You ever spend three months planning a first date and think, “This is going a little fast”? Then slow burns may be the genre for you! But there’s more to a slow burn than just making readers wait an inordinately long time. You’ve also gotta make the waiting fun! We’ve got some thoughts on how to do that. 

Generously transcribed by Michael Frank. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreants Podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle.

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants Podcast. I’m Oren. 

Chris: And I’m Chris.

Oren: I have a story about two characters who are gonna kiss, but I would like to sell ten books and I know people are gonna stop reading the moment that they kiss. So I’d like to wait. 

Chris: Oh, are they? Well, I think I found your problem.

Oren: That’s what’s gonna happen. I just know it. So I would like the kiss to not happen until the end of book ten, and I think I’ll call it a “Slow Burn” for marketing purposes.

Chris: [Chuckles]

Oren: Is this gonna work, do you think?

Chris: That would be a slow, slow, slow Burn.

Oren: The slower, the more burn-y. That’s just how it works, I think.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. The slower you go, the more you burn. I think generally, especially in a full romance, if there is a kiss at the end of the book, that would be considered a Slow Burn. 

Oren: I was wondering about that. At what point does it become a Slow Burn? How slow does it have to be before you start calling it that?

Chris: I’ve heard, for instance, Warrior Princess Assassin is referred to as a Slow Burn by many of its reviewers. And there is a sex scene at the end of the book. It’s … Okay, this is a little silly, because in hetero terms it would be still holding back for a sex scene. It’s pretty detailed, but the spice doesn’t go up to a sex scene until the end, and that would be considered a Slow Burn.

But I’ve seen other books where they just have a kiss at the end. Again, we can talk about a full romance versus a romantic subplot. But in a book where I’ve seen—like Midnight Girls, where it ends with just a kiss—I’m concerned about that leaving people too unsatisfied. 

Oren: Yeah, there’s not enough romance in this romance at that point.

Chris: Right. We want that satisfaction. That satisfaction comes from seeing them kind of hook up a bit. You can withhold some relationship milestones, I think, and save those for a later book. But only a kiss … In Pride and Prejudice, that was famous for not having any kisses, but that’s because of the time period, and they’re still an official couple who are getting married at the end.

So it can kind of vary depending on the book’s spiciness level because the heat level and how many sex scenes we have will just vary from romance to romance. It’s not really the best judge probably. But certainly I think if it is less spicy, it’s more likely to be referred to as a Slow Burn.

Oren: You could have, for example, a story where the romance part is about whether or not they’ll get together and get married, but they’re banging the whole time ’cause they fell in lust immediately. And I don’t think you would generally call that a Slow Burn, even if it takes a long time to resolve.

Chris: The primary feature that I would say a Slow Burn has is that the relationship escalates slowly. If they get together and break up, or they’re banging each other a lot, I don’t think that people would call that a Slow Burn. On the other hand, though, a kiss at the end to indicate they’re together is pretty typical for a romantic subplot.

Though I don’t know that I would call a normal subplot where they kiss at the end just to make it official a Slow Burn. Just because, for the amount of content that romance probably gets, that could be completely normal because it’s taking up a lot less page space than if the whole book was a romance novel.

Oren: Does that mean we think that to be a Slow Burn it has to be like a full romance plot and not just a subplot in a larger story? Or does it just take longer for a subplot to be considered a Slow Burn?

Chris: There’s no hard line, ’cause you could have a really prominent romance subplot, but technically it could still be a subplot or kind of blurring the line in between.

I’m not saying that a subplot can’t be a Slow Burn if it gets a lot of time. I think we have to see … The thing that I think people like for Slow Burns, one of the things they like is pining. That’s one of the features that Slow Burns often have, and of course it can be done in different ways. But I think you wanna see a lot of time. We wanna see that there’s a lot of time for them to interact and have kind of development and also build chemistry without actually taking the next step in the relationship. So that requires page space. 

