It was in an email from a friend: I’m tired. So goddamn tired.

And maybe it was because I know him, or maybe it was because I know the exhaustion he was speaking of, or maybe it was just that word choice, but in those five words, I could hear the deep weariness he was expressing.

That’s the key here: the deep weariness. It came out in that second phrase: so goddamn tired.

It’s all about the word choice.

Because think about it. If he’d said so fucking tired, there’s anger in there. You hit that f-word hard when you speak it. It’s a word of anger or frustration. A hostile word, which is why it gets used as often as it does. It’s meant to affect the listener, to evoke an emotional response that echoes what the speaker is feeling. Yes, even if that intention is subconscious, it’s still there. I mean, there’s a reason we call them f-BOMBS, right?

So enter the softer word choice: goddamn instead of fucking. And it changes the entire dynamic. Gone is the white-hot anger. Because it’s added as a modifier, or as an afterthought, the exhaustion creeps out: it’s too much to say in one sentence. It’s gotta be broken up, so the speaker can stop and breathe. Maybe even work up some courage to admit something. Or find the energy in all that tiredness to express it.

I couldn’t do much to help my friend. He works near me, so I offered up the house if he needed to sneak out of work and take a nap, but beyond that, all I could do was commiserate — because, like I said, I’d been in that particular situation before — and so I did.

But I also wrote a blog post because his word choice was just so spot-on perfect.

Which leaves me with this dare for you: can you replace a convenient f-bomb with something else? Something that conveys a bigger, broader meaning? And even more importantly, can your characters?