Monday 27 February 2012

F------ Swearing

**Warning: this post contains a couple of spoilers. Do not read it if you haven't read Sunliner yet**


**Seriously - don't read it**

I made a decision when I wrote Sunliner which I kind of expected people to comment on. No-one has...but I thought I'd explain myself anyway. It may be that no-one has questioned it because the reasons behind the choice I made were so obvious to the people who've read the book, in which case I'm wasting my time. But its my blog so I'll write whatever nonsense I want in it. :p

The decision I made was to bleep out some of the swearing. Like this: "f--- you". (not really)
:-)

I did this for two reasons:
1) The book was inspired by the pulps of the 1950s and this kind of censorship was common in them. The writers wanted to portray the gritty life of criminals and cops but the publishers or the public (I'm not sure which) weren't quite ready for it.
2) Bleeping out a lot of the swearing meant that the swearing I didn't bleep stood out. This allowed me to highlight 2 particular moments. The first was a humorous one - the moment when JJ has a gun in Curtis's mouth and is trying to get him to talk. Curtis indicates he is ready and when JJ takes the gun out says: "Fuck you JJ. Fuck you straight to hell" (I thought it was funny anyway).
The second moment is a more shocking one. the moment when Rachel reveals the truth of what JJ did to Ellie that night in '49 with the hopefully chilling line "I fucked his wife, I might as well fuck you too."

So that's that. Did it work? You tell me.

Olly

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