.
Anyone wanting to understand the filthy nature of the modern colloquial tongue should track down a copy of Daniela Gobetti’s hilarious and compendious Dictionary of Italian Slang and Colloquial Expressions. I can guarantee it will open your eyes about the bella lingua and how it’s used in real life. In truth Italian has always been like this – there are endless smutty sonnets from Caravaggio’s time.
I loved this book but it was impossible to translate any of its real-life colloquialisms into something an English reader would understand. One example: any idea what dare acqua alle fave (to water the fava beans) actually means? To kill someone. ‘He’s gone to water Giovanni’s beans’ is slang for ‘The poor guy’s going to get murdered.’ Take my point?
There was swearing in the early books because they made a conscious attempt to mirror the slangy, colloquial, occasionally foul-mouthed nature of working-class Roman speech. When it came to book four, though, I’d changed my position on this subject. I felt I was straining to make a point most people never noticed. Also Italian slang is bafflingly varied and regional. What works in Rome is incomprehensible in Naples. Why bother with this minefield? So I elected to write speech that simply sounded natural, like ordinary unaccented English. And I thought … what if I drop the swearing altogether?
As always with writing, the best way to test an idea is to back up your original and leap in with the scalpel. I cut out the profanities. It didn’t make a blind bit of difference to the text. Even when I needed people to swear I could get them to do it without uttering a single word that might offend someone. They simply curse under their breath or mutter some quiet imprecation. For my books that’s enough. You get to know they’re cross or under stress, which is why I had used swearing in any case. The constant use of the f-word in particular never really suited my style.
That’s not to say it’s wrong. If you watch the Coen Brothers’ movie Burn After Reading (which I liked, though many didn’t) you’ll find an opening in which John Malkovich’s Osborne Cox loses it spectacularly when he discovers, in a formal interview, that his employer, the CIA, is about to demote him because of his drinking problem. Malkovich gives a wonderful performance of a man breaking up in the stiffest and most unexpected of circumstances, and swears with great gusto. No problem with that at all. And once it’s over it’s over.
What grates with me is the constant use of swearing, so much that it becomes repetitive and meaningless. I never did it to that extent, even when I felt swearing was part of being a modern popular writer. The f-word does reappear once in book nine, The Fallen Angel, uttered by a character you’d least expect, in pivotal circumstances where I think its revelatory value is essential. Note that word: revelatory. I didn’t say ‘shock’. Bad language has absolutely no shock value these days. If anything it may have the opposite effect, generating a yawn, not a frisson.
You will occasionally hear the argument, ‘But they need to swear because people do in real life.’
So what? As I hope we’ve now established, fiction and real life are different. The argument ‘because that’s how things are’ is a cop-out. Fiction is invented. The only reality that matters is the one an author builds in the reader’s head.
My advice to would-be writers about swearing is simple. Don’t feel it has to be in or that using it will make you look cool and clever. Do try taking it out to see if its removal makes a difference. If the cursing really has to be there, use it. If not, hit the delete key.
A note to photographers everywhere: I don’t pose with guns. Ever. Not even silly toy plastic ones of the kind some snapper brought along to a photo-shoot in Singapore once, hoping to spice up the usual boring author picture with something a little ‘exciting’.
There’s a reason for this. Yes, I depict violence in my work, graphic violence at times. But I do it to shock, not titillate. I hate violence, and I hate guns in particular, as do my protagonists. As one of them puts it in one book, they may have to use force but when it results in someone getting hurt or killed they feel a sense of failure. They were supposed to do the job differently, to get a result without people getting injured.
Not every author feels this way. In some books violence itself is meant to be thrilling. When the hero beats up the bad guy the reader becomes that hero, exacting justice on behalf of a bloodied innocent world. Order is restored. Good defeats evil till the next bout. That kind of reader-as-hero model has worked well for centuries, and will continue to do so for many to come.
