Does Slang Belong in Fiction?
What is slang? According to Merriam-Webster, it is “an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed typically of coinages, arbitrarily changed words, and extravagant, forced, or facetious figures of speech” or “language peculiar to a particular group.”
The latter definition is what most people think of when they think of slang, and attribute it mostly to generational groups. Some slang sticks and becomes a part of language that just about everyone knows. In the 1980s, there was slang for words indicating coming and going (bounce, split, jet), yes (for sure, no doy, word), cool (awesome, bodacious, fantabulous), and more. Some of these have stuck around, while others my teenage son looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.
In the 90s, we got gems like “balller,” “rad,” and “totally tubular.” In the 2000s, we added slang related to the digital age like TTYL (talk to you later) and BRB (be right back). The 2010s brought on both new words and new meanings to existing words. “Ghost” for example, doesn’t mean a spirit from the afterlife, but when someone just disappears without another word like a text, phone call, or other communication.
Today’s slang includes things like “based,” “baddie,” “crash out,” “glow-up,” and many more.
You may know some or all of these words, or none at all. But would you want to see them in fiction, especially a story that claims to be taking place in the ‘present day’? When I first started writing my debut novel coming this summer, I considered talking to teens like my son and his friends to find out what they were saying and what it meant. Then I had second thoughts.
If I want my book and the ones that come after to stand the test of time, do I really want to add the slang of today? Not really. Unless I intend for it to be historical fiction, but I am choosing to write ‘present day’ stories that can be dropped into any time period in the future and still be readable by the people who may find my book.
All this slang I’ve spoken about will be a thing of the past no one will remember fifty years from now. To have the teens in my books talking about “rizz” or or being “baller” would definitely pull the reader out of the world. So I’ve decided not to use current or outdated slang outside of specific contexts.
What are your feelings about slang in books? Are you “here for it” or would you rather not have to keep a slang dictionary close at hand when you’re reading for fun?
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