If you’re a reader of romantic fiction, you may well have come across the words which people use to differentiate between different kinds of novel or story. I am thinking of ‘clean’ or ‘steamy’, and at other times ‘sweet’ or ‘spicy’. I’d guess that few would need to have these ideas explained, or the contrast between them, although the fact that there is such a contrast might seem rather odd to some. Romance is a charming idea, and perhaps does find itself a bit at threat in some people’s feelings from the sexual frankness that is the modern norm. But there is also a difference in tone, since those who profess ‘steamy’ and ‘spicy’ are obviously happy to indulge in their chosen world with a fair bit of humour, something that ‘sweet’ might possibly capture too, even if ‘clean’ stands apart, aloof, and on the rather severe side. To me, ‘sweet’ and ‘spicy’ conjure up the menu at the local take-away, while ‘clean’ and ‘steamy’ do not seem to make such a natural contrast: after all, a sauna or a steam-bath would make you both of these, and at the same time, too.
How much of an advantage is it to have writers and publishers operating according to terms like these? And how driven is this distinction by the reading public? I recall very well that the Romantic Novelists Association was founded at the beginning of the 1960s with the express aim of countering the tendency to regard romance writing as trivial, and even silly. The Association has been a powerful voice in the industry for many decades, and still listens very carefully to readers. In that respect, and from the point of view of craft, I could sympathize with a writer who chose to construct a story in a restrained way for the most part, as romantic partners first meet and then develop a relationship in society, but who is also willing to conclude the novel with frank sexuality. Would this be ‘clean’ or ‘steamy’? And would the relationship need to be called either ‘sweet’ or ‘spicy’ even in a more or less humorous review?
With historical fiction, the situation is rather different. Try it and see, as they say: would it be feasible to apply terms like those used for romance to historical novels? Perhaps not, yet I do see some kind of major contrast in historical fiction which lies between explicit content and a quieter tone. Which is to say, that if sexuality is the emotive core of romance writing, then violence is the likely emotive core of history, or at least the ‘go-to’ of the genre of popular historical fiction. At one end of the spectrum might be the equivalent of ‘steamy’ or ‘spicy’ – the exciting, fearsome and appalling blood-and-guts of the making of history on the ground, in the air, or on the sea. There are countless novels of this kind, and in one way or another they satisfy the demand for that kind of vicarious, imagined or possibly remembered experience.
How the rest of the spectrum of historical fiction might be described is far more of a problem. Some historical novels may avoid scenes or acts of violence, while others rely largely on a narrative that supplies for readers fascination with its characters moving through an evocative, if strange, historical world. Yet even then, scenes may be horrendously violent. Still popular and adventurous historical classics as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo contain horrific scenes, while Hilary Mantel’s chosen era, like many periods of English history chosen by others, brings with it the gruesome nature of the times. In an alternative mode altogether, the Tyneside and north-eastern novels of Catherine Cookson concentrate fully on the hard lives of those not at the top of society. She underlined that harshness with the inclusion of acts of wilful cruelty, as well as the grim realities of a substantially pre-medical age despite the availability for hire of surgeons and doctors.
My own position on these profound colours in human life and fiction has been affected by my sense of the times in which we live. I have a feeling that there are readers of fiction who by no means wish to turn away from what is out there, but who may no longer need to be confronted overwhelmingly by it. I would cite here the immense exposure through the media, reportage, photography and film to the insane cruelty that is active across the planet and close to home, as well as to so many aspects of sexuality that were in the past either directly experienced, or never otherwise seen or envisaged by most people.
I realize that I choose a kind of writing that takes account of that over-exposure, one which does not plunge readers into things as if they needed to acknowledge their existence from the blind shelter of their own lives, but which accepts that – like it or not – they now have the ability to fill in from what has already assailed their senses. I deal in small and perhaps even relatively muted instances, hopefully in a way that they can be understood: if you want more, and more explicitly, then all you would have to do is to look around you.
