Join author Lyndsey Croal for a workshop on writing within restricted and isolated settings, with top tips and tricks for building tension and suspense. We will look at published excerpts, including settings like spaceships, deep sea, or cave structures, or settings where the character may feel trapped for another reason, and explore how the writers have built this atmosphere. We will then look at lessons learned to build your own stories. During the workshop, attendees will be guided through exercises and prompts for introducing misdirection, creating unsettling scenes, building twists, and writing unreliable narrators, while keeping your readers hooked. This will primarily be focussed on horror, gothic, and sci fi texts, but should be helpful to anyone looking to build unease and atmosphere in their work.
Your Workshop Leader
Lyndsey Croal is a Scottish author of strange and speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in over eighty magazines and anthologies, including with Apex, Analog, Weird Tales, Shoreline of Infinity, and PseudoPod. She’s a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee, British Fantasy Award Finalist, and former Hawthornden Fellow. Her novelette Have You Decided on Your Question (2023) and collection of dark science fiction tales Limelight and Other Stories (2024) are published with Shortwave Publishing. Her novelette The Girl With Barnacles for Eyes appeared in Tenebrous Press’ Split Scream Volume Five (2024), and her second collection of Scottish folklore-inspired tales Dark Crescent is published in June 2025 with Luna Press. She lives in Edinburgh with her giant cat Pippin and has a background in climate and environment policy and comms. She’s currently working on a number of longer projects in the sci fi, eco-fiction, and horror space, and is represented by Michael Mungiello at InkWell Management and Sean Berard at Untitled Entertainment (for Film/TV). Find out more via: www.lyndseycroal.co.uk
About the event:
Running time: 105 minutes including breaks
Venue: Braid Room
Tickets: £19.50 / £16 (plus 50p booking fee)
The event will be take place in-person. Workshops are not recorded.
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