Then there’s the Quentin Tarantino theory of violence, which is that it’s all a big and wonderful buzz, the reason some people go to the movies in the first place. Well I don’t go to the movies for that. Nor is extreme brutality something I want to be central to my own writing. My attitude to violence is simple: it’s reprehensible, usually avoidable, an extension of the dark side of human nature that we would all, in ideal circumstances, like to suppress.
Critics sometimes moan about the amount of violence in modern fiction and film, arguing that it provokes similar acts in real life. I’ve never been much impressed by that argument, though there are certainly movies and books out there that turn me off through excessive brutality. Art reflects society. It doesn’t do much to shape it. The idea that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ is pretty ridiculous. I don’t think Hitler spent many sleepless nights fretting about writers.
The fictional bloodshed that worries me most is the old-fashioned kind – bloodless deaths, gentle poisonings among the aspidistras in the hothouse, Hopalong Cassidy shooting some bad guy who doesn’t even bleed, just clutches his shirt and says, ‘Ah, you got me.’ That kind of fake, sanitised violence was understandable in its day. When Agatha Christie was writing in the 1930s crime was something that happened to other people and those who committed it were exterior creatures, beyond the norms of ‘civilised’ society. What is often called classic crime tends to treat criminals the way gardeners treat greenfly. All you have to do is identify them, locate them, spray on the right kind of insecticide/justice and everything turns right again.
It’s difficult to justify that kind of portrayal today. Crime is everywhere. Most of us will know someone who’s been the victim of violence, perhaps even murder. In the classic crime template all that is required for justice to be enacted is the simple matter of identification. The villain is unveiled, he puts up his hands, the police come along, a trial ensues and the world is put to rights. Does law enforcement in the twenty-first century feel that way to you? Probably not. Today justice is truly blind. Even if a perpetrator is found he or she may well walk free through failures in process or the intervention of very clever lawyers.
Ordinary decent citizens no longer feel safe. At the same time more and more start to think, ‘If they can get away with it, why shouldn’t I?’ The world’s a greyer, less certain place. When I depict violence I try to reflect that. So my violence may well not be the work of ‘criminals’. It’s unpredictable, hard to understand, random, even unplanned. And it has consequences – lasting ones that affect all those involved. I can’t pretend that murder is simply a plot device, not when violence and crime, fear and a lust for retribution are everywhere around us.
Here are a few ground rules I try to apply when depicting brutal acts:
I keep violent scenes short. The impact they have on the reader bears no proportion to the number of pages they take up. I well remember one book event where the moderator wondered out loud, ‘Why is there so much violence in your book?’ I asked him, ‘How many violent scenes do you think there are?’ He said, ‘Lots.’ I went through it with him. There were just three. It’s not the quantity that matters, it’s the impact. You can achieve more with a few well-written paragraphs than with ten pages of graphic, gruesome scalpel-wielding.
I avoid extensive physical detail. It adds nothing to my kind of book to be told what tendons are severed, what part of the brain is lying on the pavement. I’m squeamish in real life. I don’t want to know, and I don’t see why the reader should. This may be different for those writing from, say, a medical point of view or reaching for revulsion as an effect.
I always ensure that I describe the emotional effect of the violence on those involved, the person who inflicts it, the victims, those who’ve witnessed the act and those charged with bringing the perpetrators to justice. Particularly the culprit sometimes, because I know from experience as a journalist that extreme violence does affect many of those who use it. They can be as shocked by what it achieves as anyone else. And if they’re not – as happens with a character in Death in Seville – that needs to be depicted and explained too, since it says something about them.
There are a lot of myths out there – fairy stories about ‘closure’ and the like. One such fable is the idea that people, police officers especially, become ‘inured’ to violence in the sense that it no longer affects them. I think it’s true that they may not let its effects show after a while. But they’re usually there, even if they’re invisible to the person concerned. And again if they’re not that tells you something about that person.
