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im so happy i made all the correct choices that led to us meeting

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How to Write Characters With Romantic Chemistry

Writing great chemistry can be challenging. If you’re not super inspired, sometimes the connection between your characters feels like it’s missing something.

Here are a few steps you can consider when you want to write some steamy romantic chemistry and can’t figure out what’s blocking your creativity.

1. Give the Love a Name

Tropes have a bad reputation, but they can be excellent tools when you’re planning or daydreaming about a story. Giving the romance a name also assigns a purpose, which takes care of half the hard plotting work.

You can always read about love tropes to get inspired and think about which might apply to the characters or plot points you have in mind, like:

Friends to lovers

Enemies to lovers

First love

The love triangle

Stuck together

Forbidden love

Multiple chance love

Fake lovers turned soulmates

There are tooooons of other tropes in the link above, but you get the idea. Name the love you’re writing about and it will feel more concrete in your brain.

2. Develop Your Characters

You should always spend time developing your characters individually, but it’s easy to skip this part. You might jump into writing the story because you have a scene idea. Then the romance feels flat.

The good news is you can always go back and make your characters more real. Give them each their own Word or Google doc and use character templates or questions to develop them. 

You should remember to do this for every character involved in the relationship as well. Sometimes love happens between two people who live nearby and other times it happens by:

Being in a throuple

Being in a polyamorous relationship

Being the only one in love (the other person never finds out or doesn’t feel it back, ever)

There are so many other ways to experience love too. Don’t leave out anyone involved in the developing relationship or writing your story will feel like driving a car with only three inflated tires.

3. Give the Conversations Stakes

Whenever your characters get to talk, what’s at risk? This doesn’t have to always be something life changing or scary. Sometimes it might be one character risking how the other perceives them by revealing an interest or new fact about themselves.

What’s developing in each conversation? What’s being said through their body language? Are they learning if they share the same sense of humor or value the same foundational beliefs? Real-life conversations don’t always have a point, but they do in romantic stories. 

4. Remember Body Language

Body language begins long before things get sexy between your characers (if they ever do). It’s their fingertips touching under the table, the missed glance at the bus stop, the casual shoulder bump while walking down the street.

It’s flushed cheeks, a jealous heart skipping a beat, being tongue tied because one character can’t admit their feelings yet.

If a scene or conversation feels lacking, analyze what your characters are saying through their body language. It could be the thing your scene is missing.

5. Add a Few Flaws

No love story is perfect, but that doesn’t mean your characters have to experience earth shattering pain either.

Make one laugh so hard that they snort and feel embarrassed so the other can say how much they love that person’s laugh. Make miscommunication happen so they can make up or take a break. 

People grow through their flaws and mistakes. Relationships get stronger or weaker when they learn things that are different about them or that they don’t like about each other. 

6. Create Intellectual Moments

When you’re getting to know someone, you bond over the things you’re both interested in. That’s also a key part of falling in love. Have your characters fall in intellectual love by sharing those activities, talking about their favorite subjects, or raving over their passions. They could even teach each other through this moment, which could make them fall harder in love.

7. Put Them in Public Moments

You learn a lot about someone when they’re around friends, acquaintances, and strangers. The chemistry between your characters may fall flat if they’re only ever around each other.

Write scenes so they’re around more people and get to learn who they are in public. They’ll learn crucial factors like the other person’s ambition, shyness, humor, confidence, and if they’re a social butterfly or wallflower.

Will those moments make your characters be proud to stand next to each other or will it reveal something that makes them second guess everything?

8. Use Your Senses

And of course, you can never forget to use sensory details when describing the physical reaction of chemistry. Whether they’re sharing a glance or jumping into bed, the reader feels the intensity of the moment through their five senses—taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell. 

Characters also don’t have to have all five senses to be the protagonist or love interest in a romantic story. The number isn’t important—it’s how you use the ways your character interacts with the world. 

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Anyone can write great romantic chemistry by structuring their love story with essential elements like these. Read more romance books or short stories too! You’ll learn as you read and write future relationships more effortlessly.

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Here’s my comic about Crowley’s bender in Spain 10 pages, the rest below the cut! Zines are available for preorder!! 

Keep reading

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she asked me if i believed in god and i told her that when i was four i almost drowned in a public pool and in my panic mistook a stranger for my father. i clawed my way up his leg. four years later he’d send my parents a picture of the scars alongside a tin of cookies. he said, “i hope she’s still okay. i carry her with me. it isn’t every day you save a life. it isn’t every day you feel like you were here for a reason. when it does happen, you have to cherish that memory. for once, i had a purpose. just being there was enough. she tore me open but she taught me a lot about love.”

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Stede being so up in his head about leaving his family that he distances himself accidentally.

When even getting what you want feels like punishment because it's not what you deserve.

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Oh, don't be so stubborn, Stede said, as if that didn't make it worse.

I'm not being stubborn, Ed gritted out. You're just wrong.

Their map had gotten damp this morning, the ink smearing away with the kick of seawater inescapable in a little fishing vessel like this without a proper table. Or a proper bed. Fuck, Ed's knee ached. And it was so fucking hot.

