In The Morning, It's Light Academia At Night, It's Dark Academia In The Brain, It Chaotic Academia

— Arthur Miller, The Crucible

Got any tips for writing romantic slowburn fics?

Hello! I’ve done my research and I have plenty.

How To Write Slow Burn Romance

Firstly, here’s some helpful links to other tumblr posts and websites (where I got most of my information). They go more in depth than I will here. For the tumblr posts, I recommend having a scroll through the notes for extra tips.

Other helpful links:

Advice for writing slowburn romance [the960writers]

How to write slowburn [givethispromptatry]

Tips / prompts for writing slowburn [creativepromptsforwriting]

The art of writing slowburn romance

Here are the main points I gathered:

Slowburns don’t start with love/attraction at first sight. The attraction builds up throughout the story.

There are many tropes that apply to slowburn; Friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, having to overcome something internal, having to overcome something external, etc.

To borrow a quote from @the960writers , “That’s why most romance stories have an exciting sideplot. It gives the characters a background to act against and it gives the writer time to develop the chemistry between the characters”

Your characters need believable chemistry, otherwise the reader has no reason to route for them.

At the same time, your characters need a reason to not get together right away. Otherwise, there’s no reason for the burning to be so slow. A few reasons for the characters to not get together right away include denial, societal taboo and them already being n a relationship.

When it comes to the characters starting to like each other, show don’t tell. It’s okay to occasionally have the characters go “Oh no! I’m developing feelings for B!” but for the most part, we shouldn’t be directly told that the characters are falling for each other. We should see them be nicer to each other, spending more time together, subtly flirting and showing other signs of attraction. It makes the relationship feel more real.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you want me to add more advice.

Leave requests for other oneliners and prompts!

I've spent a life chasing stories to tell when I'm old

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my souls still wracked with longing to see you

— Nizar Qabbani

"...anyone who really knows mankind might say that there is not one single living human being who does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbour an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or a something he dare not even try to know, an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety about himself..."

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛

𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛’𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑢𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠

𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠.

𝐼𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢…

♡ xoxo-Suzy ♡

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

Joe Keery for WWD — August 2023