The Core of Our Beings

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

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🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to each of the challenges to navigate easily to the prompt of your interest: OctPoWriMo for poetry; Writober Flash Fiction for flash fiction; Halloween Photography Challenge for photography
🐦‍⬛Example poems are copied here for educational purposes.
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🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Skeletons

Skeletons, like blood, are supposed to stay inside our bodies, so when we see them, they are a sign of death and can be frightening. The skeleton is the core of our body: It’s deepest depth.

You might find some inspiration in the Bone Hall of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Now that we’ve warmed up and gotten into a daily writing rhythm while exploring our senses and scary sensory details, let’s go a little deeper by connecting these sensory details to our personal fears.

Here’s a quick exercise I introduced during April’s NaPoWriMo and AtoZ Challenge this year to identify our deepest fears:

1. List fifteen things you’re afraid of
2. Prioritize your list and choose the top five
3. Start with the number one fear on your list, set a timer for five minutes and answer these questions:
   Where does this fear come from?
   What specific incident is it connected to?
   How does it affect your life?
4. Now, set your timer for another five minutes and write to the fear directly. Thank it for how it has protected you in the past, but let it know that it is no longer helpful.
5. Read what you wrote, and ask yourself if this is really your greatest fear, or can you now identify your real fear, something that was lingering underneath.
6. Repeat the exercise for your newly identified deepest fear, or if you haven’t identified a deeper fear, continue down your list to your next fear.

OctPoWriMo

In poetry, the skeleton of your poem can be its poetic form or shape on the page. It can be the through line of the poem: a mood, a color, a theme, or extended metaphor. It can also be an emotional arc and/or a narrative structure.

Example Poem: “Sleeping with One Eye Open” by Mark Strand from Voetica.

Sleeping With One Eye Open

Unmoved by what the wind does,
The windows
Are not rattled, nor do the various
Areas
Of the house make their usual racket–
Creak at
The joints, trusses, and studs.
Instead,
They are still.
And the maples,
Able
At times to raise havoc,
Evoke
Not a sound from their branches
Clutches.
It’s my night to be rattled,
Saddled
With spooks. Even the half-moon
(Half-man,
Half dark), on the horizon,
Lies on
Its side casting a fishy light
Which alights
On my Floor, lavishly lording
Its morbid
Look over me. Oh I feel dead,
Folded
Away in my blankets for good, and
Forgotten.
My room is clammy and cold,
Moonhandled
And weird. The shivers
Wash over
Me, shaking my bones, my loose ends
Loosen,
And I lie sleeping with one eye open,
Hoping
That nothing, nothing will happen.
~Mark Strand

How does the structure of this poem help to convey the meaning?

Prompt: Write a poem about a skeleton of any kind. Use sensory details from at least three senses, and a personal experience of one of the fears from your list. Use your line breaks to give your poem an interesting skeleton.

Possible form: Mesostic. The Mesostic was created by John Cage. You may choose to use the Mesostic Poem Generator to generate many different Mesostics until you find your favorite.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Seven Image

Click on the link and take a look at the image. How might this image relate to today’s theme? Write a piece of flash fiction, anything from a six-word story to 999 words. Feel free to bring in the OctPoWriMo prompt and the Photography Challenge prompt, anything that inspires your story.

Halloween Photography Challenge

Thank you so much for joining me for this year’s October challenges. Remember to support each other by visiting and commenting on as many links as you can as we explore our Deepest Fears in anticipation of Halloween.

If you enjoy these posts and the work I do here, please head to my buymeacoffee page and show your support! Thank you so much. Every bit helps keep this site going.