What would happen if your xenophobic character ended up stuck in a crowded elevator? Another character ends up with a severe case of poison ivy. Thanksgiving week, you get to write about a mother (or father) reuniting with their children.
Inside this month’s writing prompts, you’ll find Hansel and Gretel, gingerbread houses, pumpkin carving contests and Stringy Jack, black cats, and rainy days.
If you want to make a book truly scary, an evil child will send chills up the readers’ spines. In Baby Teeth, Zoje Stage has created a little girl that will give you nightmares. Being a parent is a wonderful experience. Most parents believe they have the perfect child. But children can be scary. Children…
Something eerie is going on at Stillbrook Apartments where Harris is the maintenance man. The bizarre and disturbing residents, screaming birds, strange noises and odors, an eerie abandoned unit—these all add up to make a chilling and oppressive atmosphere. I’m so glad that I don’t live there. This spooky tale is told by Harris and…
Nursery rhymes are written for little children, so they should be sweet and innocent, right? Little children should not have experienced the horrors and reality of life yet, and these rhymes made to entertain them should not talk about them either. But not all nursery rhymes have innocent meanings. “Ring Around the Rosie” is one…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it is up to the author to write those thousand words. (Richard Petracca) Do you remember the rumor that the world would end on December 21, 2012? Did you believe everything would end on that specific date? No matter what you believed would happen, you…
Dragons. Do you believe they exist? There are Komodo dragons, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about huge winged reptiles that can fly through the air and breathe fire. The setting is Vietnam, 1968. I’m not much into reading books that center on the soldiers in a war. One word in the title…
A young governess travels to a secluded estate to care for two children. She discovers, much to her horror that a couple of ghosts are hanging around, and these children are communicating with them. The governess fears that these ghosts are evil and attempting to possess the children. The rather creepy children know about these…
The great thing about fairy tales? Anyone can connect with them. They’re highly accessible. The only price of admission is being human. There’s a reason we give fairy tales to children. It’s about all they can connect with. They haven’t yet been told how to “get” Sartre, or Barthes, or any other tricky-to-pronounce French author.…
