Writing Ghosts and Why You Want To

Write a scene in which you’re sharing space with a ghost from your memory. It can be memoir or fiction, scary or silly, simple or complex. Just like ghosts themselves.

We’re all haunted by something, or many somethings. This is one of the reasons I find it so strange when writers tell me they feel stuck. Anyone who has lived is full of interesting material: stories that never quite got resolved, people we can’t quite forget, mysteries we can’t quite fathom. (I guess I don’t really find it strange when writers get stuck, actually. So often, the thing that is haunting us is also silencing us. Ghosts! Such fickle entities.)

Dig into your memory, and think of your earliest experience with a ghost. This might be the idea of a ghost—a cartoon or movie that particularly struck you, or the supernatural protagonist of some favorite chapter book with a cover you can still picture. It might be a visitation, or cheesy Halloween haunted house prop, or an inexplicable encounter, or the vague uneasy feeling your best friends basement always gave you. Did you believe in ghosts? Do you now? And either way, why is this particular ghost still haunting you?

Write a scene in which you’re sharing space with this ghost from your memory. It can be memoir or fiction, scary or silly, simple or complex. Just like ghosts themselves.

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If you enjoyed this prompt, Amy is teaching two online fiction seminars with us this fall. Sign up for the October session of Writing Ghosts & Why You Want To here—or for the December session here!