It’s the month of Halloween again, so here are some new “What If?” Writing Prompts for you to enjoy! This week’s set of prompts is centered around the genre of horror. What sorts of scary stories can you write from these ideas? Have fun!
What if… every time you had a dream about someone you know, that person died within 24 hours?
What if… you woke up with blood on your hands and no memory of how it got there?
What if… your dog started acting as though it wanted to eat you?
What if… you heard scratching against your bedroom door at night… even though you didn’t own a pet?
What if… the local haunted house attraction turned out to be filled with real monsters?
Good luck spinning some more tales of horror!
If you have any “What If?” writing prompt suggestions (for any theme), please feel free to share them in the comments below. Ideas I like may be featured in future “What If?” posts, with full credit and a link to your blog (if you have one)! Also, if you’ve written a piece based on an idea you’ve found here, be sure to link back to the respective “What If?” post. I would love to see what you’ve done with the prompt! Thank you!
Continuing from last week’s vocabulary post, here’s another new word I learned from playing Destiny 2. The story campaign of the game centers around an attack on humanity by a hostile alien army, led by a warlord whose goal is to steal the “Traveler’s Light”, a gift of enlightenment to the human race, and keep it for himself. Given the tightly knit organization of its army, the political motives that drive its leader’s actions, and the negative connotation of the word itself, I’d say “Cabal” was an appropriate choice of name for this alien race!
A “cabal” is a secret political faction or clique. The word arose in the late 16th century and traces back through the French noun cabale to the Latin noun cabala. This noun derives from the Hebrew noun kabala, meaning “something received” or “tradition”.
According to Wikipedia, a more complete definition of “cabal” is “a group of people united in some close design together, usually to promote their private views or interests in an ideology, state, or other community, often by intrigue, usually unbeknown to persons outside their group”. The word originates from the name Kabbalah (one of several different spellings of the word), which refers to the Jewish mystical interpretation of Hebrew scripture. Today, the word carries a heavy negative connotation of secretiveness and insidious influence, and is frequently associated with conspiracy theories. If your characters are part of a secret group with shady political goals, you might have fun writing about the “cabal” in your stories!
What are your thoughts on this word? Any suggestions for future “Word of the Week” featured words?
You think you have limitless power. Every time you strike, it gives you such a high. You revel in the chaos and devastation you create. It’s never enough; no matter how much pain you cause, you always want more.
I know because I’ve been watching you from the start.
I know why you do what you do. You think you can tear down their spirits. You think if you hit them hard enough, you can break them. You think if you destroy them from the inside, you can win.
But I also know that you’re wrong. You will never win. You can hit them as hard as you want, and you may even break a few, but you will never destroy them all. Because on the other side, there will always be someone to catch them, to heal them, to mend their spirits and send them right back out to fight you and everything you stand for.
That someone is me.
Every time you threaten them, I tell them not to be afraid. Every time you hurt them, I defy the impossible to heal them. Every time you break them, I embrace them and remind them that they will recover, that the pain will make them stronger, that it’s not the end.
You want everyone to know they should fear you. But I want you to know that you should be afraid too, because no matter how many hearts you break, how many souls you claim, or how many lives you take, you will never defeat me.
You forget that for every one spirit you break, many more rise up against you. For every one soul you claim, countless others flock to me. For every one person you push over the edge, hundreds find solace in my love and choose to believe in the better life I promise. We outnumber you, and we always will.
So it’s been a brutal last several weeks, hasn’t it? From a conga line of devastating hurricanes to a humanitarian crisis in a U.S. territory to a mass shooting labeled the worst in American history, it’s almost as if 2017 is trying to set some sort of horrible historical record.
I’ll be honest: it’s times like these when I can’t help but feel glad my blog posts are written and scheduled in advance, because there’s nothing like the world seeming like it’s falling apart to totally kill creativity. The hurricane-every-week situation of September was bad enough, and then what happened in Las Vegas last week broke me. Instead of spiraling into a dizzying rant about all the anger and frustration I feel, however, I’ll let Jimmy Kimmel sum it up better than I ever could:
Honestly, a part of me felt guilty for not saying anything about Las Vegas on my blog last week. I mean, when tragedy strikes, everyone feels obligated to say something before all the buzz dies down, right? And it’s not like I haven’t acknowledged tragic events before; it’s almost become a habit for me to dedicate a poem to the victims of a major attack within a week.
But this time, I just didn’t have the energy. I didn’t like thinking about it, much less talking or writing about it. So I figured I’d just share my thoughts on my personal Facebook page and move on with my blog like everything was normal.
But then I started reflecting on that mentality. Why was I thinking about the latest in a series of national tragedies like it was just another social media meme doomed to fade after a week? Why should we stop talking about the people who have suffered and are still suffering from any recent event just because it’s not the trending topic anymore? Should I not write about an issue that matters because I “missed the boat” and it might upset readers who are trying to forget about it? I don’t think so.
