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: Deadly Mischief
Bad things happen. It can’t be avoided. But sometimes the little mishaps come in more than threes and it feels like the world is out to get you. What do your mischief makers look like? Brownies, fairies, goblins, gremlins? Or do you just believe it’s bad luck?
As writers it’s our job to create fascinating, complex, well-rounded characters that our readers can relate to, and then make their lives miserable. And once they think it can’t get any worse, we raise the stakes and bring them to the edge of death. It’s in that precarious moment of facing their ultimate fear where change happens. In this way we’re like gremlins: we start out just being pesky, blocking our characters from getting what they want, but then we escalate our mischief until we are vicious and deadly.
You might find some inspiration at The Gremlins Museum.
OctPoWriMo
When writing a poem, we think a lot about ordering our ideas. When thinking about fears we may order them from things we only think are a little scary to our deepest fears, or fears we think are personal to universal fears. But in poetry, jarring juxtaposition can grab a reader’s attention. Juxtaposition is placing two things next to each other to compare and contrast for an interesting effect. We may follow what we consider to be a small fear with a huge fear, then a personal fear with a universal fear. We might put a monster we don’t believe in next to the monster that lives under our bed.
Example Poem: “Fear” by Ciaran Carson from Poets.org
Fear
I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.
I fear the gap between the platform and the train.
I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.
I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea.
I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee.
I fear the books will not survive the acid rain.
I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane.
I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be.
I fear the bad decisions of a referee.
I fear the only recourse is to plead insane.
I fear the implications of a lawyer’s fee.
I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain.
I fear to read the small print of the guarantee.
And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.
~Ciaran Carson
How does this poem use juxtaposition for effect?
Prompt: List your fears that have come up this month. Then list all the little things that have gone wrong lately and how they led to change in behavior. Did any of those slight differences lead to good conclusions? In your poem mix your deepest fears with the daily goblins and gremlins that come up in daily life.
Possible form: Villanelle
Writober Flash Fiction Challenge
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 get us moving:
Experience Writing 
OctPoWriMo Day 26. Inventory of Goblins
~ Oizys.
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