 Daniels' playwriting career took off after she sent in a script to the Royal Court Theatre in London for reading and spent a year as the writer-in-residence of Sheffield University’s English department.Since the early 1980s her plays have appeared at other venues including the National Theatre, the Battersea Arts Centre, the Crucible, Sheffield and Chicken Shed.She was the first living British playwright to have a play premiered at the National Theatre in London when "Neaptide" was performed there in 1986.