Welcome to our Eight-Week Summer School Series
Genre, Character, Voice, Setting, Tension, Containment, Theme, and Twists—direct to your inbox
Welcome to Present Tense Summer School, a new feature hatched by the nerdy minds who produce this newsletter!
Recently, I was pondering some craft issues and browsing some of our archived posts, stumbling across gems I’d forgotten. I was reminded how often our thoughts circle around core aspects of craft that deserve examining and revisiting.
And that got me thinking.
Wouldn’t it be cool if summer school came to your inbox, and you didn’t have to register, pay, or do anything else except prepare your mind to learn more about suspense and the craft of writing over eight, no-pressure weeks?
If you are an author, would-be author, or reader who wants to understand how genre novels are written, welcome!
(And if you don’t get excited thinking about “school” per se, think of this as summer re-runs, the kind I remember watching on a hot summer day with a fan blowing in the background.)
Here’s the syllabus, uniquely tailored to our fascinations as suspense/mystery/thriller (and horror too!) fans.
Genre
Character
Voice
Tension
Containment
Setting
Theme
Twists
Each week, I’ll introduce a topic and link it to an archived post—sometimes long, sometimes very short!—as well as some follow-up “extra credit” posts.
Topic-wise, you’ll know what’s coming—that’s the syllabus part! And at the end, you’ll have an easy way to review the series in full.
I’ll add some weekly prompts or questions to get you thinking or promote some interactive conversation. Lurk silently or comment—the choice is yours.
In return, I have some favors to ask.
We’d love it if you would re-stack these pieces and/or mention them in “Notes” so that we can continue to build our community here. If you value the time we put into these posts, please help us find more readers.
Furthermore, we’d love it if this series inspires you to submit a post to run in the fall! How’s that for an extra credit assignment you can give yourself!
Let’s get started!
Week 1: GENRE
The premise of our first week is that thinking about genre—questioning or resisting it, finding possibility in it, being surprised and delighted by it!—is, in itself, a creative practice.
Main post
One of my favorite short posts on this topic is by Youthjuice author E.K. Sathue, who didn’t think of herself as a horror writer until recently, when she started to learn from books and movies—and in doing so, found both inspiration and community.
Broadening my view of what I considered horror literature further gave me an endless toolbox to play with. It showed me that genres aren’t boxes; they are planets. Sitting down to look at my manuscript and thinking “this is a horror novel” gave me permission. It said: Go there. Make it grosser, bolder, more dramatic. In other words, don’t hold back.
By the way—Sathue may be talking about horror, but I think we can apply this thinking to any genre or subgenre. Dig into films and books from various literary traditions as a portal to permission and possibility!
Extra Credit
Time for more (and looking for debut novelist inspiration, in particular)?
Just as Sathue wasn’t always sure what she was writing or wanting to write, frequent contributor Kristin Offiler (whose debut novel, The Housewarming Party, releases Aug 1 and is already available as a Kindle early read, #1 in Women’s Psychological Fiction!) didn’t realize she was writing a thriller until she queried it.
Do you learn better by watching TV and film? Are you a White Lotus / Speak No Evil fan or just someone nitpicky about genre, like one of us?
Andromeda (that’s me) has some strong opinions about subgenre differences. I used the final episode of the TV show White Lotus, season two to analyze the moment the show veered from mystery into suspense—which made me love it even more! How do mystery and suspense differ, you ask? I’m so glad you asked. Read my post!
Likewise, I look at the movie Speak No Evil as an exemplar of suspense (rather than mystery) because the viewer is well aware, within the movie’s first scenes, who our antagonist is and why he’s trouble. The question of withholding versus sharing information in order to create more tension is an essential genre issue, in my opinion, and one worth puzzling over if you are writing something without knowing quite what it is or how to prioritize one aspect of reader engagement over another.
Your Turn
Do you think about genre or actively avoid thinking about it? Do you find genre exciting or freeing? If you have a question, gripe, or discovery, please share!
Do you see differences between suspense, mystery, and thriller subgenres?
Have you written something (or even submitted it for publication) without realizing what it is until an editor or reader told you?
Have you revised something from one genre into another, or made changes as a way to intentionally sharpen a genre aspect?
Do you have favorite novels or movies that play with genre conventions or hybridize/subvert genre in an interesting way?
Next week, we’ll talk about Character! Stay cool out there.
Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of seven novels, including The Deepest Lake, a Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick and Amazon Editor’s Choice, and the forthcoming What Boys Learn, available for pre-order and on NetGalley. Andromeda and Caitlin Wahrer co-created this newsletter in order to share their love of the craft and community aspects of suspense writing.
What a great idea! This genre question is currently bedeviling me because I seem unable to stay in one lane, within any one project. Gonna do my homework!