House

Writober 2026 Prompt Post

🔗Post contains Amazon associate links (shown with Aal in parentheses)
🐦‍⬛Example poems are copied here for educational purposes.

Super-excited for Writober to start? Here’s the early-bird prompt. If you think of Writober as a house, this is the Welcome mat. Come on in.

Photography prompt: Take a picture of a house. Perhaps something derelict. Explore the unexpected light and shadows.
Photography technique: Focus on the spot with the brightest light.

Flash Fiction prompt: Write a story of any length up to 999 words inspired by the image above. Is the structure scary, or who or what is inside it? Was it a house for animals? What made it implode?
Flash Fiction technique: Focus on one moment of conflict, causing an epiphany, a change of perception, or a change in belief.

Writing has often been compared to a house. In You Can Write Poetry_(Aal), Jeff Mock uses the house to discuss writing a poem. The foundation is words, framing the house is imagery, the furnishings are figures of speech, devices of sound, rhyme, and meter. The word stanza in Italian means room. In a flash fiction piece, each paragraph might be a room. A title can be seen as the entrance, inviting the reader in.

Emily Dickinson compared poetry to a house in “I Dwell in Possibility”

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

Her house’s roof is like the roof in our photograph: the sky. I wonder if the poem’s house was haunted.

For our poems, stories, and photos today, think about how your dwelling is now. How will it change by Halloween?

Example Poems: “Enter This Deserted House” by Shel Silverstein from Where the Sidewalk Ends_(Aal) and “One need not be a chamber—to be haunted” by Emily Dickinson from The Poems of Emily Dickinson_(Aal)

ENTER THIS DESERTED HOUSE
Shel Silverstein

Enter this deserted house
But please walk softly as you do
Frogs dwell here and crickets too
Ain’t no ceiling, only blue
Jays dwell here and sunbeams too
Floors are flowers – take a few
Ferns grow here, daisies too
Swoosh, whoosh, too-whit, too-woo
Bats dwell here and hoot owls too
Ha-ha-ha, hee-hee, hoo-hoooo,
Gnomes dwell here and goblins too
Oh my child, I thought you knew
I dwell here… and so do you

“One need not be a chamber—to be haunted”
Emily Dickinson

One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors surpassing
Material Place—

Far safer, of a Midnight—meeting
External Ghost—
Than an Interior—confronting—
That cooler—Host—

Far safer, through an Abbey—gallop—
The Stones a’chase—
Than moonless—One’s A’self encounter—
In lonesome place—

Ourself—behind Ourself—Concealed—
Should startle—most—
Assassin—hid in Our Apartment—
Be Horror’s least—

The Prudent—carries a Revolver—
He bolts the Door,
O’erlooking a Superior Spectre
More near—

Poetry Prompt: Use onomatopoeia (sound words) to describe your house, or a house. What will be dwelling in your house this spooky season?
Suggested Form: Monorhyme- use the same rhyme sound to end every line.

Fun Writing activity: Wander around your home and collect 7 objects that start with the letter H. Examine them with all of your senses. How do they relate to each other? How do they haunt? Use some aspect of each one in your writing.

All of these prompts are intended for inspiration. They are completely optional. Go where the spirit takes you. When you’ve created something you would like to share, please mention Writober and Experience Writing and link to this page in your post, then come back and make sure there’s a pingback or put a link in the comments. Make sure to visit and appreciate other participants’ responses.

Have Fun!
And Come Back Often