The slow burn
can take the night off.

I have a small complaint about fictional adults who spend three hundred pages almost touching. At some point, somebody needs to put the wine down and make a decision.

A well-written slow burn can be exquisite. A glance across a room can earn its own bookmark. I simply refuse to believe that making two people wait is the only way to make what happens between them matter.

Sometimes she notices his mouth before she knows his surname. Sometimes he says something perfectly ordinary and she spends the next ten minutes hearing it in an entirely different context. These people might have jobs, responsibilities and reasonably good judgement. They can still be spectacularly inconvenient for each other.

That is an excellent place to start a novel.

Instant attraction has an image problem. Say the chemistry arrives early and someone will ask whether the relationship has enough depth. Yet wanting to kiss someone and trusting them with your life are separate developments. A story can move quickly towards the first while taking its time with the second.

I am very happy for my characters to discover they have chemistry before discovering whether they can have a difficult conversation. In fact, the gap between those discoveries can be where things become interesting.

A kiss can answer one question and create six more. Does this mean the same thing to both of them? Will he still be brave when the conversation gets awkward? Is she choosing him freely, or choosing a temporary escape from everything waiting outside the door? And how exactly are they planning to behave when they next see each other in public?

Excellent. Now we have something to work with.

For my money, an early yes can make a romance more demanding. Once the characters know the attraction is mutual, the writer has to find out what else stands between them. Another conveniently interrupted kiss will only buy so much time.

There might be pride. There might be expectations neither person has admitted to carrying. Perhaps one of them is wonderfully confident while flirting and almost useless when asked a sincere question. Attraction can put two people in the same room. Staying there, emotionally speaking, asks rather more of them.

I find that tension delicious. The moment after someone gets what they wanted can be far more revealing than the wanting. A person who seemed effortless from across the room may become much harder to read up close.

None of this requires the heroine to misplace her judgement along with her composure. She can be intensely attracted and still ask a question. She can initiate something, set a limit, reconsider. A clear yes has plenty of heat when the person hearing it knows how to pay attention.

And if she wants him early, I would rather the story let her own that. Desire does not need to complete a probation period before it becomes respectable.

That is part of the appeal of writing Evie Hartley and Tristan Davidson in Ideally Positioned. She sells luxury Sydney property. He works in council garbage services. The attraction arrives well before either of their lives has helpfully cleared a space for it.

For me, that gives the romance its momentum. Evie can recognise a desirable proposition. Knowing what to do about this particular one is considerably more complicated.

I want room on the romance shelf for people who are immediately, inconveniently drawn to each other, with all the emotional work still ahead. Let the first spark arrive whenever it likes. Give the choices that follow enough weight to keep me reading.

Personally, I am quite happy for someone to make a move before I need to renew the library loan.