Write a Halloween Story Before October 31
Seventeen days is plenty of time to write, illustrate and narrate a short spooky book. Here is a plan that fits around a busy October.
Author
Share
Halloween is seventeen days away, and that is plenty of time to make a short spooky book. It could be a ghost story to read aloud at a party, a not-too-scary picture book for the kids to take trick-or-treating, or a dozen pages of gothic dread for the friend who loves horror. You don't need a finished novel. You need one good chill and a plan.
Week One: Find the Chill
Good spooky stories are built around one specific unease: a house that is slightly too quiet, a voice on the stairs, a pumpkin that keeps turning to face the window. Tell Anthra that single image and ask for three different premises around it. Pick the one that makes you want to keep reading, then let Anthra outline it into a short arc of five to eight chapters. Keep the scares quick. In short horror, what you leave out does more work than what you put in.
"The scariest thing in a story is the door that hasn't opened yet."
Week Two: Make It Look and Sound the Part
Once the draft is in place, generate illustrations for each chapter. Anthra locks your characters' descriptions, so the girl with the lantern looks like the same girl on every page and doesn't drift into someone else halfway through. Then pick a narrator. A slow, low voice turns a creepy paragraph into a story people actually remember, and it lets you play the whole book at a party with the lights down.
In the last few days, design a cover in the cover studio, publish the book to a shareable reading page and send the link around before the 31st. Writing for kids? Keep the monsters friendly and the ending warm, and preview the narration together first. Whatever you make, start tonight. The best Halloween stories get told while it's still October.