♥ Romance Opinions ♥ Sweet, Traditional, & Clean: What's the difference?

Sweet, to me, implies a certain lightness to the story. I sometimes refer to it as fluffy, though not everyone considers that a positive thing. I don't think it's a bad thing, just a different type of story. There's nothing too traumatic happening and definitely nothing graphic. Very little profanity or violence, if any.

Traditional romance I typically consider any romance that leaves the sexual details to the imagination, regardless of genre. That most traditional romances are also sweet isn't much of a coincidence; they go hand-in-hand, for the most part. However, I've read a few (and written a few) that leave out the sex (or at least the details) but touch on subjects that make your stomach clench. Hard to refer to stories like that as sweet.

Then there's clean romance which I pretty much consider the same as traditional. I've noticed some are offended by the term clean, however, as they believe it implies sexually detailed romances are then dirty. To each his own. I call mine clean because the sexual details aren't there but sweet they are not. 

The only difference I see is in each person's opinion. I view clean, sweet, and traditional in much the same light. But when the storyline gets into rough territory, I have a hard time calling it sweet.

There's a discussion on this subject in the Clean Romances group on Goodreads. (Funny, since I actually wrote this blog post back in December '11 and never published it.)

Then there are the differing views on "clean" in general. How much detail is too much detail before it's left the realm of clean and turned into something else? But that's another blog post entirely. lol

This is all just my own opinion and I'm sure not everyone would agree. So tell me, what do you think?

~Jaimey

Traditional Regency Romance...with an Edge 

www.jaimeygrant.com