Macabre Writing Prompts From My Backyard

This week Ellen Kazimer, MFAC alum of 2014, shares a few creepy stories and free write exercises based on true events.  Read on, if you dare...


When the call came out for Halloween inspired postings, I didn’t wander past the woods behind my house to dig up a few writing prompts. This time of year, globe spiders spin webs across my windows, bats perform aerial acrobatics at dusk, and toads cover my front walk. 

Halloween decorating? I’ve got that covered. So for your writing amusement, I present three “true life” vignettes from my woods, each with two writing prompts. Hope they inspire your monster muse.

Vignette I 

There are ten unmarked graves behind my house and possibly more. A dismembered arm indicates there is still another body to be found. Three dead baby dolls and seven dead Barbie’s is a case for the Behavior Analysis Unit on Criminal Minds. I suspect that in yards across America, you will find a buried doll or two, but ten? What twisted mind would do that? (I tried reviving the dolls, but they were too far gone. Tiny insects had crawled into their heads through their hair follicles.) 

A. Write a picture book, middle grade, or young adult scary story where your protagonist either buries or unearths dolls in their backyard.  Would you choose gothic, noir, supernatural, or psychological? Picture book noir, anyone? 

B. The last Barbie I found had hair so full of leaves and mud, that her hair was stuck in place as if it were styled that way on purpose. Perhaps I had a woodland fairy instead of a zombie. Are the dolls changelings? Write a story using the buried dolls as fantasy elements. 


Vignette II 

Last winter, in the middle of a snowstorm, I spotted a piebald deer. I'd never seen one before, and we are replete with deer. A few days later, a neighbor found a tree stand in the woods and deer entrails strewn into the creek. (Deer hunting is illegal in our woods.) The kill was fresh. Turkey vultures had not found the entrails yet. That piebald deer never appeared again. Who killed and gutted the poor piebald deer and why? 

A. Write a story where your protagonist discovers the entrails using one of the three types of terror defined by Stephen King, the Gross Out, the Horror, or the Terror. 

B. Write a story where this unusual deer is a magical beast loose in the suburbs. Perhaps go back to the ancient legends of the mythical white stag. 


Vignette III

I have a trail camera takes six rapid photos when it detects motion. Most of the time it catches deer, foxes, squirrels, or me walking the dog. One night the camera went off, and there was nothing in the pictures except an “orb.” If you are a fan of shows like Ghost Hunters, then you know this could be a spirit orb. (Or it could be an insect or pollen, but let's stick with a spirit orb.) 

A: Write a story where a spirit orb or ghostly apparition haunts your protagonist by appearing their trail camera. 

B: Write a story where the orb is a “will ‘o the wisp” leading your protagonist to another world. Hope you found some spooky inspiration for your stories of mayhem, horror, and the supernatural. I’m off for a walk in the woods.


Thanks for answering the Halloween call, Ellen!  Hopefully these spooky true-life events will give you some great starting points for you own seasonal scares.


*Ellen Kazimer is a 2014 graduate of Hamline MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. When she’s not sweeping spider webs off her windows, she writes picture books, nonfiction, and middle grades novels. Her bio can be found on her website and blog where she shares “Odd Bits of Research that Washed Ashore.”  Learn more about her work on her author website or visit her blog.

Alumni Voices with Ellen Kazimer: Resetting My Setting

As someone who has lived overseas and moved twelve times, I know that every place is unique. Two towns from a small state like Connecticut appear so similar to an outsider, but to a native, they are as different as night and day. There is a different rhythm, a different sensibility. Every town has a unique, idiosyncratic heartbeat once you get beyond their similar appearance.

So I shouldn't have been surprised that shifting my setting upended my novel. I naively thought this would straighten out a few plotting issues. My characters kept wandering over into this town for entertainment so I figured I would situate them there. My plot problems would be solved, right?

Of course not. In fact, I created a slew of new obstacles for myself. And as the esteemed Jane Resh Thomas wrote last month, "setting, like yeast, is not put-in-able at late stages of the cookery." I had ruined my "bread." Most of my original scenes no longer fit.

My first town was largely homogenous in demographics and was located on a sheltered harbor. My new setting jutted out into the Atlantic, its harbor unprotected from the elements. In many ways, my young protagonist was less protected, too. She finds more ways to get in trouble. While other characters had to find new jobs, she found new dreams. So I experienced first hand what Jane wrote last month. "Although place does concern distances and landmarks, it also determines character."

