Workshop Twenty-Three

This week’s workshop is all about Halloween. It’ll help us remember that writing is fun. Sometimes as writers we focus too much on end goals, such as publication, or finally finishing the project we’re writing. But writing should be, above all, fun. Enjoying getting words on the page is the first step in a very long, challenging process. So, we’re going to have a little fun with writing this week by looking at writing a Half-Minute Horror story!

This is a project I took part in a couple of years ago, as did a bunch of very cool and brilliant authors including Lemony Snicket, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman and Joyce Carol Oates. The weblink is here if you’re interested in sharing your final result or reading some other half-minute horrors.

The idea is that you write a story that is spooky, scary, (totally in the Halloween mode, hey), that can be read in half a minute. You’d be amazed at how tricky it can be to get down a whole story, hopefully with a spine-tingling twist, so it takes up less than a page or two. Taken from their website, here’s a Half-Minute Horror by the wonderful Margaret Atwood. As you can see, it’s brilliant, swift, and chilling. A whole story using hardly any words at all. I’ve included it here so you can see what can be done with this idea:

This week’s writing prompt:

Now it’s your turn: I’d love to see what you come up with if you dare this week. Write your own Half-Minute Horror.