​The Gothic Story Matrix​

I have a new book out this month. The Standalones is my eighth book to be published by Linford Romance in their large print library edition. Some of you may have read it when I serialised it on Writing in the Shadows.

All my Linford Romance novels are available in libraries throughout the UK. If your local library doesn’t have a copy in stock you can ask them to order it, and then borrow it.

You can listen to my reading from an excerpt here:

Watch me read from The Standalones

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Not Bad for a Beginner — A Short Story

Your first tattoo is scary, right? The needles, the buzzing, the ink, the skin, the blood.

And it's a permanent disfigurement of your flesh. A wound. A scar.

More than that, this tattoo is now a part of your DNA.

What are people telling the world when they get a tattoo? That symbol, that illustration, those words?

What does it all mean?

Please, try to keep still, I'm almost done.

The Gothic Story Matrix

Thirty children aged between eleven and fourteen were sprawled on the floor of a school assembly hall, some on their fronts, some sitting cross-legged, and they were rolling dice and chatting excitedly. Ten minutes later they were sitting in their seats and writing in silence.

I love running creative writing workshops in schools.

On Thursday of last week I was at Small Heath Leadership Academy. I ran six workshops throughout the day, and yes that is as exhausting as it sounds. But I had great fun, and so did the children. In fact, some of them had so much fun they were asking their teacher if I was coming back again the next day!

This is what a typical workshop in a school looks like:

Usually I have between 45 minutes and an hour with the young people. Numbers can vary between twenty and thirty. I once ran a workshop with 100 students, but I recommend keeping to a maximum of thirty.

The first thing I do is introduce myself and my young adult books.

When I get to talking about The Devil and Edward Teach, I ask them if anyone knows who Edward Teach was, and what name he went by. The answer is Blackbeard, and the first to answer correctly gets a signed copy of my book.

Then it’s on to a free-writing exercise. They all have exactly one minute to write about a prompt I give them, and they have to write as many words as they can.

When the timer beeps they have to stop writing, even if they are in the middle of a sentence. Then they count up their words and we find out who wrote the most words in the group. Next, they have to write for another minute, and their aim is to beat their own word count.

The children find this good fun. I tell them that they are not in competition with each other, but of course they are! After we have found out who wrote the most words, I explain to them that this is a warm-up exercise. I tell that when they need to write something and they are stuck, (the terror of the blank page!) then they should set a timer and just write for five minutes or so. This is a way of freeing their brains up and getting them past the ‘But I don’t know what to write’ stage of paralysis.

If there is time I will ask if any of them are feeling brave enough to read out their work.

More on this in a moment.

Now we come to the main part of the workshop. On Thursday I used my Gothic Story Matrix.

There are four sheets: Characters, Places, Objects, Situations.

In each sheet there are 100 elements in a grid, and the rows and columns are numbered from 0 to 99. Each young person gets two dice, which they roll and use the numbers they get across the top and then down the side to find their character, place, object, and situation.

On Thursday we were situated in the assembly hall, and the young people were sitting in chairs with a tiny desk attached to each one. The Gothic Matrix sheets are A3 size, plus there needs to be room for the dice to be rolled, so I had them spread out on the floor across the hall with their sheets and dice.

It was chaos!

But it was fun, controlled chaos.

When they come to the writing they must use each of the elements in their story.

So, for example, a young writer might get:

• Character: A young witch whose tears turn to ink
• Place: A library where books rewrite themselves
• Object: A silvered glass that reveals hidden doorways
• Situation: A man begins sprouting feathers where he was once wounded.

Sometimes the four elements gel well together, but at other times they can be quite tricky. In the above example I think the first three go well together, but the final one is a little trickier.

Once they have all their elements I give them a brief talk on starting their story in the middle of the action and using the five senses to immerse the reader in their story.

Then the young people get ten minutes to write their story. This is where, after all the excitement of rolling dice and finding characters and places, objects and situations, the room falls silent as they write their stories.

I love it!

‘Why are you never this quiet for me?’ one teacher said to her class in another school I visited, as her students all sat writing silently away.

At the end of the ten minutes I tell them all, well done and thank them for their hard work. And then I ask for volunteers to read out their stories.

I make a big deal of this. I encourage them to come and stand at the front and introduce them to a round of applause from the group. I then tell them they have a responsibility to read clearly and loud enough that everyone can hear. I give them two tips here:

Speak slightly louder than you are comfortable speaking, and speak slightly slower than you are comfortable speaking. I tell them this will be perfect for everyone listening.

To the audience, I say you also have a responsibility: to show respect to the individual reading out their story, which means, no fidgeting, no talking, and to pay attention.

Once the young person has read their story I encourage another round of applause and I give them some positive feedback.

That’s a lot to fit into a forty-five-minute session, but it’s fast-paced and fun.

And did I mention how much I love it?

If you are interested in me visiting your school and running a creative writing workshop, you can find out more and book me here.

If you think you’d like to have your own set of Gothic Story Matrices, either for your school or just for yourself, then click below to register your interest.

​https://writing-in-the-shadows.kit.com/1904cc917a​

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Thanks for reading! I just wanted to let you know that paid members of Writing in the Shadows get a story every week. Coming soon they are going to be getting a Zine once a month too. Paid members also get free access to the archive, and to some of my ebooks.

If you've been thinking about a paid membership then now is the time to join, as prices are going up soon. But all current members are locked in forever at the price they originally paid.

Find out more here.

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Currently Reading

Reading this to get me in the mood for writing my own Victorian novel.

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Movies Watched This Week

Watching 365 movies in 2026

152​ Jafar Panahi’s first film is a simple tale of a girl trying to buy a goldfish.

153​ A lot of fun.

154​ Totally very different from The Stuff, but just as bananas.

155​ Cold and brutal.

156​ Pretty good.

157​ Nice little British chiller.

158​ Should have finished at the gunfight at the OK Corral.

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