WRITING PROMPTS | PROMPTLY WRITTEN
Prompt Yourself: Weekly Prompts October 30–November 5
Prompts to tempt your muses
Welcome to the 44th week of Weekly Prompts here at PW! Although Bella set us up with a ton of Halloween prompts last week (make sure to check those out!), I couldn’t resist doing a spooky-themed prompt list this week, too! However, I have tried to make the prompts at least somewhat interesting/unexpected.
Before we get started, here are a couple of quick reminders:
How This Works
- Use these prompts to write poetry, fiction, an essay, creative non-fiction, or an article. They are totally open to interpretation! Include a link to the prompt at the bottom of your post.
- If you use one of these prompts, you can submit the result here at PW, to any publication that accepts prompts from other publications, or self-publish. If you submit somewhere besides PW, make sure to include a link to the prompt and tag PW editors so that we do not miss reading your story!
- You don’t have to use PW’s prompts to submit work here. We are an open publication for established and new writers to submit their writing — usually based on writing prompts from here or elsewhere, but unprompted stories are also welcome!
- Please be sure to use the correct Reader Interest Tags when you submit your work to PW so it lands in the right place on the homepage. Please use ONE (not multiple) of the following tags: Poetry, Fiction, Essay, or Articles. Your other four tags can be whatever you wish them to be.
- Please ONLY submit drafts. To do this, once you have finished writing, instead of hitting the Publish button, click on the three dots (…), choose Add to Publication, click on Promptly Written, and then submit. This will put it into our queue, and we will publish it on our end.
- Each week, you will find prompts for Monday-Sunday. However, you do not have to use them in the order they are written. Browse them all and use only the ones that resonate with you. Submit your work any time during the week (or long after!).
- If you previously wrote for PW but haven’t in a while, you may need to go to the Submission Guidelines and ask to be a writer again. We went on hiatus a few months ago and stopped accepting submissions; if you were a writer with us before that time, you will need to sign up again.
- Have fun!
Are you ready? Great! Let’s get prompting!
Macabre Monday
Write a ‘macabre’ piece around any or all of the following:
— A winding road — A sudden noise — An elaborate funeral — Shattered glass — Distant howls
Tuesday Boo-some
Write a story inspired by the following:
Concept — Fright Twosome — flight and fight
Consider how your story’s character(s) reacts to being frightened. Autonomic nervous system hyperarousal or the acute stress response, also known as “flight or fight,” is our bodies’ natural physiological reaction to fear. It engages the adrenal glands, heart, lungs, muscles, and reflexes — usually outside of conscious control. Consider the character’s body when you write how they respond to a real or imagined threat.
Bonus: perhaps your character (or you, if you’re writing creative nonfiction!) doesn’t react in one of these two ways to the threat. Sometimes, the acute stress response is called “flight-fight-freeze” or even “flight-fight-faint-fawn,” which gives you more options to work with!
Wednesday’s Eerie/Ogre
Either trick or treat
Bonus: incorporate both concepts in one story or poem
“Trick or Treat” is the most basic/common of Halloween traditions. Choose one as a theme for your story — or both, if you dare!
Thursday’s Haunts
Consider any of the quotations below and use them as inspiration for a story, poem, or essay.
“Every day is Halloween, isn’t it? For some of us.”
— Tim Burton
“Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, ‘Never take candy from strangers.’ And then they dressed me up and said, ‘Go beg for it.’ I didn’t know what to do!“
— Rita Rudner
“A mask tells us more than a face.”
— Oscar Wilde, Intentions
Freaky Friday
Write a story using any or all of the following:
— A phone call — A broken mirror — Someone is definitely in the house — A switcheroo or plot twist
Redrum Words Saturday
Choose up to 5 of these 10 random words (you may use any form of these words, including plurals, any tense, or changing to a noun/verb/adjective):
- Coven
- Harvest
- Lurk
- Dismal
- Abysmal
- Reap
- Veil
- Vile
- Corn
- Incantation
Bonus challenge: Your story isn’t spooky, creepy, horror, paranormal, or Halloween-themed in any way, but still uses at least 5 of these creepy words!
Spooky Sunday
What is the scariest thing that has happened to you? Write a story or creative nonfiction essay about that experience. Consider not only the event itself but what you were feeling — what made the experience scary? What did you see, smell, touch, taste, or hear?
Bonus: Consider the words in your story carefully. How can you evoke creepiness using language? Here are two techniques you can incorporate into your story:
1. Defamiliarization — write familiar, common things in an odd or unorthodox way. The purpose of defamiliarization is to cause the readers to question their perception of reality. Approach your topic as if your reader is unfamiliar with even its most basic assumptions/components.
2. Onomatopoeia — use words that sound like what they mean, such as “crackle,” “squish,” “clang,” and “plop.” These can create a visceral reaction for some readers. You can even make up your own words to describe a particular sound.
Bonus Prompt — Write a ‘spooky’ poem, flash fiction (<500 words), or essay.
There you have it! Another week’s worth of prompts to tempt your muses. I look forward to reading your submissions!
Don’t forget, there are Writing Sparks available in the Monthly Theme.
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