by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
Every novel makes promises. It sets questions loose in its opening pages, and readers chase them the way a hunting dog chases a rabbit through the brush: eagerly, for as long as the trail stays warm.
Amber Wheeler Bacon learned this the hard way. After a character-driven novel of hers didn't sell, she went back to her first loves, Murder, She Wrote and her mother's VHS tapes of Perry Mason, and spent years studying mystery, suspense, and thrillers from the inside before finishing a literary mystery of her own.
Now she's sharing that hard-won knowledge in Rabbit Hunting: Tracking Suspense in Your Novel, a one-night Zoom seminar at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
Amber's fiction has appeared in Crazyhorse, Ecotone, and Prairie Schooner, and online at Ploughshares and CRAFT. She is a winner of a 2023 Prairie Schooner Award and a Breakout Writers Prize from the Authors Guild, and her story collection We Were Vessels is forthcoming from YesYes Books.
Working closely with Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Hitchcock's 1940 film, students will list the narrative promises their first twenty pages make, learn to tell genuine mystery from reader confusion, and build a timeline mapping every reveal in their own book. Below, Amber explains why the end of a sentence matters more than its beginning, why "show, don't tell" is only half true, and why she'd rather you learn by doing.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Amber:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Amber. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Amber Wheeler Bacon: I'm a writer and teacher living by the beach in South Carolina. I've got a forthcoming story collection. After writing a very character driven novel that didn't sell a few years ago, I decided to try to write a literary mystery. The first shows I loved were Murder She Wrote and my mom's VHS tapes of old Perry Mason reruns. I love a good mystery, so studied the form of mystery, suspense and thrillers over the last few years. Now that I'm finished with my manuscript, I wanted to teach a class on some of what I've learned about suspense.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: That a novel is not a social worker's history but a series of connected scenes that relate back to questions introduced to the reader... Those questions are the reason we keep reading.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: They'll be able to articulate the narrative stakes in their stories and see which scenes can be revised to be more cohesively married to the big questions of their novel.
"A novel is... a series of connected scenes that relate back to questions introduced to the reader... Those questions are the reason we keep reading."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Amber Wheeler Bacon: "This house will make you do things," Dayna thinks. (from If You're Seeing This It's Meant for You by Leigh Stein)
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: I was in a story structure workshop with an incredible writer and teacher, Stuart Nadler, and at the end, he really encouraged everyone to lean into our own unique strangeness, which gave me the courage I needed to write the novel I wanted to write.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, but a small, specific technique.
Amber Wheeler Bacon: The last half of the sentence often sticks with readers more than the first half and leads them to the next sentence, so putting the most important information in that last chunk can be really helpful in sentence flow and momentum.
Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: Rebecca! It's why I use it for this class : )
Watch du Maurier's suspense machinery work in real time with Amber's illustrated timeline of Rebecca, then build the same map for your own novel.
Enroll in Rabbit Hunting →Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: Show, don't tell. This is an oversimplification. A good scene is a combination of both.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Amber Wheeler Bacon: A good story almost always takes longer than you think it will.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: My dad gave me Flannery O'Connor's complete stories when I was twenty-five, and I saw myself as a writer in them.
"The last half of the sentence often sticks with readers more than the first half and leads them to the next sentence."
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence rather than a paragraph?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: Don't really believe in lectures. People learn by doing.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Amber Wheeler Bacon: When I was a kid, I sold boiled peanuts at Braves games with my dad.
Anyone who has worked the stands at a ballpark knows the real job is holding a crowd's attention for nine innings. Amber brings that instinct to the page. In three hands-on hours with Rebecca as your guide, you'll learn to set your novel's rabbits running, track them scene by scene, and catch each one at exactly the right moment. Bring your manuscript and your curiosity to Rabbit Hunting: Tracking Suspense in Your Novel on Thursday, December 10th, and leave with a map of the questions that will keep readers racing to the last page.
One evening, one classic novel, and a clear map of the questions driving your book. Join Amber live on Zoom, Thursday, December 10th, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM ET.
Save Your Seat in Rabbit Hunting →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
