So in my novel I tried really hard to keep the confession from seeming cliche, but the truth is, expressing feelings is often going to come across awkward if your characters are awkward, and since I wanted the whole story to read with the MCs emotions parts of the story, are a little awkward (and more coming, so prepare to scrunch your toes.) The confession scene itself though, is less awkward than others, just because it's not really romantic. Surprisingly enough, when the big moment came for my leads where they finally stopped putting off the conversation they'd been skirting for fifteen years, it was under circumstances that were more emotional and sad than they were "sappy" (as Kattar would call them.) Also, considering the male lead's view on romance, the awkwardness of telling the truth is still a struggle that's going to be shown more in coming chapters. He's been raised to believe that emotions are kind of a waste of time, that romance is alright for television, but in reality, tends to be stupid unless looked at through a lens of logic, so yeah. He's still struggling with it all, and that's caused a lot of trouble between he and Alicia, as expressed in the first part of "Chess with Cinnabar Pawns.":
“Ahhhg, and there goes the sappy part.”
“Is it sappy to say I love you?”
Etan used to say it.
He didn’t mean it but he still said it.
Kattar would suffer to say it to his mother because he knew it would break her heart if he didn’t. But for me, there was no such obligation. It went without saying - or it went unsaid. Either or.
And two can play at that game.
A stalemate.
*
I personally don't think confessions scenes have to come off as "Corny" if you do them well. The main struggle is avoiding over-used lines that make everything seem stupid because we hear them so often.
