Halloween Writing Prompts
Reading Time: 4 minutes Are you looking for fun writing prompts to help fire the creativity of your children or students?
Halloween brings to mind trick or treating, costumes and spooky stories. It can be the focus of many fun Halloween writing prompts. Before we get to my favorite prompts, let’s set the mood and talk a little bit about creative writing or free writes.
What is a free write?
There are many different ways to write. Students will have to learn and show proficiency at most of these: expository, persuasive, research, informative, and descriptive. There is a wonderful freedom to a free write. There are no rules, it starts with a spark and the writer just allows their thoughts to “go”. Many children who may be resistant to writing in general, may not be as reluctant to write if they are allowed to write about any topic, in any way. If you have a poet, they can put their words into poetic form, if you have a child who loves to journal, their writings can be autobiographical, and if you have a child who is passionate about telling stories, they can write stories.
How does creative writing and free writing help students?
• Allows them to be creative
• Boosts imagination
• Broadens thought process
• Allows students to develop their unique voice
• Helps children express themselves
Why give students a writing prompt?
Most writers know that the best way to become proficient in their craft is to write each and every day. We have all heard of “writer’s block.” It is a real thing! Many adults, children, and professional writers scoot up to that blank piece of paper and have no idea what to write down. Using a prompt can get the wheels of creativity flowing.
Set the mood:
I did a free write in my classroom every morning. It was only 5 minutes long and the students would take one out of every 15 or so to make a quality story or paper. Some days or topics would strike one child more than another. I always had instrumental music play with in the background. The music was sometimes light and happy, complex or foreboding. For the Halloween writing prompts I recommend Bram Stoker’s Dracula Movie Soundtrack: The Beginning. This is a really creepy sounding song!
Choices:
Children are independent beings with their own set of drama and craziness. I would not limit a child to writing about specific topics. They may want to sit down and write about something that is pressing on their minds. I would offer the prompts as a choice. I also offer only 2-3 prompts. I try to have them be relative to a specific topic, in this case, Halloween, however, they each are a different look at the holiday. For example, one can be the supernatural, one can be personal experience or memory, and another can be connection to something else.
Halloween Writing Prompts:
Supernatural:
- Do you believe in ghosts?
- Have you ever thought a place was haunted?
- How would an evil spirit plan an attack against humanity?
- Which Halloween “character” do you like the most: goblins, witches, monsters or ghosts?
- Zombie apocalypse, what will it look like? Who will win?
- One by one, you notice people in your life are disappearing and you seem to be the only one who notices.
- It is late at night. Thunder booms, lightning strikes. You hear a squeak from the boards on the front porch. What do you do?
- You go to a fortune teller, what news do they give you that changes everything?
- While digging in your back yard, you discover an old chest. What is in it?
Personal Experience:
- What is the creepiest thing that has ever happened to you?
- What scares you the most?
- Do you have “irrational” fears? What are they?
- What is your favorite Halloween experience?
- What is your favorite Halloween story? Tell me about it.
- Have you ever had a horrible nightmare that just sticks with you? How about an odd one?
- What is the best Halloween you can create?
- Describe what you think would be a great haunted house.
Connection:
- Who is your favorite “bad” or “evil” character in literature (or a movie)? What makes them “bad” or “evil” and why do you like them?
- Write an interview for People, or some other magazine with a famous “spooky” character, like Dracula, Frankenstein (the monster or the doctor), Werewolf, Zombie, the Wicked Witch of the West, Maleficent, etc.
- Reality can be scarier than make believe-what do you find scary about people?
- Think of all of the typical characters on Halloween, what do they have, for example, witches have broomsticks, goblins have amazing strength, ghosts are invisible, etc? Which one has a characteristic you would like, what would you do with it?
- Potions. You can create any potion for any issue. How is it created (the recipe) and what is it used for and why did you pick this one?
- Think of a book or movie, where everything goes terribly wrong. Write about it coming true in your home tomorrow.
- Have you ever had something happen to you that is “stranger than fiction”?
- Think of one of your parents. Do the remind of you of a villain or hero? Which one? Why? Is it only during certain times?
Halloween is a time where it is “fun” to get those creepy chills and tell scary stories. Help your children with some fun Halloween writing prompts to get their creativity flowing. These may turn into amazing creative writing or descriptive tales.
“What’s the matter princess? Do you know the end of your story?”
Cornelia Funke, in Inkheart
