Clean Fiction is a dirty phrase these days. In this blog post, you’ll learn how valuable you are as a fiction reader and why the opposite of clean fiction doesn’t mean ‘dirty’ fiction.
An Author’s Responsibility to the General Public
Authors take great care to weave each word into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that capture you emotionally and keep you turning the page until the final word.
They labor to create flawless phrases only to lament their loss as they vanish in the blink of a notification.
They create landscapes and build worlds with imagery so descriptive that your imagination can’t keep up with your reading pace.
Regardless of the genre and whether you read it or not, know YOU played an integral part in helping the author fulfill their dream. By holding their book in your hands or on your screen, your imagination brings an author’s vision for the story to life.
No two authors have the same vision, so there are endless possibilities for how a story flows from beginning to The End.
Whether they intend to thrill, excite, inform, convince, romance, sexualize, enlighten, scare, trigger, cleanse, transform, transport, or heal, authors take the responsibility of igniting your imagination seriously.
An Author’s Responsibility to Their Genre
If an author knows their genre well, they understand the expected elements their readers crave. Take Romance, for example. The characters must meet at least in the first chapter, if not on the first page, and they must end up together in a ‘happily ever after.’
An author who writes erotica is responsible for providing at least ghost pepper-scaled spice. Authors who write clean fiction will refrain from including explicit content, including sex, profanity, and violence.
As authors, our words are an expression of ourselves. But the truth is, it’s not always the public or familial self our readers see. It may be the repressed or ideal self. We may even project our hurts and wounds onto our characters or we may live vicariously through them.
We’re creatives, so a little…different. And these differences give you, the reader, shelves full of choices.
Don’t like Anime? Great! The filtering option will help you filter out what you don’t want to read. Don’t like Romance, Sci-Fi, or Literary Fiction? Wonderful! The Western and Historical Sections are right around the corner.
Don’t like Clean Fiction? The … (enter record scratch soundbite), what goes here? Explicit? Erotic? Contemporary? How would you fill in the blank?
The Opposite of Clean Fiction isn't Necessarily Dirty Fiction
To be controversial, using “clean” to describe a book one must assume that books with explicit material, including sex, profanity, and violence, are the opposite of clean.
And no one wants to be perceived as dirty.
However, I ask you to consider if the opposite of a ‘clean’ read will always by dirty. If the answer is yes, then should we deduce that the opposite of a ‘spicy’ read must always be a bland read?
Of course not!
With all the choices readers have in their selection and interpretation of prose, including the ability to interpret clean and spicy, the reader would have to choose the interpretation of dirty over spicy and accept this level of mutual exclusivity in all aspects of their reading and creative world. It’s been my experience that artists are not that black and white.
Additionally, this argument would also claim that a spicy story lacks substance or that a clean story is all bubble gum and rainbows. In fact, any story from any genre can be emotionally captivating or dull, poorly written, and lackluster.
The level or lack of spice does not always indicate the quality of the craft.
My Responsibility as a Catholic Author
Stories powerfully influence our hearts and minds. I’m acutely conscientious about putting my characters into situations that leave them feeling vulnerable and raw but don’t force the reader to endure graphic scenes. That may be your jam, and it may not. But my responsibility is to my reader, not to please the general population.
In fact, my responsibility as a Catholic Author is to God. I want to use the specific skill set he graced me with to support and collaborate with others so that together we make up the body of Christ.
As a convert in 2024, I’m desperate to find fiction with Catholic faith elements weaved through the characters, the landscape, and all the rising and falling beats. And I’m committed to writing the same.
I aim to create stories that celebrate love, commitment, and the beauty of human dignity without explicit scenes that might diminish that sacredness.
When challenged if care more about level of explicit content than I do the spiritual message, I reply that they are one and the same for my writing.
Catholics (and many Protestants) believe our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that God intended marriage as a Sacrament. If we wrote super spicy, explicitly sexual material, then it would violate what we hold profoundly holy. It’s clean because it doesn’t violate the tenants of our faith.
Clean material also doesn’t mean the characters are flawless creatures who lack depth and never do anything unholy.
What it does mean is that what I am keenly aware that when I invite you to read my material, I am influencing your hearts and minds. And I pray that I do so in a way that the redemptive love of Christ is honored.
Clean Fiction, Closed-Door, Sweet?
Who cares what we call it?
· Authors care. Choosing a label to best serve their audience matters.
· Those who’ve found the description offensive care. Again, words matter and some are affected negatively by it.
· Readers who only want to read clean fiction care. They may not want censorship, but appreciate picking up a book without any surprises.
Personally, I’ve chosen to use Closed-Door Contemporary Fiction to describe what I write. It encompasses the vision I have for my characters and stores who kiss, flirt, argue, and have make-up sex without actually writing any of those things. As an author, it challenges me to show-not-tell my characters' emotions, passions, and desires without having to literally spell them out. It opens the world of the reader's imagination, who then chooses whether to continue to the next scene or pause to consider what’s behind the closed door.
Taking Action
Words are important. Actions are just as necessary. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with calling a book “clean,” I’m open to having meaningful and respectful conversations with those who disagree.
Before posting this blog, I prayed you would land here and find I have communicated in a helpful, informative, and loving way.
And I hope we become friends.
Kass is an author, speaker, Catholic convert, wine and chocolate connoisseur, and distributor of Hope Notes. Oh, and she can stand from a full seated position in 4.3 seconds popping every bone below her bellybutton along the way.
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