If you had a subplot that was a very slow building and had a decent amount of page space, and maybe it doesn’t have a kiss until book two, that could certainly be considered a Slow Burn. I just would be hesitant to take the normal romantic subplot with the standard ending kiss and call that a Slow Burn because I think in many cases, while the romance just doesn’t get that much development, it doesn’t have that much page space, there’s not really that kind of long simmering time that a slow burn romance is supposed to have.

Oren: When I think about a long, normal plot, not romance, but just like an external plot of some kind, I plan it out in terms of what needs to happen for this plot to resolve in one way or the other. And I imagine those as important events and I add more of them if I want the plot to be longer. Do you want to be planning out a slow burn romance the same way? Or is that gonna be too confining?

Chris: How many plot events do we have?

Oren: ‘Cause like, in a normal plot I wouldn’t just be like, “And then my characters sword-fighted for twenty pages.” I would be like, “So the plot is that we’re defeating store brand Sauron and to do that we need to first take Minus Terith.” That’s gonna be what my city is called. Don’t sue.

Chris: [Laughter]

Oren: And then after that, we need to get it to the gates of Lessghoul, and I would plan it that way. But I don’t know if that has a direct comparison in a romance story or if they are just longing.

Chris: If you think about the movement in the romance, we’re talking about the escalation in the relationship. So normally when we have a romance and we’re looking at “longing structure,” for instance, we have chemistry and then we have some development of the relationship that makes it feel like things are progressing, and then usually our kind of down note or our sort of separation point.

In a Slow Burn, we want that movement to be real slow in comparison to the amount of time they get together. I have seen complaints from people reviewing romance books that something is not a real Slow Burn because there is not enough time with the love birds together. They spend too much time apart. We don’t have enough page space. That is a frequent romance complaint.

Oren: Like saying it’s a slow burn because they meet on page one and then take a two-hundred-page vacation from each other. That’s not gonna work? They need more actual contact?

Chris: Yes. Romance audiences just want them to have lots of time together, interacting with each other. [Laughs]

That would be a complaint. That’s not a valid Slow Burn. We want kind of slow progress or we want it to take a long time before we get to a certain point in the relationship. I do think that sometimes might be challenging to stretch out in some ways if you’re just relying on the romance itself to create structure.

We had another episode on Enemies to Lovers, and I do think that gives it more time. It has more miles to cover. And so you could do a Slow Burn a little easier if they start out as enemies. Then we have a lot more milestones that we can fit in. But I also think it’s worth considering whether we want to have an additional plot in there so the relationship doesn’t have as much structure and we can afford to have the relationship milestones go slowly because we have, for instance, a high tension plot.

Oren: That’s my instinct. If you want the romance to take a long time, you attach it to a long external plot which gives you something to do so you don’t have to explain why they’re constantly longing for each other but not together yet. 

Chris: The external plot—depending on what it has, it may not save you from that. But what it does is it provides another form of structure using tension. Ideally, again, the external plot supports a romance. But in this case of a Slow Burn, all you might want is an external plot that gives them a reason to be together all the time. They’re stranded out on an island, whatever. They’re traveling together, something that makes them in close proximity all the time so that if they’re not in love yet, they can be. I’m not gonna eliminate that from consideration. 

But if they were doing something like Enemies to Lovers, we need something to push them together when they’re enemies so that they spend time interacting, for instance. And so I think if you had to do strong plot that provided some level of excitement but just had them together a lot in their scenes, then you could sort of take a step back and not worry as much and just give them a lot of chemistry as they interact together and have that kind of slowly blooming relationship.

Oren: We mentioned the possibility of Enemies to Lovers, but obviously that’s only one way you can do a romance. Not every Slow Burn is gonna wanna be an Enemies to Lovers. So what else do you do to set up the situation where the characters have enough chemistry that we would want them to be together, but also they aren’t gonna get together for a long time? What’s the play to keep them apart?

Chris: Well, sometimes with a Slow Burn they are friends for a while. And there is definitely a trick to making sure that the readers feel some level of chemistry or the readers are invested in it without the characters being too invested in it.

I guess what we’re trying to avoid is—I’m thinking of Paladin’s Grace.

Oren: Yeah.

