Guarding the Hoard with Fire

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: Dragons

What do dragons teach us about writing? Going deeper? Dragons lay on hoards of treasure, they fly, they breathe fire, they are giant lizards with wings. They represent ancient knowledge. In A Dictionary of Symbols_(Aal) by J. E. Cirlot I read, “it _{(the legendary dragon)} is a kind of amalgam of elements taken from various animals that are particularly aggressive and dangerous, such as serpents, crocodiles, lions as well as prehistoric animals.” It is pieces and parts of these animals seen in the dragon that represent the whole.

As writers we have techniques we can use to have a part of something represent the whole:

• synecdoche -when a part of something is substituted for the whole, as in “hired hand” representing a worker, or “fin” for shark.
• metonymy – the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing
• antonomasia – the substitution of an epithet or title for a proper name (e.g., the Bard for Shakespeare)
• kennings – compound expressions with metaphorical meaning, like “oar-steed” for ship, or “whale’s road” for sea.

How would you describe a dragon using each of these tools?

Dragons may have represented disease, devastating a population. The fire of fever, and burning bodies. But they also guard hoards of stolen treasure. What would you protect with the vehemence of dragonfire?

You may find some inspiration from these dragons at the Reading Museum

OctPoWriMo

I recently took a screenwriting class during the Gotham open house. The instructor asked us what is everyone’s major want / motivation? Then he concluded that all people, and thus characters, always want happiness. Thus the conflict of every story is what stands in the way of happiness, and the conclusion is whether or not they achieve happiness. Since happiness is abstract and defined differently for each person, this isn’t untrue.

However, since happiness is always the want of the character, doesn’t that tell us that happiness is lost just as quickly as it is achieved? And wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that our motivation is a fear of losing happiness? Even when we are happy, we know it will end, and we fear that loss: there is so much to lose at every moment.

Example Poem: “To Failure” by Philip Larkin from Collected Poems_(Aal)

To Failure

You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking, nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne,
Expenses met, nor as a draughty ghost
That’s seen, some mornings, running down a lawn

It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Install you at my elbow like a bore
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too.  And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.

~Philip Larkin

How does the poet use negation to show what failure is? What does the dragon symbolize in this poem?

Prompt: Write a poem about something you are afraid to lose. Something you would protect with the fierceness of a dragon. Use all of your senses to describe it, then use all your senses to describe its space without it.

Possible form: Puente

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Twenty-one 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.

Music to move to: