Me either, unless the characters somehow fall in love on their own and I’m forced to be cheesy about it because that’s the only way I know how
Omg, I wish I could get you in contact with this writer friend on IG who does awesome with slow burn subplots and we even talked about slow burn romance writing a few months ago
Do you have any specific questions about it and maybe I can ask her since you’re not on IG?
Oh, btw, she has a book out:
It’s scifi. This is the one where she has the slow-burn romance
Personally I think the best romances are when the romance is distinctly NOT the focus of the story. People have bigger things to worry about in life, and it’s just more believable to me when the romance grows subtly on the side while you’re trying to tackle more important issues.
Like when you’re trying to get a promotion at work, then you find out the person you’re competing with is this gorgeous wunderkind who succeeds at everything because he has rich parents and all the advantages and opportunities you never got, and if he gets the job you’re going to hate him, but if you get the promotion then he’ll be working for you. So there’s so much to gain and all this conflict built into the plot. But then it turns out he bucks the rich guy stereotype and is actually really nice and happens to also be really into you, so when the competition slowly turns into friendship and then into mutual attraction it just hits so much harder. And the reader is left wondering: I know they’re going to get together in the end, but I’m more interested in who’s going to get the promotion and what will happen to the other one when they do?
Come to think of it, this sounds like the plot of a tv show or something I saw recently, but never mind. The point is to write about two people who become friends and then eventually realize they’re attracted to each other. Each time they do a favor for the other or save them from something or take the blame for something the other one did or whatever, the readers go awwwwww! and you’ve got a romance going without any mushy slushy stuff. ( ˘ ³˘) (˘ᴗ˘ღ)
Afraid this is not my area of expertise as I’m not a fan of romance thus why it’s more a passing mention than in-depth I shall lurk for future ideas in the unlikely event it happens
I don’t write romance intentionally either, buuut my characters have decided to start one as a subplot in my current project sooo, time to learn
Like other kinds of subplots though, I see it as a mini story that is developing “in the background”, but can interact with the main plot sometimes. Occasionally there’s a scene focusing on the romance, but it never overshadows the protagonist’s main goal nor changes the stakes driving the story forward. Akje gave a good example of that above!
I think it depends on tense and pov
if you are in the third person regardless of tense - you simply need to figure out when and why the narrator is sharing the romance and when/ why they are not.
if you are in the first person past tense - same as above
if its in first present you need to understand why for the main character they aren’t focused on romance, what is their focus and why
^^ this should help with the romance not taking over
in terms of slowburn regardless of pov and tense you need to ask yourself why for these characters is it slow?
you simply need to figure out when and why the narrator is sharing the romance and when/ why they are not.
in terms of slowburn regardless of pov and tense you need to ask yourself why for these characters is it slow
the narrator is always telling us the story now even if the story happened in the past. so in first person past. the narrator is typically the MC now recounting who they were in the past. so if they don’t focus on or draw attention to something, or space it out a lot their is usually a reason.
maybe they are embarrassed about it? shy? maybe they regret it but don’t want to admit it? maybe for them its private? maybe they are reserved about it? maybe they need time to open up about it? maybe they need time to trust the reader? maybe it would be a betrayal of their love to do that? infinite possible reasons
i know why functionally lol. I am saying if you want to be slow burn understanding why your characters are getting to know eachother slowly will help
like in general asking why from the character’s pov for stuff helps
(˘ᴗ˘ღ)
I shall lurk for future ideas in the unlikely event it happens 