In honor of Halloween, let’s do a Steve Ramirez style prompt: make a list of five monsters or horror movie villains, then a list of five children’s toys, and finally a list of disappointments or tragedies.

Roll dice for each of the categories, or cut them up and put all of a categories options into a hat and draw. Ultimately, see what clicks for you.

For example, perhaps the dice chose Godzilla to explain divorce to the Easy-Bake Oven, but Freddy Krueger just seems more familiar with ovens and furnaces. Go with your gut. Write the poem or short story that calls to you.

For a second prompt, reverse predator and prey: mouse and cat, fly and spider, antelope and tiger, rabbit and hunter…

I took the photograph below in an attempt to capture the face I saw in the stone and moss. Do you see it, or the small figure with outstretched arms that seemed like a thick, misshapen cross from a distance? As a child, I would stare sleepless at the “faces” in the knotty pine walls of my bedroom.

Remember a time when you thought you saw a face in a pattern or shadow, and you had been right. Now write what that figure would have warned you if you had only believed your eyes.

For the final prompt, write a poem or story from the perspective of the “final girl” who makes it to the end of the slasher film but write about your life. You may have to omit 2020 because some storylines just aren’t realistic.