To Write Clean, or to Not Write Clean? A Writer’s Guide to Navigating the Clean Fiction Debate

You’ve probably seen it across the internet. Substack, Bookstagram, and Booktok is all hopping with the same buzzword— clean fiction. A concept usually coined by the Christian homeschool community, now up for debate in almost every genre from Middle Grade Adventure to romance novels. Basically, the idea of books without “content”. Books without “bad things” like language or sex. Books that can be safe to hand to kids and you don’t have to worry about what they might accidentally discover.

Recently, however, there’s been a couple of heated debates on how exactly the “clean” label should be used. If a book isn’t clean, does that mean it’s dirty? How does one actually define the difference between a “clean” book and a “dirty” book? Do all Christian books have to be clean?

If you’re a former (or current) homeschool kid, you might be looking at these debates wondering, “where do I fit in?”. There’s good arguments on both sides. You might agree that hard, dark topics should be talked about in books— but you might also feel more comfortable reading a book an author labels as “clean”.

After all, clean means good, right?

I’ve been in this same battle. I’m a homeschool graduate who grew up on moderated content— but now writes stories tackling abuse, mental health, and many other dark and sensitive issues. I have discouraged my readers from calling me a “clean” author, but I’m not necessarily offended anymore when people use that label.

Today, I’d like to give you a crash course into how to decide whether or not using the label “clean” in your marketing is even worth it anymore— and how to avoid being burned by the heated debate.

“Clean” is a Marketing Term

I’m approaching this from the view that “clean” is a marketing term to be used in applicable situations. It conveys a message to the reader that they can expect a lack of XYZ content. The expectation shifts depending on the age range and genre. People expect a “clean” romance to have no sex (I’ll have a note on the term clean in romance later in this article). They might expect a “clean” YA book to have no graphic violence, sex, or swearing. By providing a definition of “clean” on your author website, such as a bio, you can easily set up reader expectations for what your brand of clean is and avoid those (often unwarranted) ranting reviews of people saying “I thought this was a clean book!”

I actually do believe some genres and age ranges benefit from the “clean” label, but not all. I’ll go into that more in the sections below.

Clean Is a Relative Term

The biggest issue with the term “clean” is that EVERYONE has their own definition and without knowing an author personally, you can’t really determine what their definition is. They might think depicting mental health issues in fiction is not “reflecting on good or beautiful things” or they might just not want to read f-bombs in their books.

Given such, I wouldn’t recommend authors writing for older audiences (or who are writing heavy topics) to use this term in their marketing. Most older audiences are not going to care if a book has discussions about depression or a described dead body (of course, content warnings should still be used for potentially triggering topics like suicide, abuse, PTSD, etc). While most older audiences expect mature topics, given the vastness of definitions it’s easier to abstain from using the clean label in marketing these types of books. The only caveat is again, if you’re marketing to a specific audience. If you use the term “clean” you’re probably going to attract homeschoolers and the most content-conscientious types— which isn’t a bad thing! I have several friends who are more content sensitive and prefer the use of the word “clean” in the fiction marketing to help determine what they should read. Just be aware that if you write heavier topics, you do risk a lot of miscommunication.

But WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!!

Hold your horses I’m getting to that. This element tends to be the most hotly contested (besides spicyness— will be getting to that in a moment) because of course, there’s a good amount of parents who don’t want to expose their kids to certain content when those kids aren’t ready for it, and a good amount of young teens stepping out into choosing their own books who want to be reassured that their choices won’t involve something scummy. To these audiences, they’re searching for the word clean— and it’s for these audiences that you would use it.

This is also the audience that needs content warnings.

For the authors in MG and younger YA genres, (especially to homeschool audiences) I’d actually encourage them to use the term “clean” when applicable to their stories. This gives the reader or parent a green flag that these books are going to be family friendly and they can feel safe about handing that book to a child or reading that book themselves without worrying about finding the MMC swearing or reading about the FMC lusting over boys.

Clean Romance?

I debate the usage of this, because again, to have “clean” romance inherently means there’s “dirty” romance… and while I do believe there are dirty romances, the presence of sex in a romance does not inherently make it dirty.

Okay, hear me out, because I see some people getting their hackles raised.

