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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PaulKemp" data-source="post: 3606017" data-attributes="member: 2809">The first sentence of my story, "Confession," published in Dragon 356, elicited a similar discussion on the Paizo boards.  The first sentence went like this:"I sloshed through sh** up to my ankles."Some readers were (and are) offended by that sentence.  Here's my thinking on the matter (this is more or less a cut and paste from my response on the Paizo boards):One of the primary functions of the first sentence in a piece of short fiction is to grab the reader and set the tone for the story. In this case, the mild expletive did that work (at least as far as I'm concerned). Sure, I could have written, "I sloshed through excrement/sewage/feces/take your pick, up to my ankles" but that, IMO, would not have had the same impact. It has nothing whatever to do with an attempt to shock for its own sake or the lack of a thesaurus.  The story is told in alternating first and third person limited point of view, so the sentence does the additional work of giving a glimpse into the mind and personality of the character who's narrating (and in this case, suggests something still more).That some readers dislike and/or are offended by the word choice is unfortunate, but it's also just one of the things you deal with as a writer. My writing in general, and this story in particular, is not for everyone. I can live with that.</blockquote>