As I revised, I recalled Ron Koertge's lecture back in summer residency of 2013. He proposed we let our characters wander through the town and see whom they meet as an exercise in character cartography. On any summer’s day, my characters would have run into some of the wealthiest families in America. Additionally Ron advised that we “map out your character's world and see what sticks out.” As it turned out, my characters tripped over things that stood out and lay splayed out on the sidewalk. From that vantage point, though, they could see the underclass—the nameless, faceless servant class of those moneyed families. I realized these servants were not nameless or faceless to my characters. So I had to uncover their stories as background to my story.

In the end, social class became an antagonist in my story, thwarting the dreams of my protagonist. She can't go anywhere without being affected by class distinctions. My protagonist loves to swim. In the former town, there were lakes and a shoreline available to everyone. In the new setting, there is a swim club reserved for only the very wealthy and the shoreline is privately owned. She also loves the movies, but class determines where she sits. Affluent summer residents reserve the box seats and servants crowd the theater on their solitary afternoon off.

Moving my setting presented many challenges to my "work in progress." Using Jane's metaphor, I had to throw out the bread I was baking. Truly, this new loaf is so much better. We often hear about letting our characters lead as we write and revise. Perhaps we should consider having the setting lead, and see what happens to our characters and plot.

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Ellen Kazimer is a January 2014 graduate of the MFAC program. She lives and writes in Virginia. 

Faculty Voices with Claire Rudolf Murphy—A Writer’s Gratitude List: John Lewis #1

Claire Rudolf Murphy

I began this post before Maggie Moris’ thought-provoking gratitude post. Thank you, Maggie, for reminding us about the deep work we writers do—every day. I too am grateful for the challenges my writing life presents and for other aspects about this life that I don’t always appreciate—my supportive friends and husband, agents and editors who tell it straight and send me back to the work, the students, alums and faculty of the Hamline writing community that feed me in so many ways. And I am thankful for one of the most incredible experiences of my writing life that took place out in the world, not at my desk.

Please bear with my excited verbiage about my recent trip to Washington, D.C. for the National Council of Teachers of English conference. I am so very grateful. I flew out two days early to experience our nation’s capital again. Because I write about history, I wanted to visit the halls of power again where so many decisions have been made, to be reminded again about the evolution of our country. Thanks to Hamline alum Ellen Kazimer, a history geek like myself, we got around brilliantly. The second day we visited Mount Vernon where I came to appreciate our first president more deeply and to embrace the fact that he graces the cover of my new book My Country Tis of Thee, rather than Aretha Franklin. We also met an awesome fife player and guide whose interactions with third graders on our tour modeled ways to help young people enjoy history.

But the first day rocked my soul. Ellen and I toured the Supreme Court and the capital. Across the hall from my senator—Maria Cantwell—is Al Franken’s office. Ellen and I were delighted to take a photo in front of the Minnesota college pennants on his wall and tell the office staff all about the Hamline MFAC program. Then we heard testimony on immigration on a mostly empty Senate floor, some of it inflammatory behind belief. But I want to focus on the positive, on what came next.

Ellen and I arrived at Congressman John Lewis’ office about fifteen minutes ahead of the interview time. I had met John at ALA last summer and he had agreed to discuss my new book project with me. Even so, I was delighted when his scheduler set me up with a face-to-face interview, only requesting the questions ahead of time.

We had to wait awhile as the House was actually working that day, voting on some bill. Like a cat on a hot tin roof, I could barely sit still. Ellen admitted later that she was surprised how nervous I was. I was too. But John Lewis was my hero—Freedom Rider, speaker at the March on Washington, a member of Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign staff and, most importantly, the last civil rights activist serving in Congress. The 45 minute delay was a blessing. Ellen and I were allowed to stand in his office, which is like a museum to the Civil Rights movement and full of plaques honoring John’s service to our country. Bobby’s poster can be seen in the photo Ellen took of me and John.

He’d been on the go all day, but when he arrived, he asked us if we needed something to drink. To drink! I know, I know. My students are thinking to themselves how much I abhor exclamation marks. But . . . that’s how it went down. He was gracious and thoughtful and considered every question. We had a great conversation about his time with Dr. King and the Kennedys. All my questions were answered, and I only glanced once at my list. In closing I asked him what I should write about today’s racism challenges, what I should say to young people.

“Tell them never to lose hope. We have to have hope.”

