Saturday 4 July 2026 On Monday morning next term, there’ll be an empty chair beside mine. Not literally empty forever. Just empty enough that, for a split second, I’ll turn to say something before remembering she’s not there. It’ll probably happen dozens of times. I’ll hear a child say something hilarious and instinctively look to find her. I’ll solve a problem and want to bounce an idea off someone.

Friday 17 April 2026 I haven’t really mentioned overtly on my blog that I’m in education. I like to keep the ‘Danielle work persona’ and the ‘Danielle writer persona’ separate. My day job has no bearing on my writing, and frankly, with some of the stuff that I write, I really don’t want that link up of ‘teacher writes this sort of stuff’.

Wednesday 31 December 2025 It was, wasn’t it? A year that either made or broke people. For many, an utter annus horribilis. With that in mind, it seems like a rubbish thing to write my 1000th post about, doesn’t it? Except I’m not going to write about the sh!tty year. I’m going somewhere else. One of the things I’ve done for myself late 2025 is subscribe to Jay Shetty’s…

More than twisted fiction . . .

When writing the climax your story, you’ll need to decide if the ending will be happy or unhappy.In a happy ending, the main character solves the story’s problems by restoring the status quo that t…

Saturday 4 – Monday 6 October 2025 It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these types of posts. The idea for this one has been playing on my mind for a little while, and in the midst of another writing course, I’ve sidestepped to write this post instead of the predicament scene I’m supposed to be writing. Procrastination 101: write a completely different post than what you should be engaged in.

Sometimes when selecting which word to use, our aim is off. Usually, this can be resolved simply by thinking a little bit more about exactly what is meant and then changing that word.When our …

**The final session of Character Development for The Writers' Studio saw us taking our main characters to the absolute brink of sanity, I guess, in Jo's case. We took our main character and had them come face to face with what is their ultimate worst nightmare. I knew from the outset exactly what I wanted to do with Jo. It was something that had to be done.

**To round out session 3 of The Writers' Studio Character Development course, I've returned to Jenna Andrews and her past. This is well before her encounters with Hugo Pearce that you may have already read. It's where Jenna came from, what has made her who she is.** St. Matthew’s Church was the last place anyone would think of looking for deeply agnostic Jenna, and yet, it was a place of sanctuary she held in great reverence.

**Ritchie Pope isn't a character I expected would enter Jo Moloney's world, but here he is. There is a reason I chose to write about a psychic medium but that's a tale for another time. Jo is a practical, logical woman who finds the very thought of psychic mediums an affront to logic and common sense. Yet, here is she, talking with one.

**Part 2 of session 2 was a second ghost piece. I stayed with Jo because there's so much to her story that I've yet to unravel. The Character Development course from The Writers' Studio pushed me to flesh Jo out more than I thought I ever would. In the twenty something years since she had reclaimed the clearing as her own, the trees had more than established themselves.

**Session 2 of The Writers' Studio Character Development course takes us into exploring our character's ghost. What in their past still haunts them? This time, I've brought back Jo Moloney, former police detective, now private investigator. This piece is set when Jo was in her 20s. It shows how an experience as a child has shaped her life now.** Jo Moloney’s reluctant strides decreased in length with every step she took.

**Still in session 1 of the course, here comes Prison 2. I chose to stick with the same character for this session. I have a definite view of Jenna in my head, and maybe she might feature later on when I complete my next course with The Writers' Studio...First Draft.** She stared at the scribbled note that summoned her: My office.

**Once again, I've completed a 6 week course with The Writers' Studio. This time, I jumped on board the Character Development course, and I loved the hell out of it. This is the first piece I wrote for the course, and I take you back to Jenna Andrews who appeared in a couple of the other courses.** True to form, Jenna ignored Teddy Burrows’s order to stay the hell away from Nicky Cain.

Wednesday 2 - Thursday 3 April 2025 **We've made it to the final piece: the 1500 word story. I'm posting the edited version because my original comes in close to 2000 words, and the requirements were 1500. I've created 2 entirely new characters for this story, Darcy Arden and her husband, Keiran. I have set it in the UK, overlooking the Calder Valley to be precise.

