Attraction Should Create A Problem

If wanting him only makes the chapter warmer, the attraction is not doing its job.

Attraction is useful when it interferes. He should want this person and also want something that wanting them makes harder: the friendship he is afraid to lose, the case he is supposed to solve, the exit he has already promised himself, the version of his life that does not include being seen. Desire is the pressure. The problem is the cost of acting on it.

Do not add a rival, a parent, or a storm just to keep them apart. An outside delay is not the same thing as a problem created by the wanting. If the obstacle vanished and the story got easier without changing either character, the attraction was decoration.

Write the want and the damage in the same sentence. He wants to kiss him, and doing it would make tomorrow’s scene worse. That second half is the plot.

Try this. Take a scene where two characters are drawn to each other. Finish this line before you revise: “Wanting him makes it harder to ___.” If you cannot fill the blank with something the character already cares about, the attraction is not carrying the scene yet.