Why so many Christian books?

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

'Cause for many readers, a character crying; "shucky-darns!" when they smash their finger—or are confronted with major adversity—just doesn't quite cut it. It's no real mystery, here. People who swear regularly in their daily lives are more likely to write a book with swearing in it. Make sense?

All of which has absolutely no bearing on the prodigious amount of free Christian Fiction out there. I happen to think it's fantastic for Christians and non-Christians alike. I've read several Christian works that could have just as easily been released by a traditional publisher and no one would have known the difference.

There are a lot of possibilities between "shucky-darns" and the f-bombs or worse. And then there's also the option to say the character swore, without detailing exactly what the character said in loving detail.

I get so tired of coarse language. It's desensitizing. And it's boring.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Catlady

And it's boring.

Only when done incorrectly If an author is creative, or it really really fits with the character, great. If it's just there for sensationalism, yeah, it's boring.

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by Catlady

...........I get so tired of coarse language. It's desensitizing. And it's boring.

I agree, although I qualify that by adding the word "gratuitous".
I particularly dislike comedians who use it for cheap snickers, rather than shock, or the odd moments where the swearing - talking what even I would term foul, here - actually highlights/adds to the topic.
We have a few frankly bad comedians who have gained notoriety by a set that consists of very little other than a tirade of pretty disgusting language. Funny it ain't.
And there are very few of my acqaintances who would describe me as a prude - especially after........well, no, best not go there...........
Oops, just caught Queentess' post which said it far more succinctly !

[Harry_Y]

I'm a Navy vet. When I read a book where the characters are in the military
and every other work is swearing it becomes very clear the author is clueless.

We never swore that much in real life.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by queentess

Only when done incorrectly If an author is creative, or it really really fits with the character, great. If it's just there for sensationalism, yeah, it's boring.

It's hard to shock when every character is busy swearing. There are other ways to show a character expressing anger, other adjectives and intensifiers to use. If they're dropping f-bombs over minutiae, what do the characters do when they're faced with something important?

[DiapDealer]

I curse. I curse in my daily life. A lot. It's not for humor. It's not for effect, it's just part of my life. So while I get where many of you are coming from... it seems as weird to me for an author to go out of their way to never curse (or worse, when they make up imaginary curse words) as it does when an author goes out of their way to curse all of the time. I see no difference.

People curse. If your book has a fairly large cross-section of culture/characters/society in it and none of them ever curses... that's weird to me. If you have relatively few characters; all from a specific subset of society... then fine. Maybe none of them curse.

[mldavis2]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

There's very little worse than an inexperienced curser when they're practicing.

I wish I had a recording of conversation among Army cooks in the mess hall during the Viet Nam war... clearly 25 word vocabularies... which I 'enjoyed' while I was on KP duty peeling potatoes.

But salty language is part of the real world. There is a place and time where it does invoke some degree of realism into 'overheard' conversations as used by a writer attempting to re-create an accurate portrayal of life in the slums, or even executive boardrooms (Nixon, Blagojevich, et. al). My objections would lie only in those instances in which the language was inappropriate or unrealistic to the scenario.

[Harry_Y]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I curse. I curse in my daily life. A lot. It's not for humor. It's not for effect, it's just part of my life. So while I get where many of you are coming from... it seems as weird to me for an author to go out of their way to never curse (or worse, when they make up imaginary curse words) as it does when an author goes out of their way to curse all of the time. I see no difference.

People curse. If your book has a fairly large cross-section of culture/characters/society in it and none of them ever curses... that's weird to me. If you have relatively few characters; all from a specific subset of society... then fine. Maybe none of them curse.

It is extremely rare for me to swear, and I never curse.
There was a time I did, but now I find it distasteful

As far as sex scenes in a book where they don't belong
that is a quick way to ruin a book for me. It just makes
me think the author is grasping at straws.

[covfam]

Originally Posted by Harry_Y

I'm a Navy vet. When I read a book where the characters are in the military
and every other work is swearing it becomes very clear the author is clueless.

