Writers who finish
manuscripts, not drafts
Science fiction demands more than imagination — it requires structure, discipline, and a working understanding of how speculative ideas hold together on the page. This is where that work happens.
See the full programme
Each module covers one distinct craft area — from speculative premise to final scene revision.
Small-group sessions where your actual pages are read, not summarised.
Structured review points that keep your project moving rather than stalling between modules.
Writers from across the globe bring genuinely different perspectives to every cohort discussion.
There are people here who have been stuck in the same place
Every writer hits a point where the premise feels hollow, the pacing collapses, or the speculative logic stops making sense. That moment is not a sign the project is broken — it is usually a sign that something earlier needs revisiting. The support structure here is built around exactly that kind of problem.
Instructors are working writers, not theorists. They know what it feels like to have a chapter that refuses to resolve, and they give feedback that is specific enough to act on — not just encouragement to keep going.
Async feedback within 48 hours
Submit pages at any point in the week. Written notes come back with specific line-level observations, not general impressions.
Peer workshop groups
Small cohorts of 8–10 writers at a similar stage. The conversations there tend to be more useful than any single piece of instructor feedback.
Office hours — optional, not scheduled
Drop-in sessions twice a week. No agenda required. Bring a problem or just listen to what others are working through.
What moving through this actually feels like
The programme does not unfold like a textbook. It moves the way a writing project does — with momentum in some weeks, friction in others, and a gradual sense that something is accumulating.
Orientation and premise
The first two weeks are slower by design. You establish the speculative core of your project and examine whether the central idea has enough tension to sustain a longer work. Most writers revise their premise at least once here — that is expected, not a setback.
Building and breaking
The middle section of the programme is where most of the actual writing happens. Modules cover world logic, character motivation, and narrative structure — but the emphasis is on producing pages, not studying craft in the abstract. Expect to write something you are not happy with and revise it.
Revision and completion
The final phase shifts from generation to judgement. You learn to read your own work with some distance, make structural decisions, and bring a draft to a state that is ready to share — not perfect, but coherent and intentional.
What stays useful when the coursework is done
The skills that matter most in science fiction writing are not genre-specific. Understanding how to build a coherent speculative system, how to pace information for a reader who does not share your assumptions, how to revise without losing what made the draft interesting — these transfer to any long-form writing project.
Graduates retain access to the resource library and the peer network. Neither is a substitute for continued writing, but both are useful when you start a second project and hit the same kinds of problems in different forms.
Declan Murtagh
Lead Instructor
"Most writers know what they want to say. The work is learning how to say it in a way that holds together."
Sorcha Veldtman
Programme Facilitator
"The writers who finish are not the most talented — they are the ones who kept working when the draft stopped making sense."
How this programme is built, and why it matters
Most writing courses teach craft as a set of rules to apply. This one treats it as a set of problems to solve — which is closer to what writing actually involves.
Project-centred, not lesson-centred
Every module connects directly to your manuscript. There are no exercises disconnected from your actual project — the feedback you receive is always about the work you are producing, not a hypothetical scenario.
Instructors who write in the genre
The people giving feedback have worked through the same problems in their own manuscripts. That specificity shows up in the quality of notes — they know which problems are fixable and which require rethinking a premise.
Designed for writers who work full-time
The programme runs asynchronously with optional live sessions. There is no attendance requirement. The workload assumes roughly eight hours per week — enough to make real progress without requiring you to reorganise your life.
Completion is the goal, not comprehension
Understanding craft concepts is not the same as having a finished draft. The programme is structured to keep your project moving — checkpoints, deadlines, and peer accountability are built in because knowing something and doing it are different problems.