Chill the bones of your readers this Autumn with Andy Murray’s short story craft course.Learn how to build suspense, how to deftly handle ambiguities, how and when to scare your reader, and how to play around with story form and structure to achieve tension.We’ll journey from that most terrifying of concepts; a blank page, and arrive at a complete and polished story, which we’ll publish in a Comma Press ebook. Along the way, Andy will offer expert editorial advice and ply you with gallons of imaginative prompts whenever you might get stuck.

We will look at classic and contemporary Horror texts to identify HOW we terrify our readers. The workshops will consist of fun and simple writing exercises, in-class discussions, readings of some awesome stories as homework, and the chance to share bits of our writing as it develops.

The first session is on Tuesday September 30, continuing on October 14 and 20; November 11 and 25 and December 9 2025

£180 per ticket (+Booking Fees – or feel free to email George below to avoid booking fees). This covers 6x sessions including detailed feedback and publication in a Comma Press e-book anthology.

£150 bursary tickets are available on a first come first served for writers of protected characteristics – simply email to apply.

Andy Murray is a writer and journalist based in Manchester. He edited Comma’s first modern horror story anthology, Phobic, and has been leading online story courses for Comma since 2020. He’s written biographies of British television scriptwriters Nigel Kneale and (with Dr Mark Aldridge) Russell T Davies and was formerly the programmer of the Darkness Over Britain strand celebrating British film and TV horror at Manchester’s Cornerhouse arts centre. He now contributes to the webzine Northern Soul, provides editorial content for the Royal Exchange Theatre’s production programmes and teaches Film Journalism at the University of Salford.