Happy Friday the 13th, everyone! Such an odd month to have it in, December. It’s not as though we associate winter with Friday the 13th–that’s more of a fall and Halloween thing. Of course, writers live for unusual combinations. What better way to exercise our writing muscles than to try and make two seemingly mismatched elements fit together cohesively?
That brings us to today’s writing prompt. As always, the prompt itself is fairly straightforward. All you have to do is write a horror short story that takes place in the winter. If you can tie in Christmas or some other winter holiday, even better! In fact, for maximum benefit, I highly recommend incorporating any festive elements that you can and try to twist them to enhance the horror in your story. You could even write it in the form of a rhyming children’s story or Christmas poem, like “A Visit from St. Nicholas”.
Get as disturbed and deranged as you want. Turn white winter snow red, explore the darkest thoughts that arise around this time of year, do whatever you feel it takes to make the most wonderful time of year frightening. You can follow Krampus on his annual journey to beat naughty children, turn Santa into a psychopathic stalker that sees you when you’re sleeping–the only limit is your imagination!
There are several examples of winter horror stories in movie form: Krampus (2015), Elves (1989), even The Abominable Snowman (1957). My personal recommendation for inspiration, though, is this reading of “The Night Before”, a zombie twist on “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, by paranormal investigator John L. Tenney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjXQe0fWrRM.
Feel free to share your experiences with this exercise and the resulting short story in the comments. Now, merry writing to all, and to all a good Friday the 13th!
Designed by Stephanie Hoogstad circa 2011