We never swore that much in real life.

I agree im and infantryman vet. and while there was crude language regularly, movies, games and even people now days swear so much that it put us to shame.

I dont mind a swearing or even a sex scene in movies/books but they have to be done apropriatly.

For example George rr martins Game of thrones series while very interesting has far too many sex /rape scenes and incest content in it for me to ever get into it, i tried but then every 25 pages or so was a nother rape/sexincest scene it felt like. In the HBO remake they added even more and made it as vulgar as you could. there was so much nudity in it my wife nicknamed the mini series butts & boobs.

My opinion is if you need that much sex & nudity go watch/read some porn and get it out of your system we dont need it ruining our movies/books

[teadonkey]

I personally can't stand foul language in life and in books. I find it to be incredibly distracting. I also find a sex scene in every chapter distracting. I unfortunately like romance novels, which means I am surrounded by sex scenes. To break that up, I read a Christian fic type romance every so many books. I find ones that aren't beating me over the head with the Christian theme (as a Catholic, I really don't need it... I go to church every sunday and I'm relatively good at living by the ideals, so I reaaaaally don't want to be preached at in my down time).

I think my point is I read one of those books to add variety. And honestly, there's a heck of a lot of smut for free on Amazon, yet nobody's complaining about that? Slight double standard there, if you ask me.

[wodin]

I don't mind rough language or occasional eroticism, but what I found distracting was when I read the Snookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series, Charlaine insisted on describing in excruciating detail exactly what every character was wearing every time they changed their clothes.

After a while I began to think she was using it for padding to increase her word count, and found myself skipping ahead a few paragraphs or pages every time she did it.

[unboggling]

@wodin, re sookie. Not to get into gender stereotyping. But. That's because you're male (as am I) and I assume a lot of, probably most, of Harris' readers were originally female before she hit the bigtime. Probably middle aged, probably low-income (like Sookie). Who probably liked descriptions of clothes. So I assume Harris developed a habit of detailed clothes descriptions. Those didn't bother me. I never notice women's clothes anyway...

[JSWolf]

One of the books for the book club (Refuge by Richard Herley) had a scene in (I think) chapter 2 that was a bit gratuitous and violent and it almost put off a of of people from bothering to go on. But the book was pretty good overall, but if it wasn't being read for the book club and so close to the beginning, I probably would have stopped.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I would suspect it's a little of both. There's always some hope that some (nonChristian) would pick one up by mistake and react to the message.

I also suspect that Christian fiction is a rather niche market - and if you think about many people's (print) book buying habits (standing it line at the grocery store scanning the bestsellers in the impulse aisle?), I suspect they're also trying to get the word out that the books exist.

I know some non-religious types who like the books solely of the general lack of overt sexuality or violence (as well as limited "bad language"), as long as the books don't get "too preachy".

The funny thing is, my friends novels are published by a christian superhero/horror publisher. his editor/the owner has no problem whatsoever with violence, he just doesn't want 4 letter words, graphic sex or the lord's name taken in vain. however grisly werewolf and zombie related disembowelings are ok lol. the label isn't overtly christian, the novels have no overt christian message, but as a believer it's just what the owner/editor wants.

[frquixote]

Originally Posted by Harry_Y

I'm a Navy vet. When I read a book where the characters are in the military
and every other work is swearing it becomes very clear the author is clueless.

We never swore that much in real life.

I have to agree. I've worked in the largest Regional Combatant Command Headquarters in the US military for over ten years now and can count on my two hands the number of times I've heard curse words uttered out loud by military officers or enlisted, no matter how tense the situation has become. It is considered very unprofessional and a sign that the curser does not handle pressure well. That's not to say people don't curse under their breath...

On the other hand, I worked in Washington, DC for fifteen years before I moved out here to Hawaii. The civilians, especially those in executive agency positions tend to be REAL potty mouths.