Both: [Burst of Laughter]

Chris: Where they’re like, all over each other, and it’s just like, “What’s wrong with me?” It’s like, why? What is the hang-up here? Why aren’t you guys together now?

I think that in many cases sometimes people really like the opposite of love at first sight. They like the slowly developing feelings. They’ll just be focusing on each other a lot and only very slowly coming into awareness of their attraction and their feelings for each other. But will still be focusing it a lot and still be creating that chemistry.

But in other cases, there may be something in the way of them getting together that provides a reason why they don’t get together. Like forbidden love or something like that. 

So Warrior Princess Assassin has characters that as soon as they get together they have obvious attraction. This is a throuple romance. Maybe it helps a little bit that the time is divided between three different romances. [Chuckles] Because a throuple romance is three romances. That makes it easier to stretch those out for a novel. 

But two of them are already in love, but their, like, relationship is forbidden because one of them is a princess. And then they meet their kind of like joint love interest, but there’s a lot of drama and political intrigue, and then a lack of trust between them.

In the case of one character, there’s some trauma where he isn’t comfortable often with people touching him. They spend the book just like, building trust with each other slowly and kind of overcoming those things. There are some external problems, but there’s also a lot of emotional problems.

Oren: I have another idea. You could make a huge deal about how this is a sex-negative society and you can’t just be having sex, and then have sex and nothing happens.

 Chris: [Chuckles]

Oren: ‘Cause we’re done with that. That’s over now.

Chris: In Midnight Girls, that one has two rival witches’ apprentices, that they have a long history of being rivals with each other. And this was actually confusing for me at first because I wasn’t sure if they knew who each other were. But no. So they both have their regular identity, and then they have like, their monster form. They’d only seen each other in monster form before. 

So near the opening, they meet each other in normal girl form and kind of become a little attached to each other without knowing who each other is. And of course, then at some point they can find out and fight each other a little bit, and then decide that they need to ally with each other.

Oren: Use my most powerful transformation: normal girl form. [Chortle]

Chris: That one’s kind of like an Enemies to Lovers too, where we have an external reason why they think they shouldn’t be together. Something that provides a barrier.

Oren: So if you’re plotting a slow burn romance over multiple books, we’ve established that you probably want something a little more substantial than a kiss at the end of book one. You don’t gotta leave people feeling a little high and dry, as it were.

Chris: I don’t think we should think of this just in terms of what sexual act they take, because we can have different heat levels. Kisses may or may not be particularly sexual. I think the thing about Midnight Girls that feels really taunting about it is at the end there’s a kiss, and then one of the girls just, like, runs off.

Oren: Flee!

Chris: And then later we kind of hear that one of the girls, they came back. But we don’t actually see them together. They part at the end, and then we hear one of them is nearby and that they’re about to kind of reengage in their rivalry, but we don’t see them as a cute couple.

Oren: I’ve read a couple books where there’s like a romance going on, and then one of them leaves, and I’m like, “Alright, bye.” And then they come back, and then the book ends.

Chris: Yeah. Having a resolution that is too perfunctory is a common issue with romances that is … makes fans real grumpy. Just have some scenes at the end with them just like being a cute couple together, please. [Laughs]

Oren: That happened in Uprooted, but it was weird, ’cause I didn’t like the romance. I was like, “Yay, he’s gone!” And then he came back.

Chris: [Laughter]

Oren: No. Go away. I don’t know if I would qualify Uprooted as Slow Burn. It’s not a super long book.

Chris: Really? That book felt like forever to me.

Oren: Yeah, that’s ’cause it’s boring. It’s not long, it’s just dull.

Chris: It’s not? It felt really long. Well I mean, we start with one plot and then we abandon it for the protagonist travels to a completely different city without the love interest. That part without the love interest would not be good for romance.

Oren: OK, I take it back. It’s 17 hours and 44 minutes in audio.

Chris: I knew it was long!

Oren: It is long! You’re right, it is long. It’s also boring. [Laughs] Or at least parts of it are, not all of it.