John Lewis should know. He’d been beaten senseless as a Freedom Rider in 1962, lost Dr. King and Bobby within two months of each other in 1968, seen Congress devolve to petty partisan politics. He didn’t cover up his pain during our interview. He’s just risen above it. He’s used that pain to keep going. My hero gave me sixty minutes of his precious time. Afterwards he left to receive another award - from the Washington Historical Society. But he talked to me like he had all the time in the world.

NCTE was wonderful. I got to meet librarians, teachers and college professors who love kids’ books as much as do. I had coffee with the amazing Emily Jenkins and we chatted about our upcoming residency. I listened to Bryan Collier discuss how he painted the illustrations for My Country Tis of Thee, and learned that he stood on the Rotunda that cold, cold January day with his five year old daughter when President Obama was inaugurated and Aretha sang.

I will never forget that hour with John Lewis. Whenever I get down and out about my writing, politics or global warming, I am going to remember his words: “We have to have hope.”

John Lewis, you give me that hope. I can only pray for a smidgen of the courage you have shown us all. And writers out there, don’t ever hesitate to ask for an interview with one of your heroes. We need their stories, and you just might be the one to write it.

Alumni Voices with Ellen Kazimer: The Evolution of Literature from Monkeys to Artificial Intelligence

Even with a Hamline MFAC degree in hand, a writer can find validation to be elusive. Published or not, everyone is a critic, and well-intentioned friends or relatives can say something that intensifies our insecurity. They might even repeat that tired old theory that if you put monkeys in a room with typewriters, those monkeys would eventually write Shakespeare.  

Hopefully you’ve read Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human and learned that the monkey theory is simply not true. Someone actually tested the hypothesis in 2003. They locked macaw monkeys in a room with typewriters and discovered the monkeys did not produce any literary works. Monkeys did demonstrate a predilection for the letter “s”. I’ve always thought this theory insulted both writers and monkeys. Isn’t it presumptuous to assume monkeys would write Hamlet? Wouldn’t they have their own unique viewpoint and story to tell?

It appears, however, that writers have evolved from monkeys to computers. The Washington Post recently featured the following blurb above a book review:

‘Computers will be making interesting and meaningful contributions to literature within the decade’—Artificial-intelligence expert Malcolm Ryan, describing progress being made designing computer programs that can create original stories. Ryan supervised development of a program that writes moral-laden fables with characters expressing a variety of emotions.

Could artificial intelligent computers replace writers? For several days, I scanned the Washington Post to see if anyone had a comment. I found nothing, so I did a little research.

Professor Ryan is from the University of New South Wales’s Computer Science and Engineering Department and the Director of the UNSW Game Design Lab. One of his students, Margaret Sarlej, has devised a computer program called the Moral Storytelling System or MOSS for short. MOSS generates stories based on morals found in Aesop’s fables. The Guardian ran an article on Ryan and Sarlej with two examples of these MOSS fables.

Sarlej believes that morals and messages are one of the key purposes of storytelling throughout the ages. While this maybe true to a certain extent, I couldn’t help thinking that many of our favorite children’s books laced with satire. How would MOSS emulate the work of Jon Sciezka or the late Maurice Sendak?

Both Sarlej and Ryan found that when they considered all the possible events, outcomes and characters reactions storytelling was an “extremely complex business.” Adding plot to the mix of events, characters and outcomes is no monkey business either. In The Guardian article, Dr. Ryan says, “Computers need everything to be defined logically, but it is very difficult to specify hard and fast rules for plot.”

Indeed. Immediately, I thought of Jane Resh Thomas’s double helix of plot and Jackie Briggs Martin assertion that plot is simply what happens, but heart is what your story is about. Where is the heart of the story when the storyteller is a computer? If we are writing about what haunts us, what haunts a computer? Any thoughts, HAL 9000?

What about fictional time and flashbacks? And dialogue? Computer-generated characters in role-playing games can talk, but do they use subtext? Kelly Easton would say that which remains unspoken remains the why of the story.

Truthfully, combining my limited understanding of computer languages and gaming with children’s literature and writing, I am intrigued by Ryan and Sarlej’s work. Dr. Ryan’s blog sometimes expresses ideas similar to our own as writers. He discusses his disappointment in role-playing games that fail to demonstrate motivation for the main quest. In our parlance, the game designer has failed to establish what the protagonist wants and what he is willing to do to get it. Worth reading was Ryan’s entry on The Tale of Peter Rabbit and how difficult it is to teach a children’s story to a computer. Perhaps he should have started with adult genre fiction that has a set format. After all, children’s books appear deceptively simple, but they are extremely complex.

