Has your teacher ever asked you to create a piece of writing, creating something that you are not comfortable with?

A ghost story, for example?

The one thing I loved in my career, which has now come to an end due to disability was the teaching of the Charles Dickens classic novella, A Christmas Carol.

A ghost story for Christmas? Surely not?

But back in the 1860s, the reading public went for it. A novella is a shorter novel, usually around 20,000 words. Novels are anything up to 90,000 words. Some even higher.

So how do you go about this in the modern age?

Now I am not saying cheat, but our modern mobile phones can do so much to help us along. One of the things they can do is help us to structure things like poems, stories, or indeed, any form of literary analysis and one of them that has come to my attention recently is totally free to download and use and is called “Dola.”

You can go onto your android phone (not sure if it will do iPhones) and download this thing and when you take the teacher’s task home, you can plan and prepare it. It will even write the thing for you but please, do not claim that as your own. Be warned, after teaching of a child through Years, 8 and 9 and then into 10, there were times when one of them tried this on with me and it clearly was not her style of writing. So I had to Google words and phrases and found the essay websites set up to take your cash and give you a mediocre essay or two to copy and paste.

The danger of that is something that will bring on an F mark for FAIL, or a ZERO if numbered, with a request from the teacher to do it again, this time in your own words.

But this new app called Dola is something else.

Here is an example. Tonight, I asked it to “write a ghost story for Christmas” and this is what it gave me inside ten seconds.

“The Wooden Soldier of Frostwick Cottage

The snow fell soft as powdered sugar on Frostwick Village that Christmas Eve, blanketing the cobblestones and turning every window into a warm, golden eye. But at the edge of the village, where the road petered out into pine woods, stood a cottage that had no light at all. It was Elara’s grandmother’s house—empty for three years, until she’d decided to spend Christmas there alone, trying to fill the silence with memories.

She’d lit a fire in the hearth and strung tinsel on the bare fir in the corner, but the cottage still felt cold. Colder than it should have, even with the snow piling up outside. As she sipped hot cocoa, she noticed something in the shadow of the fireplace: a small, chipped wooden soldier, half-hidden under a pile of old newspapers. She’d never seen it before.

“Must be Gran’s,” she murmured, picking it up. The soldier wore a red coat and a tall black hat, and one of his button eyes was missing. As her fingers touched the smooth wood, a shiver ran down her spine—not from cold, but from a feeling: like someone was watching her, from just behind her shoulder.

She turned. Nothing. But the fire flickered, and for a second, the tinsel on the tree twisted as if blown by a wind that wasn’t there.

That night, she woke to the sound of singing. Soft, high, like a child’s voice, humming a lullaby Elara had forgotten—the one Gran used to sing to her. She crept out of bed, her heart thumping, and followed the sound to the front room.

The wooden soldier was no longer on the hearth. It was standing in the middle of the floor, facing the window. And in the glow of the moon, Elara saw her: a little girl in a tattered blue dress, her hair white as snow, holding the soldier’s hand. She wasn’t solid—more like a wisp of frost that had taken shape—but Elara could see her eyes, wide and sad.

“Who are you?” Elara whispered, her fear melting into something softer.

The girl didn’t speak, but she pointed to the window. Outside, under the pine trees, was a small, flat stone—so overgrown with moss Elara had missed it when she arrived. The girl’s hand tightened on the soldier’s, and Elara understood: she wanted her to go there.

Elara pulled on her boots and stepped into the snow. The stone was a grave marker, worn almost smooth, but she could just make out the words: Maggie, aged seven. Lost on Christmas Eve, 1952.

Gran had never told her about Maggie. But as Elara stood there, the wooden soldier appeared in her hand—warm, suddenly, as if it had been held by someone living. She looked back at the cottage, and the girl was in the window, smiling now. The lullaby swelled one last time, then faded into the snow.

When Elara went back inside, the girl was gone. But the cottage was warm—truly warm—and the fire crackled as if Gran herself had stoked it. On the hearth, the wooden soldier stood tall, its missing eye replaced by a tiny, glittering piece of ice that caught the light like a star.

That Christmas morning, Elara found a note tucked under the soldier: “Thank you for bringing me home.” It was written in handwriting so small and neat, it might have been a child’s.

Now, every Christmas, she leaves the cottage light on all night. And if you walk past Frostwick Cottage in the snow, you might hear a lullaby drifting from the window—and see two shadows dancing by the fire: one tall, one small, holding hands.”

Clearly, it is what I asked it to do and it is quite good, written well and structured well too, but it could be rewritten well with a little care and attention.

Have a go at this and see where it takes you, but as I said earlier, no claiming Dola’s work is yours, even if it may not be traceable. It will help you learn how to write things and structure your writing too.

I think it is genius! Prove me otherwise.