This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I can’t help thinking about the recent flap over whether Mark Twain’s work ought to be sanitized for sensitive young readers. The debate is about the “n” word. Most everyone including me, cringes these days at the sound of this racial epithet, but in literature, should we alter art to suit modern sensibilities? And what of those writing about eras where the word is a natural part of the landscape?
Writing Tip for Today: We can’t know where Twain would come down on the issue, but King, as far as I can tell, would urge us to unite, not divide. Writers today must decide whether their works demands the use of offensive language and if it does, how to portray that “feeling” without driving away readers. I had some thoughts on this:

• Dialogue is the most logical place for profanity of any kind, including racial slurs that are hard on the reader. Even so, a little goes a long way. Think of the same advice you get on creating dialect–most writers are going to struggle with it, and even when it’s pitch perfect, the revised spellings and/or apostrophes and dropped gs create a messy page.
• As with the advice for waiting and boredom, I think it’s important to give your reader a taste without making that reader drown in whatever kind of language the authentic character will speak.
• Are there any ways to describe the situation without using the profanity? A lot of Christian writers deal with this dilemma all the time. Their audience expects and buys Christian books where profanity, graphic sex, violence and other gritty things are absent. Still, I think the story sometimes requires that shock value in order to portray an accurate character or story. Think of The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Euphemisms don’t fool readers.
• Creative ways to write about racial, gender or other kinds of injustice–aside from just showering a reader with bad words or offensive acts–are a challenge every writer should aspire to reach.
• Writers should write as honestly and authentically as they can. Sometimes this means hard things to bear, but if the story is a redemptive one, readers may tolerate more of these difficult things. Neither Twain nor King would have us close our eyes to the injustice in the world. Just my two cents.