Writing Prompts for October

What is a writing prompt?

My basic definition of a writing prompt, is a statement, question, or thought that helps inspire a piece of writing. No two people will look at the prompt the same way which I think is pretty cool.

Fall truly happens to be my favourite time of the year. The air changes and we get to have a brief little reset before winter. I really do LOVE spooky season.

I’ve been preparing for NaNoWriMo the last little while. For those of you who don’t know what NaNoWriMo means, November is National Novel Writing Month and I’m super excited to be participating again. What is NaNoWriMo? It is an annual event in which participants attempt to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. The event was founded back in 1999 by Chris Baty and a group of friends in Northern California's Bay Area, and has since grown to become a global phenomenon, with hundreds of thousands of participants every year. Stay tuned for a post about that coming in November!

For more information about the event, click the link below.

I’m getting quite excited about it this year. I’m being ambitious right now and I know that but I’m bound and determined to accomplish some goals I’ve set for myself this year. But enough about that, let's get into the writing prompts I have come up with for the month of October.

I had a crappy start to 2023. I really did. I’m so determined to change my narrative right now it isn’t even funny.

As a little fun brain break for myself while gearing up for November, I’ve been working on writing poetry in my journal more. I want to create more. I thought this would be a fun challenge for fellow creators to participate in. Choose one prompt if you’d like or do them all!

As a side note, I realized afterward I created this that a lot of these prompts don’t really have to be poetry related. I think some of them make pretty good fiction or micro fiction prompts but I wanted to leave it the writer's hands. Just have fun with the prompt list because I know I had a lot of fun creating it. 🎃

“There is great beauty in each season, but autumn has a pinch of something more.”

Laura Jaworski

OCTOBER POETRY/SHORT STORY WRITING PROMPT LIST

1. A poem about the month of October
2. “Dead leaves”
3. “A scream escapes”
4. “In the night”
5. “Blood poured down my face”
6. A poem using the colour red
7. “Demons escaped”
8. “Stay with me”
9. A poem about thanksgiving (because I’m Canadian and our thanksgiving is October 9th, 2023)
10. “The wolves are howling”
11. “Ghosts haunt me”
12. “Knife under my pillow”
13. “Trick or treat”
14. Halloween word acrostic
15. “Candy wrappers”
16. “The fog”
17. “Poison”
18. “DNR”
19. “The bones”
20. “Beware”
21. “The bugs crawl along my skin”
22. “The haunted house”
23. “Pumpkin”
24. “The wicked witch”
25. “Full moon magic”
26. “Black cat”
27. “A bad dream”
28. “Hunted”
29. “Vampire bites”
30. “A storm blows in”
31. “Hallows Eve fright”

Let me know what you think of this Halloween prompt list!

I’m kind of excited to see other people’s takes on these prompts. I’ve been wanting to do a writing challenge for fellow creators for a couple months now and October seemed supremely fitting for it. I have so many ideas and these seemed worth sharing. I have a few creators in mind that I know will shock people with their takes on the prompts.

Stay tuned for my first post for the month of October. 🎃

Happy writing to you all!

Chloe Rose Violet 🌹

Check out some more of my Halloween-ish themed writing down below!