In many standard forms of popular literature violence is seen as a regrettable means towards a justifiable end. In my work there’s a touch of that, but I want more. I want my characters to feel touched by brutality, damaged and tainted by its cruelty and injustice. Force may resolve the problem, but what interests me as much as the event itself is the aftermath, its cost and its consequences.
And that is why you’ll never find a picture of me with a gun.
There’s an odd literary prize in England called the Bad Sex in Fiction awards. I’ve never been nominated myself though I’m sure I’m qualified. Sex in fiction is an odd thing. Many, perhaps most, wannabe authors of mainstream fiction have sex in the book they are trying to sell. Why? I could be disingenuous here. I could say because sex is an integral part of human life and it would be hypocritical to ignore it. I could argue it was essential for the story I want to tell. Or even the most important part of all.
All these things may be true. But let’s be honest. There’s a grubbier, more common reason. It’s plain desperation. People believe that without sex no one will publish the damned book. They reach for those buttons in the belief they need to be pushed in order to succeed. Is this true?
This is a big subject and I’m well aware that some people will be thinking, ‘But I never want sex in my books at all’. Bear with me. Exploring the topic does tell us something about the nature of writing too. Let’s try and break this down to four basic questions. First …
Does your story need sex or not?
Human beings have sex. We all know that. Most of us have got a pretty good idea what goes on in the bedroom. I’m sure there are authors desperate to introduce new and more physically improbable forms of sex for their readers. But for the most part sex in books is, well, sex. It’s not a revelation. It’s a physical thing. So is going to the toilet. There are writers out there who describe that too, though for the life of me I can’t imagine a good reason (not that I feel they should stop trying if they’re so minded).
Sex is rarely novel or, in terms of physical detail, particularly illuminating. Why write it then? One reason – and it’s quite a common one – is to titillate. I’m always slightly bemused by this use of sex since we live in an extraordinarily graphic age. When you can see people having actual sex in mainstream cinema you have to push the boat out pretty far to match what’s out there nationwide on twenty-feet-high cinema screens.
I’m not going to get prissy here. If you want to titillate, go for it. But go for it with gusto and be aware that it will change the tone of your overall book. Readers aren’t stupid. They know and may appreciate smut when they see it. What they will spot a mile off is if you switch into poetic allegorical mode straight after and try to do the ‘yes, but it’s all in context – I wouldn’t do it otherwise’ thing.
The real reason for sex, though, is in order to explore character. To show love between people, whether it’s established love, developing love or love that’s falling apart. Desperate sex between two people whose genuine love is disintegrating can be heartbreaking. The moment a couple fall into bed the first time can be touching too and make the reader think, ‘Finally …’
Sex between steady couples … I’m not so sure. If the relationship is firm, unthreatened, friendly, I don’t know if you tell the reader anything by showing they have sex too. They would, wouldn’t they? One reader put it to me this way: she wanted to know the good people had sex so that they were happy. But she didn’t need to know the details, only that it was going on. As always the basic question is the same: can I take this out without materially damaging the book? If the answer’s yes then it has to go.
If you’re going to write sex how graphic should it be?
You have to work that out for yourself. There are delicate and sensitive lines here that can so easily be crossed. I squirm with embarrassment when I read a passage in which a male authorial voice is clearly salivating over the physical characteristics of a woman. No one (well, not many people) likes to listen to one human being pervy over another, and that’s what this can sound like all too easily.
Graphic physical detail is dangerous. I’ve done that but not for a long time. You leave yourself open to getting a guffaw from the reader just when you’d like something else. It’s also a very difficult call to make. With most work you can gauge whether it’s good or not. Once you’re in the bedroom it may not be just your characters who are faking it.
I don’t use sex very much these days. There was one short scene in Dante’s Numbers where the reader was in the room when it started. I felt in that case it was necessary because it established something about the relationship between the two people concerned. But most of my recent books, if they feature sex at all, have depicted the moment before or the moment after (and frankly that can tell you just as much as some blow by blow bedroom account). I tend to treat sex as I do violence – keep these things short, to the point and, hopefully, powerful. I’m not enamoured of lingering sex any more than I am of lingering violence. But that’s my choice. Others will feel differently. Maybe I’m just getting old.
