It’s the final evening of Winter Hauntings, and all the writers should have submitted their ghost stories to the EPIC Carteret contest by now. *ahem* So we’re going to celebrate with fun creative writing games inspired by some of my favorite writers, starting with Pamlico County poet Malaika King Albrecht.

Catalog of Ghosts

In her book The Stumble Fields, Malaika explores desire, loss, grief, growth, and more in poems like “How to Build a Ghost” and my favorite “How to be Haunted” which I shared in an earlier post. We’re using the title of the section of the book where these poems are found as inspiration for our first game “Catalog of Ghosts.”

You can use any deck of playing cards, tarot cards, or oracle cards for these games when I call for cards, or even Pokemon cards or Magic the Gathering cards. The sky is the limit. You could even use cloud formations or constellations for that matter.

  • Draw five cards. Each represents someone or something that haunts you. Explore the image, the symbols, the numbers, and allow them to take on personal meaning.
  • Write a five stanza poem, one sentence per stanza, one ghost per stanza. The nature of the sentences, the lengths and line breaks, are up to you, only strive for one powerful subject and one compelling action verb per stanza.
  • Choose one ghost to commune with for the remainder of the workshop.

How to Build a Ghost

Our second game is inspired by Malaika’s poem “How to Build a Ghost” and by one of my all-time favorite artists Professor Pam Wishbow’s House Ghost, randomized instant haunting quest packs, which includes “a randomized set of cards to jumpstart or identify your local haunting.”

  • Collect an old photograph, a page torn from a forgotten book, a postage stamp, and a card. These items are clues to the identity, backstory, or mystery of your ghost.
  • Analyze your items and brainstorm how they could be interconnected. The photo might suggest the ghost’s appearance or era, the stamp could hint at a geographical or historical context, the book scrap might provide a piece of the ghost’s story or personality, and the card could symbolize the ghost’s unfinished business or the nature of their haunting. However, that is only one possible way to read the clues.
  • Follow your imagination and your intuition. Don’t try to tell the story. Study the clues like a paranormal investigator, and make notes to develop later.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

In Italo Calvino’s novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies, travelers arrive at a castle (or is it a tavern?) pale and shaken with fear. They are all eager to share their harrowing stories, but their experiences have rendered them unable to speak. Instead, they tell interwoven stories using the symbolic language of tarot cards, which they have found on their well-laden feast table.

For our game inspired by the novel, tell the story of your ghost in four cards. Your writing partners will interpret your picture story, and then we’ll share our interpretations to compare and contrast story lines. This gives everyone new paths and possibilities to explore as we develop our stories.

  • Choose a card to represent your ghost.
  • Pick three cards to tell the ghost’s story. Each card represents a key element of their story:
    • The first card symbolizes the inciting incident of the ghost’s tale.
    • The second card represents the climax.
    • The third card indicates the consequences.
  • Trust your intuition. Don’t overthink it. Just pick three cards already and lay them out for all to see in the appropriate order.

Next CCC Class: Author Platform Essentials

I’m on holiday hiatus from creative writing at Carteret Community College until February 3, 2024, when I’ll be leading a workshop on building your author platform. It’ll be four weeks of support as you explore effective strategies and practical techniques for developing a robust online presence through social media, websites/blogs, and email newsletters. We’ll talk about challenges and opportunities, study exemplars, and do fun writing stuff, so sign up at the school.