Chris: I started a book that was supposed to be a Slow Burn romance, but put it down because I didn’t like it. This just came out this year: Weaving Shaw. And the issue that I had is I really felt that there was a complete lack of chemistry to the romance. And maybe some people who are more into the love interest than I was felt differently. 

Even if it’s a Slow Burn and even if they’re not romantically interested in each other yet, or they don’t know they’re romantically interested in each other yet, I think the reader should still feel some attraction. Some of that positive charge, as I call it.

And in this case, it was just, I felt like that positive chemistry was completely lacking, where the love interest, yeah. He’s powerful, I guess and young. I don’t remember him being particularly attractive. Maybe. He’s probably supposed to be.

Oren: Just so hot. You don’t even know, Chris. And that’s literal. You don’t know.

Chris: But he’s just like the cold-hearted boss of the protagonist. And it’s definitely one of those things where he’s supposed to come off as more heartless than he ends up being later. I just felt like the chemistry wasn’t really there. And then, of course, I got fed up when he threatened to start destroying one of her family heirlooms when she didn’t do what he said as like, an employee.

Oh, this whole employment contract is based on like an actual literal contract that they made. And I’m like, what gives him the right to destroy her personal belongings if she doesn’t obey him at work?

Oren: I tell you what, after I finish law school I’ll go back and read it, and I’ll let you know. I do definitely feel like at this particular moment in time a lot of people are a little too riled up at the wealthier classes to tolerate that sort of behavior.

Chris: Right. That’s the problem. Is that Weaving Shaw—it definitely feels like there’s a big world issue where the rich are taking advantage of the workers, and then we have a love interest that is just like one of the rich taking advantage of workers. 

Oren: [Chuckles]

Chris: I think that part of my issue is that I think that most of the people reading these romances do not get angry at men who mistreat women as easily as I do.

Oren: Yeah, that does seem to be a feature.

Chris: Yeah. I understand that I’m supposed to find him a Danger Boy who’s like dark and sexy. But I’m just angry and I want to tear him apart. That’s not appealing. But even in a Slow Burn we want to have some kind of chemistry initially, even if it’s a little subdued, so that we can enjoy that. Even if they’re supposedly just friends, even if they’re enemies to start with. We wanna feel it.

Oren: Once I am set on building my Slow Burn across books—

Chris: Across ten books?

Oren: Yeah, ten books. But let’s just go with the second book for now. We’ll get to ten books later for sure. But let’s say that I have successfully developed the relationship enough that readers don’t feel like I just didn’t give them any romance in book one, but I also haven’t like completed it, right? It’s still got room to go. 

At the start of book two, it kind of feels like the romance should hit some kind of setback. Like, it shouldn’t just be like, “Alright, now we will continue from where we left off.” Is that wrong? How does that work, do you think?

Chris: Generally, yes, if you’re trying to prioritize a romance. You want something to separate them. The nature of that thing can vary quite a bit. 

If we’re thinking about “Is this a subplot?” one thing I tell writers who wanna know how much they have to structure their, like, character arc, how much they have to structure their relationship arcs. It’s if this is just a subplot and this is not what we’re leaning on, then—and you have an external plot that has lots of structure—you can just have them slowly become closer if you want because you’re maintaining interest with the tension arc.

But if you wanna make this romance, add some longing arcs and make this romance have more power to it. Generally they should be facing obstacles that will become problems during the course of the relationship. That could be drama like revealed secrets! Oh no.

Oren: [deadpan] Oh no, my secrets.

Chris: [emotionless] “I was undercover this entire time.” 

Or it could be some external thing like, “Sorry, my family has betrothed me to somebody else.” 

An external problem could be an emotional thing. “You did something and now I feel all of my bad exes are coming back to me, and I feel like you’re up to no good, and I can’t trust you anymore.” So yeah. There are a lot of different ways to do that. But usually at some point in time we wanna see after the relationship grows, then we wanna pull them apart again. So it’s always like two steps forward, one step back.

Oren: Let’s talk about what is undisputedly the best slow burn romance of all time. And that is Julian Bashir and Ezri Dax from Deep Space Nine.

