BL Writing Secret: How to Build Unhealthy Tension Naturally
Let me say something controversial—healthy relationships are boring to read. They’re beautiful in real life, yes. Safe. Warm. Reassuring.
But on the page? They don’t make your chest tighten. They don’t keep readers awake at 3 A.M., whispering, ‘Just one more chapter.’ Unhealthy tension does.
And no, I don’t mean cheap toxicity. I mean the kind of tension that breathes. The kind that feels inevitable. The kind that makes two characters orbit each other like they’re being dragged by gravity, which they refuse to name. The mistake most writers make is trying to make it toxic. Real unhealthy tension isn’t forced. It grows.
Let me show you how.
Never Have Them Desire One Another, But Need One Another.
Desire is loud. Need is silent, desperate and dangerous. When your characters show their openness towards each other, the tension between them is split too quickly. However, when they require one another emotionally, socially, and morally, that is when things rot wonderfully.
Perhaps one of them is the only understanding person.
Perhaps one is strong, the other feigns to want not.
Perhaps to separate would be like losing breath.
There is unhealthy tension in reliance on the disguise of coincidence.
Power Imbalance Is Your Best Friend (Use It Carefully).
BL thrives on imbalance. Age. Status. Experience. Emotional control. There is just one thing, however, about this-- the imbalance need not be apparent.
In some cases, the more silent character can be the more emotionally superior. The most desperate is sometimes the dominant one. The one who does not care sometimes losing. The conflict is further intensified by the fact that each of them thinks that it is they who are in control – yet both are mistaken.
Saying nothing is the biggest talk of all. In case your characters are speaking too long, you are killing the tension.
The unhealthiness of the dynamics is constructed around the unsaying:
The apology that never comes
The question left hanging
The touch that lingers a second too long.
Let them speak in pauses. In looks. In the instances where the reader shouts for them to say something and they do not, that’s when the reader’s obsession starts. Where there is silence, obsession begins to ferment.
Give Them Moral Excuses
No one believes that he is a villain in his love affair. Don’t play with your characters and make them cruel in vain. Give them logic. Provide them with reasons that are almost reasonable.
“I’m protecting him.”
“This is temporary.”
“He started it.”
“I can stop anytime.”
Unhealthy tension is even intoxicating when the reader realises the cause of why they hurt one another and despises the way it sounds so good.
Delay Intimacy, But Increase Emotional Intrusion.
It is significant: you do not have to kiss to create tension. First, invite them to attack one another emotionally. Be acquainted with things about the other which should be known by no other. Allow boundaries to become blurred before bodies ever become blurred.
The intimacy that occurs without touching is the most dangerous one. This must be the mistake that they have been making agonies before they finally kiss.
Bring Them to Know—But Not Truthful
The most effective unhealthy tension is where both the characters are aware that something is bad... and do it anyway. Hypocrisy is fatal to awareness. They see the red flags. They feel the imbalance. They are aware of the obsession.
And they choose it.
It is that decision, that silent, deliberate act of entering what they are not supposed to desire, that is where BL tension begins to cease being an imaginary element and begins to smack of reality.
Let Love Feel Like a Threat
The reality most authors fear to tell is that unhealthy love is romantic to the individual within the relationship. It feels destabilising. Disorienting. Addictive.
Have you cost them dearly to make love?
Pride
Control
Sleep
Other relationships
Their sense of self
When being in love with another person seems to be a matter of losing balance, the tension writes itself.
And Then The Final Confession
Unhealthy tension does not have anything to do with glorifying damage. It’s about honesty. Of letting it be said that love is never tender. That attraction can be cruel. That occasionally, the magnetic relationships are the ones that ought not to occur.
When your BL causes the reader to feel uncomfortable, at least in a manner that he cannot take his eyes off it, you are doing it appropriately. Screaming is not the best way to be tense. It’s whispered. And it will linger on long after the chapter ends.
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