It's no secret that fantasy is, by definition, one of the most imaginative genres out there. Authors who stake a claim in fantasy often have to create new species, new systems of magic, new worlds, and sometimes even new dimensions. For these reasons, fantasy is a great way to captivate middle grade readers' attention and provide them with meaningful lessons within a context of adventure and escapism.

But despite the growing popularity of "darker" fantasy, like the rape-and-violence-prone Game of Thrones saga by George R.R. Martin, among adults, it remains important that authors who write for children temper these elements to an appropriate level. "It's a fine line of balance," says author Katelyn Honeck, whose recent book, The Dragons of Aleria, is forthcoming release from Greenleaf Publications. "You don't want to pretend that things like prejudice and darkness don't exist. But you also don't want to include something obscene in a book that a ten-year-old might repeat. Many of them get uncomfortable when you put in real curse words anyway."


So what is an adventurer to blurt when, say, a centaur steps on her toe? A "darn" or "golly," Honeck says, can kill the tension faster than a rampaging orc army. 

"Instead of 'damn,' I usually use 'blast,'" Honeck explains. "Its equivalent in Harroken, the fantasy language spoken in Aleria is draflkr, but I thought it best to resort to Harroken as little as possible. So instead of 'God!", characters take the name of the divine in vain by saying "By the Goddess," which is slightly different but removed enough from reality that moms won't object."

As she was planning out these logistics, Honeck was struck by how many fantasy books can include what amounts to English profanity by simply making up a fantasy curse that means the exact same thing and using it instead. Like many of her favorite authors, Honeck quickly devised fantasy equivalents of "shit" (scatflgr!) and "ass" (ashken - as in "I'll plant by boot straight in your ashken", ashkenag plural). 

"But soon I realized," she says, "that this was only shielding children from the mildest curse words." What about even more vulgar words? Were these to go unaddressed? Honeck soon realized she had her work cut out for her if she wanted to make her fantasy world safe for middle grade readers.



For instance, her characters use fairk instead of "fuck," since the two words come from two different lingual systems, our "fuck" from Old German and possibly Latin, fairk from high Dwarvish, which was used by the Old Ones before the founding of Aleria's First Kingdom, Elderharr. Characters make subdued use of the word with phrases like "we've been on the road for fairking ages", "fairk the police", "I'd like to fairk that nice piece of ashken," and "you fairkfaced motherfairker." It's easy to see how both parents and their children can feel instantly comfortable in Honeck's word.

But, sadly, it gets much, much worse in English than the F-bomb. "I believe fantasy authors have an obligation to address the marginalization and discrimination that takes place in our own reality, in order to show how intolerance can be overcome." For this reason, Honeck devised fantasy slurs for different minorities in our own world. 

WWYA: So not for elves and dwarves? For like, actual groups that exist here on Earth?

KH: Yes - different ethnicities, religions, sexual communities, people with dwarfism (not the fantasy race!), of different mental ableness --

WWYA: Oh my God.

KH: You mean By the Goddess! (laughs)

WWYA: This is kind of horrible. Why don't you just omit the slurs?

KH: They're not slurs in English. 

WWYA: Well - if it means the same thing.

KH: Well, then it's a nice way to hint at the darkness of the real world to kids who might want to explore that, but aren't ready to encounter it, like, in their own lives yet.


Katelyn Honeck lives in snowy, quiet Russelton, Pennsylvania with her husband and fellow writer Mark Wilson. They're kept busy by their two cats, Heather and Milo, and their respective novels. While interviewed, Katelyn was writing a scene in which Kalen Lightbringer, her protagonist, wipes out an enemy brigade with magic and feels regretful for a chapter, showing young readers the human consequences of violence before moving on to the climactic epic battle between two armies. She was trying to figure out a Harroken equivalent for the C-word when she realized that her female characters do not even get periods.


Dragon book art from Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, painted by Matt Stawiki. Swear jar from photosearch.com.