Do readers want to read about sex?
Some do. I have had people complain about the way sex has tapered off in my books over the years. But not many. If some hot scene is part of your unique selling point you’d be crazy to abandon it. But if it is that important your editor will know and be the first to demand it. It won’t be something you need to think about much.
Do publishers expect sex in order to sell your book?
Many years ago a former editor of mine in New York picked out a passage in an early book and said, ‘I like hot writing as much as anyone. But what does this add to the book?’
Nothing, if I was honest. I just felt I was keeping up the sex quotient demanded of new writers. So it came out.
The straight answer is: publishers expect a good book. I’m sure there are occasions when some have said, ‘This would be better with some more sex in it.’ But I’d guess it’s not often. Experienced editors will have seen it all over the years, every different description of every variation on the act, every euphemism there is for the various appendages of the human body. For them it’s going to be the story that counts. In most popular fiction sex is not going to be a make-or-break issue however much wannabe writers feel they have to write it in at some point.
If I was starting out now I’d probably be very wary indeed about putting prominent sex scenes in any prospective manuscript. At least if you leave them out you know you’re going to be offering something different to most of the other stuff on the slush pile.
Let’s deal with one more subtlety to do with sex, or more accurately gender, in terms of your book voice. Should you treat female characters differently to male ones when it comes to describing them in the third person? Do you automatically refer to male characters by their surnames and female ones by their first names?
Example: ‘Giordano crossed the room and opened Charlie’s filing cabinet. Sally followed him.’
There are people who think that writing a sentence like that is sexist. The reasoning I can see. Why should men and women be treated differently? Isn’t it condescending? Akin to referring to grown women as ‘girls’? Or, as pop songs invariably do, ‘babe’, a word I’ve never actually heard anyone use in that context in real life?
The honest answer is … it depends. Yes, it would be possible to write a book using these conventions and be highly condescending to the story’s female characters. But I also think you can slip between first and second names over gender and age with good reason.
Charlie is fourteen years old. His schoolteacher may think of him as ‘Harrison’. I can’t. So Charlie he is.
Sally’s a touch older. I think I’m going to be writing this book from a third-person subjective point of view, usually Charlie’s. He likes Sally. He’s probably attracted to her. He wouldn’t think of her by her surname for a moment. When Sally is in a scene she’s going to be called Sally.
What about an older character? Say Sally’s grandfather? Charlie doesn’t know him well. They’re not on first-name terms. To Charlie he would be ‘Mr Whitby’. So in a third-person subjective scene he would be that too.
If Charlie’s dad had a girlfriend, Rosemary Wilkins, a woman Charlie knew well, she’d be Rosemary, not Mrs Wilkins.
And our bad guy? Surname throughout. Charlie doesn’t like him.
Does this make sense? To me it does, and I’m the one who’s going to write this thing. If you try to create a rule to cover this logic I think you’d fail. But the real test is: does it work in terms of the book? Does the reader feel, in each scene, that he or she is sitting on the shoulder of the POV character and viewing what’s happening through their eyes, not as some distanced, anonymous observer? Most important of all, does this allow the book to be read without prompting those ‘hang on?’ moments that disturb the rhythm and force your audience to ponder unnaturally over some stylistic device?
I think that would happen if, on the grounds of some strange notion of political correctness, I referred to all adult characters, male and female, by their second names, regardless of their relationship to the point-of-view character. Charlie’s a young English schoolkid. He’d never think of any woman by her surname. If your protagonist was an adult, working in a big company or a government department where everyone referred to everyone else as a surname it might be different.
The key for me, though, is not corporate behaviour but what’s happening inside a character’s head. People who establish relationships with one another, romantic or otherwise, tend to move to first-name terms somewhere along the way. Forget so-called correctness. Write what feels natural.