my last rs answer For Ever .. thank u for allowing me this final Joyful Moment

honestly i think the trick to tension is to sloooooowww everything down , like get to Molecular levels of detail, describe the feeling like ure defining it for the first time ever , like ure explaining it to a reader who's never felt it before .

think of every meeting ur pairing has as still frames, then hone in on the ones that u feel are most intense, most interesting . for example if its their first time looking at each other, pick a second in the scene as the Spark , then describe it as if ur pov character was able to Pause time and really Feel that moment vividly . what wud they feel physically, whats their mouth doing, whats their expression looking like, where does the feeling live ( their tummy , their chest, does it travel, is it like a shock to their system, is it warm and comfortable, stuff like that ) . then zoom out as if uve hit Play again . continue the conversation or action as u normally would, but write down callbacks to that Paused moment when it feels right . if jsvng felt butterflies , where are they now ? add the aftershocks of that first eye contact in small sentences throughout the dialogue or scene so that it feels like its Lingering .

u also build tension outside of these scenes, and actually i think most of it only works if uve managed to create this sort of expectation for something to happen within the reader , maybe by adding more introspection to the fic , or by deciding on a Motif for the Vibes and sticking to it , calling back to it now and then, reminding the reader that it Is there, that something Will happen, they just dont know When . it cud be a recurring dream, a longing feeling, a wish the character has, a fantasy, anything that u cud latch onto that makes sense for the story while also stabilizing it, u know . like in memento mori, theres the tethered connection mnho created between him and jsvng . he beckons him at all times, and i remind the reader of that so they Know . it Means something . or in my slickfest, jsvngs secondary gender being slowly unraveled thru the means of a dream . stuf flike that

BUT U HAVE TO KNOW when to move things forward and when to slow them down . u cant have something thats too slow, otherwise itll end up seeming Boring . u need action as well, and sometimes u can even add tension BY rushing things, or having very short dialogue lines. i did this a lot in my slickfest because it had to be a shorter fic, so sometimes each spoken line is 3, 4 words long Max. and between those lines, i add a very short Jsvng Thought . this way u can up the momentum while also creating more of that tension .

so u mix these two .. and u add Actual Things that happen , faster action scenes , and u get .. tension. i hope this makes sense ? i hope it helps, i think the more u try it the better ull get at it for sure. love u to the moon and back