From the Depths of Hell

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

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🐦‍⬛Example poems are copied here for educational purposes.
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🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Evil and Possession

Our fear of possession is rooted in that universal fear of loss of autonomy that we talked about with psychic powers. Only possession has a religious origin. The idea of demonic possession is presented in the bible, in the New Testament gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus cast out unclean spirits from people. The fear of possession is the fear of losing the battle for the soul between the heavenly powers of good vs. the hellish powers of evil.

In the many stories of exorcisms we see the power of words and belief. All fears are based on belief. If we don’t believe in something, we are much less likely to be afraid of it than someone who does.

As writers our job is to get readers to suspend disbelief. We want our characters and worlds no matter how outside the known world to be real to the reader, so they will withhold logic or judgement while enjoying the story. To do that we need to be consistent once we’ve set up our story’s rules such as how magic works, a monster’s strengths and weaknesses, or the definitions of good and evil.

OctPoWriMo

Good and evil are abstractions, words that represent concepts that are not perceived by the senses and cannot be physically measured. When exploring abstractions it’s important to show how you define those abstract concepts using concrete sensory details. You may want to use similes and metaphors. Or you may want to use lists of objects with sensory details that represent that abstract concept for you.

Example Poem: “The Genius of the Crowd” by Charles Bukowski from All Poetry 

The Genius of the Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

~Charles Bukowski

How does the poet use abstract nouns and concrete nouns in this poem?

Prompt: Write a poem about the contradictory nature of human behavior. Even without possession, the battle of good and evil rages within each one of us. Like the example poem, use anaphora (repetition of the first word of the line) to show patterns in these contradictions.

Possible form: The Bop. The Bop form, created by Afaa Michael Weaver, is a three stanza poetic argument.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Nine 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.

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Music to get us moving: