Slow burn romance prompts and tips
Slow burn romances are awesome but taking so much time for the people involved to realize they love each other can be exhausting for the people enjoying the piece of media.
To make things exiting you have to give the reader/audience reasons to enjoy the slowness of the romance and not strive to get to the point where it becomes canon.
In order to do this, your characters should be involved in the relationship (even if it's not romantic yet) and the audience should feel the reasons why this romance is going to happen.
Here are some tips and prompts on how to do it:
Show how they're unconsciously building their relationship by spending time together. Give them reasons to constantly seek companionship even if none of them is fully aware that they're in love.
They have a common hobby they decided to explore together
They are involved in the same organization (volunteering, community service, defending human rights, local organizations about whatever, but if it's fantasy even thigs like a group of people with the same powers)
They have to work on a project (it can be about their work, education, hobbies, organizations they joined, bringing a dictator down, fighting aliens etc)
They have to take care of a mutual friend
They are in the same team of a competitive sport/field.
They bond over common past experiences
They are going to have the same experience (for example, they bond over the fact that they're going to move in the same town for external reasons)
Sexual chemistry is good, but it's not good in a slow burn romance. There are other types of chemistry, however, that can make your romance a lot more interesting:
Humor chemistry (they easily make the other-s laugh and be happier)
Habits/believes chemistry (they feel more connected by basing their lives on the same principles)
Theoretical sexual chemistry (they just view and live sexuality in the same way, more similar and linked to belief chemistry)
Make the audience understand the reasons they're in love
Love isn't merely based on logical reasons, but healthy relationships are based on them too. Chose some reasons for why they're going to be in love and develop them overtime.
They could be - but not limited to:
Great admiration for what other-s do
Cooperation and complicity
Healthy emotional support
Even if relationships have to be based on principles that mustn't lack, like consent and other fundamental things, it's important to not write about perfect ™ relationships but make them good in a human way.
Give characters involved bad days for external reasons, give then some fear, misjudgment or just a moment when they miss their past.
Allow your characters to be good humans and not dreamy perfect partners.
Plus: make it clearly possible
Minorities are unrepresented in medias and often this can lead to a lack of diverse love stories. So when it comes to a slow burn romance, it can be easy to want to rush to it only to be assured that this is going to happen.
To avoid this, make it clear that this can potentially happen without hitting at their romance yet.
For example, if your audience can be scared that this slow burn romance won't become a thing because it's queer and often queer baiting is chosen over actually queer representation, give to the story other happy queer love stories. They can be fully developed or just mentioned, like a character's friend cleary involved in a queer relationship that's often hit at but not important.
Other examples can be mentioning a past where this kind of romance already happened (like a poly character that was in a poly relationship years before) or showing people similar to this character in a happy relationship.
