What Is a “Low-Angst” Book, Really?

I’ve seen quite a few books marketed as “low-angst” lately. And don’t get me wrong—a fluffy story can be something quite enjoyable. But … the label makes me a little anxious.

Why? Because any time I’ve read a “low-angst” book, the label masks something a little more nefarious.

What Is Angst, Anyway?

Angst is a loan word from German. It was usually associated with the bildungsroman, or the coming-of-age novel. These novels, very popular in the 1700s and 1800s among German writers (think Goethe), usually follow the main character from their childhood into adulthood (Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman, not a romance).

The “plot” of the novel is usually following the protagonist on their journey to self-identity. The big, thematic question is what makes a person? How do people become who they are?

The bildungsroman’s answer is often that personality and identity is forged in the fires of self-examination (read: navel-gazing) and rumination on the experiences we have as we grow up. Basically, how we respond to and internalize the various traumas we encounter shapes who we are. Hence the term angst.

In the twentieth century, the term became commonly associated with the idea of “teenage angst.” The idea of the teenager emerged mid-century, and it was associated with this idea of “growing up” and discovering who you were in the world. YA novels generally take this as their premise; many of them function as modern-day bildungsromans.

Smells Like Teen Angst

“Teen angst” is disparaging; it means that the teenager in question is inflating the perceived impact of the event. We can think here of first crushes and puppy love. These affairs of the heart often seem quite dire to those who are entangled in them, but to an outsider—especially an adult—they look trifling and ridiculous.

By the early 2000s, fanfiction circles adopted the term angst. In an angst fic, the author pretty much tortured their character of choice. If it involved a ship, then the characters’ path to romance was fraught, with plenty of hand-wringing and mental anguish. Angst might also, more broadly, incorporate tragic events, such as a character dying and other characters reacting to it. Again, melodrama might be the more appropriate term, or even tragedy, but fic writers rarely used those terms.

Fanfic terminology has now migrated to original fiction. In this space, angst is often shorthand for a romance where the characters spend most of their time hand-wringing about why they should not get together or worrying if the other character will even like them back. Characters may be depressed or anxious. They may deal with their crushes in extremely melodramatic ways, often akin to those teen romances—you know, where someone decides they can’t live without their high school crush and decides to fling themself off a bridge or something equally drastic.

What Is Low-Angst Then?

By contrast, a ”low-angst” book would feature the characters getting together with relative ease. Their relationship won’t be terribly fraught. In fact, it might look like domestic bliss. In a “low-angst” book, we see the characters get together and form happy relationships—often in the absence of all the navel-gazing and hand-wringing that goes on in “angst” stories.

The fanfiction equivalent term might be “fluff.” Stories that are “fluffy” generally focus on how happy the couple is together. If a fic is particularly sweet, a writer might call it “tooth-rotting.” “Sappy” is another term authors sometimes use.

I have seen some writers call their original fiction “fluffy,” which I think is the more appropriate term, as compared to “low-angst.”
Even with that in mind, I have reservations about either term, because, as I indicated, these terms often hide a darker truth.

Where’s the Plot?

The big problem I’ve found is that authors who bill their works as “low-angst” seem to think that means every problem needs to be solved quickly and easily. One book I read had a character who was a famous romance author. This was quite an important point, as all of the character’s previous relationships had failed due to partners either not respecting romance authors or simply being after the money.

The character went on for pages about how these previous relationships had made them incredibly wary. This issue was resolved in half a page when the love interest noticed the character’s books on a shelf and professed that they loved romance novels.

As a reader, this left me hanging. Why was there all this build-up about the character’s broken heart, psychic wounds, and cautiousness around this particular subject? Why did we discuss it for pages if it wasn’t going to factor into the story more than having the love interest declare they liked romance novels? The character even suggested that previous lovers had pretended at loving romance novels just to get at their money. If you’d been burned like that before, you’d think you’d be a little more suspicious of a love interest you just met who declared they loved romance novels.

This is a plot-shaped shadow. The author builds up a problem, then hand-waves it. The book moves on to other issues, which were all handled in a similar way.

And this is what I have found with anything that bills itself as “low-angst”: the author is afraid of engaging with any problems they introduce beyond a few paragraphs to quickly and easily resolve it. Because lord knows engaging with a problem on a deeper level might be … angsty, I guess?

Why Fluff Works for Fanfic

Fanfiction writers get away with writing “fluff” pieces, whereas that feat is much more difficult when you move into original fiction. There are a few reasons for this.

First and foremost is that fanfic readers are already familiar with the characters. You don’t need to spend time building them up into real people and, generally, your readers are hungry for even just simple scenes of characters interacting in cute ways.

In original fiction, these “cute scenes” aren’t satisfying for readers unless they occur at the end of the book or in the middle of turmoil.