I don’t want to read sex scenes in fiction, but that’s not because I think sex is dirty. I think sex is a sacred event between a husband and wife created by God, and because of that sacredness, when we read it on a page, we abuse the sacredness of that even (yes, even if the characters are fictional). A “dirty romance”, in my mind, glorifies lust and sexual passion outside of marriages— and many books do that. Smutty books exist.

While “clean” works as a marketing label to assure the reader that there won’t be open-door sex scenes I’ve also read several books now that were marketed as clean and had the most bland, lusty romances to ever grace Christian fiction. So I feel like it’s losing its meaning even in Christian romance fiction.

The clean label is not all bad— it does communicate an important message to the right audiences. But there’s also another important issue that I feel lurks behind the real debate.

Clean Elitism

I am really, really tired of clean fiction elitism. I get it. You’re not comfortable with reading some topics. I’m not comfortable reading spicy romances. I’m not comfortable reading the f and s words.

But why are Christians so rude about it?

And yes, I’m speaking to Christians, because it tends to be Christians who have the most snooty, holier-than-thou opinions when it comes to clean fiction. I read a horrid book once, a contemporary romance that had no business being published for how utterly ridiculous the plot was. Nothing made sense, the characters were unlikable… it was a hot mess.

You want to know what the majority of the few bad reviews it had were about?

The fact that the not-Christian FMC used God’s name in vain.

That is what the readers hyperfixated on. Not the lack of a plot. Not the fact that the FMC was a brat.

She took God’s name in vain *clutches pearls*.

And I think this is where the real issue of the Clean Fiction DebateTM lies. I understand that content can be triggering, and I understand you have your opinions, but here’s a stark truth: not everyone writes characters that are Christians, and just like we can’t hold people who aren’t Christians to the same standard that we hold Christians, we can’t hold characters who aren’t Christians to the same standard we hold Christian characters.

Broken people act broken. Fact of life. And I think the issue is when people get on their high horse about content and don’t acknowledge that some people want to reflect what brokenness actually looks like.

There’s a really great movie my mom let us watch for a girl’s night when I was seventeen, and unfortunately we couldn’t edit it, so we had to watch it unfiltered, and there was a lot of F and S bombs. But the movie, Save the Last Dance, is about an upper-class ballerina who transfers to a mostly African-American school in a lower-class part of the city. While my mom wasn’t okay with the swearing, she had also had the experience of being in a very similar setting, and she pointed out that the swearing was very realistic to the setting the movie takes place in.

Just because it’s clean, doesn’t mean it’s good, and just because it’s not clean doesn’t mean it’s bad.

I’m annoyed with elitism in general within the reading circles, but this one ticks me off the most, because people get so rude about it. There’s no reason to rate a book lower because it’s a Christian book showing broken people doing broken things. If those topics are handled badly, that’s one thing. But rating a book two stars because the characters were drinking alcohol? Petty.

Christians who write books without sex or swearing are not necessarily doing “better” work for God than the Christian writing a book about prostitutes in inner cities. And putting on self-righteous airs about content is not the way to show Christ’s love to others. We can gently talk to our brothers and sisters in Christ who may be toeing the line in terms of morality when it comes to hard, “the Bible is against this” issues, but condemning fellow Christians for tackling hard topics in their fiction is not okay.

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I hope you enjoyed this article and I’d love to hear your thoughts(reply to this email)! Do you believe the clean fiction label should be done away with, or would you prefer it kept, with definitions?

Hey all! Thanks so much for reading! This is a guest post and is brought to you by Allie Lynn from Equine On The Mind. I hope y'all will check out her work and give her stories all the love they deserve. Seriously. Top tier storytelling and something us Irish Twins will support till my dying day. I will warn for those in our audience that are below 16 that she deals in heavier topics that are for a slightly more mature audience and should be consumed at parental discretion. It is one of the best representations that Ive seen of said topics, but again, its not for everyone.

Allie Lynn Equine on the Mind I’m an author in training writing teen equine fiction for the glory of God. To find more of my work, check out my website, EquineOnTheMind.com. I also run a private substack for my serial fiction at https://ramblingsofaridingwriter.substack.com/​