#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 14 Nbr 12 — Do you prefer euphemisms or technical terms to ...

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npub1r5f…39wa

2024-10-12 03:35:51

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 14 Nbr 12 — Do you prefer euphemisms or technical terms to refer to genitalia in your writing? Why?

Wow! What a sticky question. 🥁

I prefer innuendo. That's my concise answer and I'm sticking to it. As a gender fiction writer who writes SF and fantasy taking place in the future or a fantasy world, what passes as euphemisms for my readers now is likely to break verisimilitude there—especially if the language isn't English. Yes, English speakers colloquially use a very strictly defined set of euphemisms when intimate†. When dealing with health issues, they switch to technical terms, or few stupid when they slip. As stated, I can't do that in my stories, but in a health situation I would use the technical term if it befits the characters in the story.

So, innuendo... Innuendo generates euphemisms that follow along as cultural information shared between stories in that universe. In one series, the 1st person POV often mentally refers to "sir-parts" and "lady-parts," but would never say that out loud. She might point... She was aware of her immaturity, and often used it as a weapon. Other generated euphemisms are words like ride, riding, and ridden as well as forms of the word passionate.

Here's one example with body parts and premeditated word choice to ramp up the implications. The MC is a woman.

I looked at how his muscles moved, his legs and rear when he turned momentarily to retort to a gang mate. How he held himself erect. I blinked. Dimples?

Here's another except later in the novel. The same MC observes:

...many men kept cool the natural way, which meant said tan saint provided a—lets just say educational—view of a male sandy-haired mammal where he sat on a bench, sweating, wiping his brow with a towel, and drinking from a water flask, having just finished exercising. Pretty!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
† I am referring to same set of words often also used in porn: nouns starting with a, c, p, and t, and verbs starting with c and f.

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