Wednesday 23 – Thursday 24 March 2025 **Exercise 3 of the 2nd session of The Writers' Studio Writers' Gym course had our main characters face, head on, an opposing force. For Jo Moloney, that force is missing girl Alice McClennan's mother, Bernice. This confrontation takes place after we find out exactly what has happened to Alice. By all accounts from my fellow writers and the feedback I received from my tutor, this is a harrowing piece.**

Thursday 20 March 2025 **The Writers' Gym course through The Writers' Studio pushes writers to delve into the depths of the characters they create. In this post, we had to use inner or internal dialogue to express the primary desire of the main character. I brought Jo Moloney back for this. I had a clear image of where Jo would go when she needed time away from people, to think, to be safe, and that location was not one that was actually a safe location for her as a child.

Friday 14 March 2025 **For the 2nd dialogue session in the Writers' Studio course, Writers' Gym, I struggled to write about Jo and Gerry. I just couldn't get into the right space to write a scene for them. So, I revisited Jenna Andrews and Hugo Pearce from the Genre course. It was comforting to be back in their world. I'm now spending time trying to figure out how Jenna and Jo could meet in a story.

Sunday 9 - Friday 14 March 2025 **In the session 2 of the Writers' Studio course Writers' Gym, we had to experiment with dialogue. This piece pits Detective Sergeant Jo Moloney against her partner, Detective Sergeant Gerry Burton. It takes place before last week's post, while Jo and Gerry were desperately looking for little Alice McClennan. It is written entirely in dialogue without dialogue tags.

Sunday 2 - Monday 3 March 2025 **I've been back at it with another writing course from The Writer's Studio. This time, I dove headlong into the Writers' Gym, a 6 week course that focused on creating character development, internal and external dialogue, desire and opposition, and finally, writing and editing a short story. Over the next few weeks, you'll be able to read those creations.

Sometimes, characters who don’t speak English as their first language will appear in your story. A challenge you’ll likely face is how to portray them. While novice writers may be conscious of not …

As developing a story, your main character must face conflicts as attempting to resolve the central problem that set the story in motion. These conflicts, however, must always relate to that centra…

More than twisted fiction . . .

**The final of the genre short stories that we had to write for The Writers’ Studio course was the fantasy/magical realism. I enjoyed creating these characters and I think that at some point …

**In the next installment of genre writing for The Writers’ Studio, we have my comedy story. Great feedback again from my tutor. Writing comedy is a challenge, especially when you don’t…

More than twisted fiction . . .

**This is my thriller/action story for The Writer’s Studio Genre course. I’m pleased to say that my tutor’s feedback was very helpful in how to improve the piece, and she did say …

**This is the first of the new stories I completed for The Writers’ Studio Short Story: Genre course. It is a love story. I know, right?! Where the hell did that come from? I’ve written…

Tuesday 31 December 2024 **For transparency purposes, I received no remuneration for this review. However, I did receive a paperback copy of the book from AE Creative Communications.** Tony Carden&…

**This is the final piece I wrote for Unlocking Creativity online with the Writers’ Studio. It is the culmination of lots of work on the Jenna Andrews story. You’ll finally find out wha…

Tuesday 31 December 2024 **For transparency purposes, I received no remuneration for this review. However, I did receive a paperback copy of the book from AE Creative Communications.** Tony Carden&…

**This is the final piece I wrote for Unlocking Creativity online with the Writers’ Studio. It is the culmination of lots of work on the Jenna Andrews story. You’ll finally find out wha…

**We’re heading into the final pieces we had to write for the Writers’ Studio Unlocking Creativity online course. These 3 pieces that I’m posting today were written as individuals…

“All a poet can do is warn.” – Wilfred Owen“I often think of a poem as a door that opens into a room where I want to go.” – Minnie Bruce Pratt “And as imagination bodies …

**As mentioned last week, this week’s piece is like a resolution, a part 2 of ‘Pressure’. Once we’d applied the pressure to the character, we had to up it to a challenge pie…

**Here’s where things started to get really interesting with Unlocking Creativity online from The Writers’ Studio. We had to start applying pressure on the characters we were creating. …

**Here’s where things started to get really interesting with Unlocking Creativity online from The Writers’ Studio. We had to start applying pressure on the characters we were creating. …

**This was an extraordinarily fun piece to put together. Initially written as 5 different segments that linked in together, the final piece had a specific word limit, so parts of it had to be edite…

**This was an extraordinarily fun piece to put together. Initially written as 5 different segments that linked in together, the final piece had a specific word limit, so parts of it had to be edite…

**The Writers’ Studio Unlocking Creativity online course asked us, if we wanted, to choose our favourite song and use it as inspiration for a piece of writing. It was always going to be an Ad…

**This was a piece that we could write and post if we wanted. I thought I’d turn things on their head with ‘Love Hurts’. This is the sentence that I link the Writers’ Studio…

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