I hope it’s okay I answer this public? And thank you for the compliment.
Maybe I have a small advantage of being married 16 years. Or I just like Jack Harkness, a lot. I would say the big thing is the small things.If you want to be in a relationship, you notice the small things. You know what they like in their tea or coffee. You laugh at their jokes. If you’ve been a relationship for a while you have your inside jokes and shared experiences. If you’re just meeting someone, take a tip from Jack Harkness, smile, meet their eyes and introduce yourself. It’s a fine line between being creepy and being warm, but it’s about paying attention to the other person, and making sure they know you’re the center of their attention.
It’s also about being patient. That’s how I tend to write/think of Mystrade. Greg is warm and friendly, Mycroft is standofish and aloof. But he melts the ice simply by being there and letting Mycroft know he is willing to take as much time as he needs. John and Sherlock can have a similar dynamic, depending on how you’re writing them.
Like I said, in a more long term relationship, it’s about getting to know the other person. You get to know their lines, what jokes go too far, what things from the past you shouldn’t bring up if you want to keep you head attached to your shoulders. Real relationships have ups and downs, fights and moments of love. It can be as simple as holding hands. It can be as complicated as watching the sunrise together.
writing passive romantic interest is fun and tricky too 🙂 if your characters are into each other, make sure the reader knows it. give us little sentences telling us how they’re feeling, or what they think of their person. all the things Merinda mentioned are super correct but especially if you’re going for as-yet-unresolved romantic tension – the audience needs a window into at least one of the character’s heads.
when your characters shift from passive (interest) to active (flirting), you can’t lose this! the biggest difference between friendly flirty banter and creepy hitting-on is intent, which shows in the body language and tiny variations in tone. your narration, with a careful (not necessarily overly fancy, just… careful) selection of words works magic here.
it’s possibly a dumb obvious thing to say, but draw on yourself and your own feelings – or your friends. i’m not overly similar to john or sherlock (or greg or mycroft or newt or hermann) but if i think about my conflict of wanting to protect my friends and simultaneously feeling directionless, i can write john. if i think about pretending to ignore things that might hurt me for so long that i’m unsure how to respond to things when they almost definitely won’t hurt, i can write sherlock. (exasperated fondness for my sister/coworkers? greg. writing mycroft is like what you think you want when everything is a goddamn mess, and you have no resources to control it. “oh god did my mouth just make those words” = newt. herms is me as an older sibling desperate not to be outshone, with a dash of sherlock’s emotional avoidance) that’s a big simplification, of course, but a start. i can say “when i felt/feel like this, how would i react?” i then have a starting point i can then modify depending on the character’s situation.
building a whole existence outside the story helps greatly. this is where fanfic is a huge help/crutch, because it’s easy to think/talk about headcanons and AUs and how the characters would act/react in new situations. if you’re writing original fiction with an ensemble cast, i think my biggest pitfall was having one fleshed-out character and one-dimensional supporting cast. if you’re writing just about a couple of people, i think it’s important to avoid making them either too polar-opposites or too perfectly-matched.
and finally, find someone who can give you some tough love support. someone who likes how you write but isn’t afraid to tell you where you need to pick up the slack. if i can moan about fanfic for a second, there is a lot, seriously so much, great writing, and also truckloads of pretty good writing, but it’s jumbled in with a lot of stuff that’s… you know, mediocre or sub-par, and it makes me despair a little when they only get praise without critique? like, yeah, harsh truths hurt, but if you refuse them, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. (i guess that’s some life advice that applies to more than just writing.)
i need to stop saying stuff. the most important thing is to enjoy yourself. #platitude
Just another WordPress site