Chris: Oh my God! Why would you bring those up? Why would you do that?

Oren: It’s so great though, ’cause you see he kind of was into her previous incarnation like six seasons ago.

Chris: Has anyone ever called that a slow burn romance?

Oren: Yeah, I just did right now! 

Chris: [Laughing] Oh, I see. Just to troll us and the listeners.

Oren: What are you, a gatekeeper? [Laughs]

Chris: Yeah. You know what? I will be for this one

Oren: Gonna keep this gate. Gotta keep out.

Chris: Man. I mean, at least you didn’t say Kes and Neelix. 

Oren: Well, ’cause they are just together from day one, as much as I wish they weren’t. Until she breaks up with him through the power of Space Napoleon. Best arc in Voyager ever. ‘Cause she breaks up with him while she’s possessed and then they never get back together. They’re just broken up after that. It’s brilliant. I love it so much.

Chris: Yeah. What was possessing her detected that she really wanted to break off this relationship and just hadn’t got up the guts to do it.

Oren: Thanks, Space Napoleon.

Chris: TV shows are a whole thing, because they often have logistical problems where they’re not left with enough time, and many people have noticed they have a tendency to be like, “Okay, we have this spare man person and this spare woman person, so relationship!” [Laughs]

Oren: “Spare man person” definitely describes a few people that I’ve interacted with online recently. That’s a good description. Hello, Spare Man Person.

Chris: Do you know anything about the behinds-the-scene on that one?

Oren: On Ezri, with Ezri and Bashir?

Chris: Yeah. For anybody who is not familiar with Deep Space Nine, basically there’s a character named Jadzia. Because her actress left, they killed off the character. But she’s a Trill, and they have a form of reincarnation where like, the symbiont alien can be implanted in a new person, and that person will have the memories. Then they bring back her next iteration, Ezri And then Ezri gets together with Bashir, who back in season one—maybe a little later—had a crush on Jadzia.

When they do it in the last season, suddenly they both turn to one of their friends to be like, “Oh, by the way, I’m super into this person.” And as viewers, we’re like, you are?!

Oren: Are you now? Huh.

Chris: When did we see this? When did this happen? There’s just sudden declaration of love and then that’s it. They’re together.

Oren: I don’t know this for sure. I know that there is a lot of speculation that this is an anti-shipping move, because of course people were shipping Bashir and O’Brien, and Bashir and Garak. But I don’t know that. I just know people speculate about that a lot.

Chris: Oh no. I hope not. Whereas Bashir and Garak, that would be a great Slow Burn.

Oren: We eventually got in Lower Decks—

Chris: Yeah, an alternate universe, but better than nothing.

Oren: I think it’s just as likely that they just wanted to pair people off, because they also suddenly have Odo and Kira together again. Which is not as random. Like Odo and Kira have had a little more going on over the course of the series. But Odo being super into Kira, that’s not been a thing for a little while. 

I think that they were just looking at characters and they were like, “Well, we need something for these characters to do,” and Bashir and Ezri are barely in the last few episodes. So, I guess they banging now and that’ll be their content. That would be my guess.

Chris: The key to a good Slow Burn is lots of development time. That’s what it’s about. It’s about lots of time for pining and dwelling on the relationship that can’t happen. Or showing people very slowly fall in love with each other, and feeling it’s not rushed, that it’s really thoroughly developed.

And so anything where there’s a huge lapse in content with the two people seeing each other or interacting with each other is not a Slow Burn, or at least not a good one. Now that we have—let me remind you—officially declared Bashir and Ezri: the best slow burn romance, I think we can go ahead and call this episode to a close.

Chris: Oh no … Well listeners, if you haven’t fallen in love with this podcast yet, we have almost 600 episodes for you to enjoy and slowly fall in love. But after the most recent one hundred, you’re gonna have to take that next step of going to our website to download them. And at that point, you might consider making the relationship official by supporting us on Patreon.

Damn, alright. That was a pretty satisfying arc you got there. Before we go, I want to thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, there’s Amon Jabber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s the professor of Political Theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week.