What you’re reading now is the result of days of processing, a sudden urge to vent, and hours of careful editing to get my thoughts straight. Maybe it still needs some work—editing is never truly finishing—but I can only write so much on the subject without losing my mind.
To be clear, this is not a political rant. I’m not trying to shove my thoughts on climate change or gun control in anyone’s face. I’m not even focusing on the events themselves. This is more of a creativity rant, or rather, a lack-of-creativity rant. So here goes nothing.
Recent events have reminded me of how much despair can drain one’s ability to create. As a writer, it’s a strange feeling not to be able to write. Emotion is the fuel of good fiction and poetry, after all, so you’d think real-life tragedy would be perfect material for art. But emotion also affects inspiration, and when there’s simply too much negativity to handle, it takes an incredible effort just to sit at a keyboard and type out a half-decent story.
2017 has been a particularly difficult year for me, not just because of what’s going on in the world, but because of major changes in my personal life. As soon as I finished my Master’s program at the end of 2016, I left home, hopped on a plane to California, and moved in with my long-distance boyfriend of seven years.
For almost a year now, I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the most emotionally exhausting events of my lifetime. To give an idea of how much current events have affected my creativity, I used to have at least three weeks’ worth of blog posts scheduled in advance at all times. Now I’m lucky if I can get up to two weeks ahead.
But a reflection on recent events has also reminded me that despair is only half of a cycle that includes hope. Somehow, every time tragedy strikes, a little light still finds its way through the shadows and rekindles that spark of creativity and inspiration. Whether it’s a blog post, a short story, a poem, or another page of my novel, the will to create always returns.
It’s hard to stay positive when the world insists on knocking you down over and over, but if I’ve learned anything in all the time I’ve been writing, it’s that creativity is one of the greatest manifestations of hope. I may write less than usual sometimes, but I’m always writing, and that definitely counts for something. It means that deep down, hope is still alive and well.
I’ve been told that I’m an empath, a person who feels other people’s emotions. I’m no stranger to being overwhelmed by negative energy, and it’s certainly made its way into my writing more than once. But while some of my most inspired fiction and poetry has come from a place of sadness or anger, I’ve realized that the creativity I feel in those moments is rarely about the emotion itself; more often, it’s about conquering those bad feelings and battling through the darkness to get to the light.
Maybe that’s why despair affects me so much: it feels less like an emotion and more like a void for all the others. It fights dirty, robbing me of the only weapons I have to fight back. But it hasn’t won yet, and as long as hope and creativity remain, I know it never will.
So to all my fellow artists, the best takeaway I can offer you is this: try not to let despair stifle your creative nature, because it’s both your best defense and your strongest weapon. Hold on to your hope and remember that there will always be a light at the end of the darkness. Sometimes a short piece of fiction or a simple poem written from the heart is all the reminder you need to keep moving forward.
On a final note, those of you familiar with my blog know that I share posts about creative writing every single Wednesday, all year round. I almost didn’t share this post today. I could have written all my thoughts out and just kept them to myself and let my blog skip to the Wednesday piece originally planned for today. But obviously, the fact that you’re reading this now means I decided these thoughts were too important not to share. I only hope they’ve resonated with someone in the good way I intended.
Thank you for reading. Stay hopeful, keep fighting for positive change, and please, no matter how hard it seems, never stop creating.
Here’s an interesting word that I’ve recently picked up from two very different sources: the productivity app Habitica and the sci-fi action role-playing game Destiny 2. The Habitica blog mentioned today’s Word of the Week in a post featuring guilds dedicated to learning and studying, while Destiny 2 uses it in the name of one of its Warlock armor sets (Warlocks in this world being akin to scholars). Of course, regardless of whether I read it in a blog post or a video game, I know I can easily identify with this word; my whole life, I’ve always been a “philomath”!
A “philomath” is someone who loves to learn, especially such academic subjects as philosophy and mathematics. The word arose in the early 17th century and comes from the Greek noun philomathḗs, meaning “fond of learning”. This noun comprises two roots: the adjective phílos “loving” and the verb manthánō “to learn”.
The word “philomath” is considered a historical term and has an interesting background as a pseudonym: King James VI and I created the character Philomathes to represent one side of a philosophical dialogue in his dissertation Daemonologie, while Benjamin Franklin used Philomath os one of his many pen names. According to Oxford Dictionaries, this word was once used specifically as a term for an astrologer or prognosticator, but this definition has since become obsolete. Note that “philomath” should not be confused with “philosophy”, as the former refers to learning while the latter refers to wisdom. If your characters love to learn, you can have plenty of fun writing about a “philomath” or two in your stories!
What are your thoughts on this word? Any suggestions for future “Word of the Week” featured words?
J.C. Wolfe is a fiction writer, biologist, and aspiring novelist of science fantasy and romance. A natural-born American and graduate in Marine Ecology from a university in Brazil, J.C. now writes for a living in California while spending free time blogging and penning stories and poetry.
J.C. Wolfe is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
What if… every time you had a dream about someone you know, that person died within 24 hours?
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