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Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

20 October 2026

Posted by Harley Truslove

Scares & Therapists

Alas, we are off next week on our half-term break, so today is the closest to Halloween we are going to get! Ali set our writers a challenge to write a scary story rather than her usual fill-in fun. We got such spooks as:


  • The feeling of ‘viscous’ spirits going through the main character’s nose and into their brain

  • Singed flesh of someone’s muscles as a hot doorknob burned them

  • All of the writers being stuck in our meeting room (Ali was the culprit, sourcing material for her new book)

  • Ali who had been murdered but found herself reanimated with blinking, swollen eyelids and a broken neck


But our writer of the week was Issy for her story about a creature named ‘the Spider’ which lurked beneath the MAST’s tables!


We also talked about our ‘therapy session’ audioplay, using backstories from the characters we made last week. Our group made themselves a little writers’ table and discussed the shape of the play, the characters involved, and the story beats. It seems we have a direction to head in, so! With the plan being to debut the play at the March showcase, watch this space.


Or, well, listen to this space…!


We’ll be back after half term!


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