The Nuts and Bolts of Crime Fiction with Andrea Carter
Info
Date: October 6, 2026
Time: 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm
Duration: 8 weeks
Level: Advanced | Intermediate | Beginner |
Cost: €250 (€225 Members)
This course will take place in person for 8 weeks from Tuesday 6 October excluding the 27th October. The course will finish on Tuesday 1 December. (8 sessions total)
Course Summary
Have you ever wanted to write a crime novel? Or are you already working on one? Learn the nuts and bolts of crime fiction with the bestselling author of the Inishowen Mysteries series, Andrea Carter. Over the course of eight workshops, we will explore the elements which make up a good crime novel: voice, setting, characterisation, and dialogue, while also looking structure and suspense, and how to edit your own work. Finally, we will discuss what to do with your manuscript once you have finished it, how to go about submitting to agents and publishers.
Course Outline
Weekly sessions will be divided (approximately) as follows:
- Getting started, idea and triggers, finding your voice.
- Setting and description.
- Creating characters. Villains and heroes, writing a series character.
- Dialogue, pace, and suspense.
- Mechanics and structure: plotters and pantsers, clues and red herrings.
- Research and specialist knowledge. Sex and violence.
- Denouements and endings. Revision and editing.
- The writing habit, the road to publication and beyond.
Sessions will be a mix of teaching, exercises, and group discussion. Participants will be expected to produce work on an ongoing basis but will not be required to share every week.
Course Outcomes
Participants should emerge at the end of this course having made significant progress on a crime novel and having acquired some useful tools to apply to their work.
Andrea Carter is the author of seven crime novels. She graduated in law from Trinity College, Dublin. Having practised law for twenty years, both as a solicitor and barrister, she now writes full time. She holds a first-class MFA from UCD. Her short story The Lamb was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in 2019. The Inishowen Mysteries series is in development for television, and her first standalone thriller There Came a-Tapping was published in March 2025 to critical acclaim.
Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email bookings@irishwriterscentre.ie.