Why does this work in fanfic but not OG fiction? It’s because we don’t care about the characters. At the end of the book, readers might feel the characters have earned this little slice of domesticity.

But if the characters hook up on page 1 and they’re having cute domestic moments by page 10? Your reader is saying, “Okay, that’s sweet, but why do I care?”

The reader is not emotionally invested in these characters. That’s why fluff works well for fanfic. Readers come to fanfic emotionally invested in these characters, so seeing them interact this way is often gratifying.

In original fiction, the same scene often leads readers to ask “why?” This is not a question you want your readers to ask, generally speaking. A reader asking “why do I care?” should be anathema to anyone writing original fiction.

And sure, not every book is going to grab every reader. Some readers are easier to convince when it comes to caring about characters. But readers generally approach original fiction expecting that they will be introduced to characters they will come to care about, and, through the course of some sort of trial, they will root for the characters to succeed.

Creating Emotional Depth Has to Precede the Payoff

How are we supposed to root for a character we don’t about? Think about the last time you heard a story about a couple that got together and now is sappy-happy, to the point of being disgustingly sweet.

You might be happy for them. Maybe you give them a “that’s cute” or “that’s so sweet.” But there’s a good chance you don’t really care beyond that.

Now, let’s suppose you hear about the ongoing saga of these two people your friend knows. Maybe one of them has been crushing on this other person forever. Or maybe one of them just got out of a bad relationship. You know the other is shy and has never dated. Suddenly, you are much more invested knowing how this love affair goes. Did they finally go on a date? How did it go?

You Have to Have Stakes

Having a plot doesn’t necessarily mean there’s angst. And I think that’s what bothers me most about these books that bill themselves as “low-angst.” The term is a misnomer; what these books are actually doing is avoiding conflict.

Conflict is central to telling a story. I’d point to the emergence of “low-stakes” fantasy or the “cozy” genre of fiction. Generally speaking, these books still have conflict. It’s more that the stakes aren’t the kind of high-flown, save-the-world adventure we usually see in these genres. Rather, the stakes are smaller, more personal.

Romance works with these sorts of stakes anyway: the world likely isn’t going to end if these two characters don’t hook up.

Conflict can come in a few ways: we can think of internal conflict, where one of the characters is conflicted about getting into a relationship, or maybe they want to focus on their job and feel like getting involved is a distraction. Other factors could be keeping the characters apart, which is external conflict: a jealous ex, a disapproving parent, and so on.

And part of becoming invested in fiction is often watching our protagonist triumph over the stakes, no matter how high or low they are. The important thing is that there are stakes, and they matter to the characters.

That tends to be the issue with these “low-angst” books: they might set conflict up, but they dismiss it or solve it with a hand-wave, so that the stakes never matter. The challenges—such as they are—are met with such ease that nothing feels like a triumph. In turn, the reader can’t become invested in the characters—resulting in the fact that they don’t care about that cutesy-wutesy scene of domestic bliss. There’s no emotional gratification.

Can Low-Angst Be Done in Original Fiction?

I’d argue that, yes, low-angst can be done—and often is, even when the author doesn’t explicitly apply the label.

Low-angst doesn’t necessarily mean no conflict. It means less of the melodrama than usually goes on. There’s less-navel gazing, so to speak. Characters don’t agonize over things, and the conflicts are not drawn out to increase drama. They can still resolve quickly or easily, but I think the true crux is the approach to the problem. Give me characters who are confident and decisive, and I’ll probably tell you we have a “low-angst” book on our hands.

What writers need to avoid doing is adding conflict after conflict that resolves with little to no trouble. Those aren’t stakes. They’re throwing “issues” at the characters to try and create a plot.

A better approach, I think, is to decide on one conflict that gets pulled through the narrative. Think of a character who has to choose between their job and a new relationship. This conflict comes up periodically, even as it becomes apparent that the relationship is really more important. We don’t necessarily need a lot of navel-gazing or “angsting,” as it were—the conflict surfaces periodically, then drops to background noise. Eventually we find the resolution.

Versimilitude Is a Balance

This is similar to real life—which is often what “fluff” writers are after. Not everything is a momentous, life-changing event; the mundane is actually much more common, and most people have relatively conflict-free existences. And that, I think, is what “low-angst” writers really want to portray: something closer to the mundane magic of everyday life.

I don’t blame them. Sometimes we need a break from the wondrous, the momentous, the stress of high-octane, high-stakes narratives. But I don’t think aiming for “conflict-free” or “every conflict is a minor inconvenience that resolves to be rainbows and sunshine in the span of a paragraph” is a great way to get this down on the page.

And that’s why I’m going to continue to be wary of books that bill themselves as “low-angst.” Give me cozy fiction, low-stakes fiction, gentle fiction. But, for the love of god, save me from “low-angst” books that think eliminating angst means pitching all conflict out the window.