As it turns out, Ryan believes that artificial intelligence programmers must to work with experts in the field—writers and narrative theorists. He envisions MOSS not as a replacement for writers, but as new way of telling stories. Ryan wants a cross section of gamers, writers and artists to create things never envisioned. As he says in his UNSW online resume, he is interested in “code-based art in which the artist is the programmer.” Picture the mischief Mo Williams or Jon Klassen might create if they wrote computer code.

It is gratifying to know our ability to write stories is not inconsequential or easily replicated by macaw monkeys or artificial intelligence-based computers. Writing is hard, but surely we will welcome new ways of telling stories. Just imagine the stories those macaw monkeys will tell someday with artificial intelligence-based computers.

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Ellen Kazimer is a January 2014 graduate of the MFAC program. She lives and writes in Virginia.

Meet the Grad: Ellen Kazimer

On January 19, 2014, on the final day of the upcoming residency, the MFAC program will have a Graduate Recognition ceremony, honoring the 11 men and women who have just completed their studies and will receive an MFA from Hamline University. Between now and residency, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, we'll be posting interviews with many of the grads. Ellen Kazimer is today's grad; she lives in Fairfax Center, Virginia.

What do you do when you’re not working on packets?
Travel, volunteer at the USO, tutor occasionally, swim laps, play with my dog, and pester my kids.

How did you hear about the Hamline MFAC Program?
A good friend of mine received her MFA in writing for children and encouraged me to pursue an MFAC, too.

What was your writing experience prior to entering the program? I wrote and illustrated books when I was in second grade. These I expertly bound with safety pins. My writing career slowed considerably after that. After high school, I convinced myself that I needed adventures before I could write seriously. So I joined the Navy after college. While serving, one of my Navy buddies gave me an antique book from 1905 book entitled, How to Tell Stories to Children. Guess she was trying to give me a hint about my career choice. Several years later, when my children were little, I started writing local interest pieces and taking a few writing classes. A piece I began in one of those classes received an honorable mention in the Writer’s Digest Annual Contest. I attended a few Highlight Workshops and wrote a non-fiction article for Blaze Magazine for Horse Crazy Kids.

What do especially remember about your first residency? I remember meeting my classmate Gina the first morning of orientation. I did not know a soul in St Paul. Having flown in the night before, I didn’t even know where I was in relation to the university. At breakfast, I saw a woman reading The Hobbit. Since the book was on our required reading list, I introduced myself and that was the start of meeting my incredibly talented classmates. The camaraderie established from day one has remained a constant source of inspiration. It is amazing the close friends you make at the residencies.

Have you focused on any one form (PB, novel, nonfiction; graphic novel) or age group in your writing? Tried a form you never thought you’d try?During the program I’ve tried a YA novel, middle grade novel, short story, and a non-fiction picture book. I wanted to explore new ideas so every project was brand new. I hadn’t planned on writing non-fiction, but while researching my middle grade novel, I came across a topic that really intrigued me.

Ellen's Inspiration

Tell us about your Creative Thesis.
I worked on a middle grade, historical fiction novel set during the First World War. The initial inspiration came from a poster I saw at a Bed-and-Breakfast. In the living room of the B &B was a WWI era handmade poster of a rocking horse with the words, “Toys Made By Our Wounded Soldiers.” A few months later, I came across this antique toy soldier doll from 1918. I fell in love with his baby-face. One idea led to another and soon I had an idea for a story. The owner of that doll in my story is an eleven-year-old girl, named Florence. She fights her battles on the home front while her two older brothers fight their battles “over there.” Florence struggles to find her place in the world and in her family torn both apart by war.

What changes have you seen in your writing during your studies? I was a cautious writer--too cautious. I was timid about conflict and didn’t want to offend the very characters I created. Now I insult my characters, argue and throw rocks at them. I reach deeper for the emotional core of my stories. All my advisors have helped propel my writing to a new level.

Any thoughts for entering students or for people considering the program?
I researched MFAC programs for a long time waiting to find the right fit and the right time. I even did a cost analysis on a spreadsheet of three programs. I ended up tossing the spreadsheet and chose Hamline on instinct. It just felt right and I’ve never regretted my decision. Don’t wait too long. Trust your intuition. Take a risk and just do it. You won’t be sorry.
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 The public is welcome to attend the graduate recognition ceremony on Sunday, January 19, 3:30pm, (Anne Simley Theatre, Drew Fine Arts Building). Jane Yolen is the speaker.