Shifting From Sweet to Heat—4 Tips for Changing Genres and Heat Levels in Romance Fiction

Attempting to classify “heat” or “spice” levels in a romance novel is often a tricky proposition—what is ghost pepper hot to one reader is a sweet, bell pepper to another. And unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules about what qualifies as “sweet” or “spicy”—it seems every author and reader have their own definitions that might conflict with yours. Which leads to our first step—

You’re never going to make everyone happy with how you define things, but generally speaking, if your characters don’t go past kissing (either on or off the pages), then you generally have a sweet romance. When you start including on-the-page love scenes is where it might get a bit trickier to label. 

(5 Elements That All Good Rom-Coms Should Include.)

Some authors/readers think that if you focus primarily on the feelings during a love scene that it still qualifies as sweet, while others think that if it’s on the page at all, it is definitely spice. Compare your books to others that you consider similar to yours—what is their heat level?

Spicy is also a very broad term—from on-the-page, basic love scenes to some very explicit type of scenes on the other end of the spectrum—again, you would need to find authors with books similar to yours to get a feel for how you might define your heat level. Because readers very often ask how spicy your book is and it’s good to know for yourself where you might fall on that spectrum.

Before I began writing my first book, I looked to see what I was attracted to as a reader. What sorts of books did I love best (romantic comedies) and what did I like most in them? I loved the banter, the flirtation, the interaction, those first moments that set your heart racing (“Did he mean to touch my hand?”). I found myself skipping spicier scenes to get back to the parts I loved. 

So when I wrote my first rom-com, I wrote the things I liked best. I loved sexual tension and chemistry, but I preferred focusing on the emotional connection and watching the couple fall in love.

Perhaps you’re drawn to writing Young Adult books where the spice is either nonexistent or toned down (but not always!). Or you might be worried your neighbor or your mother are going to read it. I also thought that if I wrote sweeter, that from a marketing standpoint it would appeal to readers who only read sweet and to readers who prefer spicier books but that it wouldn’t work in the opposite direction. I hoped it might help me to find more readers. Figuring out the why of your choice will help you move forward.

If you’re just starting out in your career, or if you only have a few books under your belt, you might want to consider using separate pen names if you intend to write both sweet and heat. Then it’s very easy to tell your readers which pen name does which and to direct them to the one they’d prefer.

That’s also a great deal of work—keeping up with multiple pen names on various social media sites and newsletters and websites, etc.

I have always wanted to write fantasy and so I was practically giddy when romantasy became so big—the ability to combine my two favorite genres was something I couldn’t resist trying my hand at. When I set out to write A Tribute of Fire, I knew that it would be steamier than my rom-coms (for several reasons, including plot and character arcs). But because I have dozens of rom-coms out there and have built up a brand/following, it was decided that I should keep using my name even though I was shifting to a different genre and a different heat level. 

In this instance, I took a page out of author Sarah Adams’ playbook (another author who has shifted her heat levels recently) and I have repeatedly warned my current readers that this book would be steamier. Sarah even lists out the chapters her sweet readers might want to skip in her new romances. If you’re keeping your name and shifting heat levels, it can’t hurt to tell your current readership as much as possible so that they’re prepared.

If you want to write in a new genre with a different heat level, then you have to do your research. Read the most popular books and find out what’s working and what readers are responding to. What are the conventions of that genre? (That does not mean that you “upend” romance by omitting a happily ever after—that is a must and the readers WILL come for you.) What are the expectations? The word count? The themes and tropes? And how can you take all of those things and make it your own?

With deciding to change heat levels I did a lot of examination as to why I felt the way I did, what things I was actually comfortable with personally, and continued to follow my personal boundaries. My agent gave me advice—“Write it and see what you think.” She was right. (She usually is.) Writing things differently than I had in the past gave me a great deal of freedom and opened up new avenues of storytelling for me.

So, write it and see what you think. 

Check out Sariah Wilson's A Tribute of Fire here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)