♥ 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 

All the Latest Gossip

I am a bad, bad blogger. How can I let more than a month pass between posts? Typical, though, when life gets extra busy. 

Writing 

I've been writing short stories and editing on Heartless, two things that take up a lot of time. I hope to post a new short story soon but in the meantime, there is another installment of My Lady Coward over on my website. www.jaimeygrant.com (Click the Coward cover and then scroll to the bottom to find Part 7.)

Covers 

I still design book covers. If you're in the market for a great, eye-catching design, please check out my cover design site: www.anauthorsart.com In fact, I just bought a new computer with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive so the cover designing isn't such a slow, slow, SLOW process. (My old computer only had 3GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive...not that the hard drive size has all that much to do with the slowness of the computer but now I have tons of space to save all those wondrous covers.) I'm still in the process of transferring programs, book files, fonts, and all that lovely stuff. That's time-consuming and just a bit irritating. Still, it will be done soon and I'll be back to cranking out some fabulous covers!

I think that's all the updates I have for now. I wish everyone a safe, productive, lovely weekend! ♥