Let's Write: The Art of the Redraft

This is part 3 of our Let’s Write series with tutor Chris Wright, created to help you take your writing from the early draft stages to finished manuscript, ready for submission.

Already got a full manuscript but not quite sure how to turn it into the novel you meant to write? This 4-week course focuses on taking a messy first draft and shaping it into a tight, confident second draft.

We’ll cover structural edits, character development, pacing, theme, continuity, line-level polish, and how to diagnose the hidden problems that hold a story back.

Each week includes practical exercises, examples from published fiction, and opportunities to apply techniques directly to your own work.

By the end of the course, you’ll leave not just with a stronger manuscript, but with a repeatable editing system you can use for every future novel. 

About the tutor

Chris Wright is a short fiction writer from Bangor, Northern Ireland. He has been longlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year, runner-up in The Mairtín Crawford Award, and his work has been featured in dozens of print anthologies and publications.

Chris recently had the honour of having his non-fiction work on the pandemic preserved in the Irish Reading Archive at UCD Library in Dublin for the next 100 years. Chris has previously been a judge for the Mairtín Crawford Award for Short Story and has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast.