Radio FreeWrite
A podcast for lovers of stories- reading them, hearing them, and writing them. We provide a new prompt every week, then share the stories we have created from that prompt. We discuss the stories and the art of storytelling while encouraging listeners to create their own stories along with us.
Radio FreeWrite
Limehouse: When to Use Profanity in Fiction
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Should writers use profanity in fiction? Does it weaken the story, or add a li'l spice of realism to character dialogue? That's what the Crü explores in this week's workshop on creative writing.
Like anything in the toolbox, profanity can wind up being used as a crutch or a shortcut. We discuss how to avoid it if you'd prefer not to use it; sprinkle it in like smoked sea salt on a good chocolate chip cookie; or invent in-universe swears to snag the best of both worlds (think the holy mother-forking shirtballs of The Good Place or fraking in Firefly).
And, of course, we share our own stories based around our prompt from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Limehouse. In Britain in the early part of the 20th century, a verb meaning 'to use coarse abusive language, especially in a political speech'. The usage arose from a notably acerbic speech which the LIBERAL Politician David Lloyd George made in Limehouse (then a particularly rough part of East London) on 30 July 1909, in which he attacked the aristocracy, financial magnates, etc.
And, as promised, here's Wanda Sykes as Harriet Tubman (nsfw dialogue).
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Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.