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Crowley might like to pretend the world wouldn't spin on in his absence, but it did. Aziraphale fumed for nearly a quarter of a century before realising, belatedly, Crowley hadn't yet appeared on his doorstep to win his forgiveness with wine or chocolates or some exceedingly rare and well-preserved volume Crowley "happened upon" in the last week and thought to drop by in case it was wanted.

It was always wanted, of course, and it would be terribly rude not to offer a drink or three in the wake of such a kind offering.

Aziraphale expected him to turn up in the last few years—he could hardly remember the last time an argument lasted the turn of a decade, let alone two.

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Something broke Ed. Really it was someone, but it's not like he can say as much. Izzy would just sneer and ask him what else he expected from a wishy-washy newly out gay man clearly in the middle of some kind of midlife crisis. Ed would still defend Stede, which probably says more than he's willing to admit.

Fuck him, honestly. Fuck him and the stupid fancy yacht he floated in on. If it were still in the dock he might've asked Fang to commit a little light arson with him, like old times. Ugh.

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"H-Holy mother of God," Stede says, twisting his hands into the sheets.

"Now why are you bringing her into this?" Ed asks with a gravelly chuckle, his spit damp lips against Stede's length.

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A List of Prompts

because yeah i think it would be helpful if there was a comprehensive list of those, so

ANGST. want to cry? here's some onion for you.

fighting/intense

someone is injured

protective

reluctant allies

shedding a tear

secret relationship--getting caught and confronted

enemies to lovers

corruption arc

sentence starters

forbidden love

101 ways to break the characters (and readers) heart

broken trust

hit em where it hurts

for the damaged

short angst sentence starters

soft angst sentence starters

high pain tolerance

dark and angsty sentence starters

from the villain

SMUT / NSFW. having horny thoughts? endulge.

action prompts

subtle intimacy

sexual tension

kissing starters

smut dialogue prompts

sfw friends with benefits

types of kisses

soft dirty talk sentence starters

consent is sexy

spicy actions

subtle smut sentence starters

nonverbal sexual situations

bdsm and dom/sub prompts

build the tension

love and leashes

FLUFF. for when your heart needs healing.

simple actions.

forehead touches.

things done while spooning

things done while dancing

oblivious idiots in love

idiots in love

dancing prompts

dialogue prompts

simple touches

casual affections

soft and sweet sentence starters

types of hugs

comforting

domestic intimacy

comforting actions

soft touches

BITTERSWEET. for those who like to hurt and then soothed.

reassuring your lover

reassuring your lover pt. 2

sacred moments

hurt/comfort prompts.

hero x villain prompts

lovers in denial

comforting a lover after a nightmare

grumpy x sunshine

enemies with benefits

noticing trauma

all about the yearning

found family

nightmares and sleeping

reassuring

reunion after (physical) trauma

possessive/territorial

for the heavy hearted

enemies to lovers

hero x villain sentence starters

dissociation starters

intervention

enemies to lovers and lovers to enemies

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October Prompts

i. into my arms ii. vertebrae iii. light sleeper iv. hurricane season v. sentinel vi. replacement vii. station wagon viii. VHS ix. tiny god x. blue roan xi. not a lot to give xii. release xiii. gouge xiv. skeletal xv. false idols xvi. winesap xvii. bad plan xviii. lazarus xix. possession xx. honeyglow xxi. early sunsets over ___ xxii. behind the stables xxiii. scorpio xxiv. phantom crosses xxv. chestnut tree xxvi. vetiver xxvii. boxcar xxviii. fireside xxix. after the war xxx. seance xxxi. bonechill

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November Prompts

i. home at last ii. empty coast iii. drive down south iv. chemical accident v. fragrance vi. girls’ night vii. noise in the wall viii. mourning moon ix. i’m trying to be nice x. a wish that came true  xi. scene that takes place late at night in the kitchen xii. impersonate xiii. kestrel xiv. spiral staircase xv. medusa xvi. drugstore purchase xvii. summon xviii. silver locket xix. wool xx. light breakfast xxi. beech grove xxii. trout xxiii. scene that takes place on a pier at dusk xxiv. first frost xxv. splatter xxvi. offal xxvii. nighttime shadows xxviii. scene that takes place on the library steps xxix. a conversation between two enemies xxx. after everything

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"Cream of the Caribbean—”

Ed glances up from the glass he's polishing as a boy all in white trembles at the entrance of his bar. What the fuck?

"What the fuck?" Izzy says at Ed's elbow. The rum he's pouring overflows in his distraction and soaks into the sticky, dagger-scarred bar top.

"Watch the fucking rum, mate."

Izzy quickly rights the bottle and picks his chin off the floor.

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every second I think about ed emerging from his anger and depression stage of thinking "he abandoned me because he didn't want to run away with me" and moving on to "what if he didn't make it to the beach because something happened and now he's dead"

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You're my favorite person in the entire world

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Aziraphale always imagined it would be more complicated. He'd had millennia to work up the moment in his mind, after all. His first kiss with Crowley would be dramatic, romantic and knee-tremblingly passionate, like those perfect kisses he's sighed wistfully over in his books since the dawn of literacy.