Dark | Young Writers Project

Writing Challenges: Inspiration and ideas to spark your creativity every day

Are you afraid of the dark? Let the fear of whatever may lurk in the absence of light, real or imagined, spark your creativity. [Photo credit: YWP Media Library, art by cedar]

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Responses to this Challenge

Apr 10

poem challenge: Dark

TreePupWriter

In the dark moments

Sometimes as I
wait for sleep to come,
I pack up my thoughts and drop them into
other people's bedrooms--
friends, family, the kid I sat behind in class

I try to picture them in bed
Curled up? Lying flat?
Reading by pearly light or
trying in vain to undo today?

The man at the grocery store,
the girl on the bike with the yellow streamers,
the voice on the radio--
I don't know them.
Not even the classmates I've
labeled in my brain--
I can barely see into them, no clearer than
the nighttime outline of my familiar furniture.

Yet all these people lie in darkness now;
what is it that keeps them up?
I want to know who they are in the dark moments.

When the daily happenings--
people, mealtimes, work--
when they all fade into what was,
what parts of them linger?
What do they worry about and
what one hope do they

Posted: 04.10.21

Nov 17

poem challenge: Dark

SpookyCatHalloween

Any Creepers?

   Hello?

   Any monsters in the dark?

   Creepin’ and waiting

   For the perfect moment to pounce.

   I hear a creak and a skuffle.

   Tensing I pull my covers closer

   Over my small head.

   I wrap my body into a pretzel

   And hug myself.

   I squeeze my eyes shut

   I wait a minute and hear nothing else

   I peek an eye open and see it's bright

   And sunny out now

   And I stretch out of bed

   To feel something wet touch my foot

   I choke my scream back down my throat

   And I look down

   To see my dog sitting there

   With her nose smooshed up against my leg

   As a good morning gesture.

And I smile realizing it was all in my head

Once again.

Posted: 11.17.20

Nov 04

poem challenge: Dark

Aster

The monster

It swirls within me,
crouching and tensing its limbs to leap
in an attack on my mind,
my consciousness,
my sanity,
and as it goes,
it shouts to the sky,
I know you.
I know who you are,
I know what you are afraid of,
I know what you dislike,
And I'll use that against you.
And you better believe it will.
Because if you don't-
And even if you do-
It will swallow you.
We've all felt this fear at some point in our lives.
It hides.
And waits.
And plans.
And when it knows the circumstances are the worst-
It leaps.
And it leaps for us all, at some point.
It just leaps higher for me.

Posted: 11.04.20

Oct 30

fiction challenge: Dark

[email protected]

The Frightening Darkness

Mia is afraid of the dark. She has been since she was six years old. She is now twelve and still hates the darkness. She told me that the reason she is so scared is because, one day it was super dark in her room and she heard a car. The headlights stayed in the same spot. She didn’t move, not even to yell or run to her parents’ room. She pinched herself, but she wasn’t dreaming. She heard the stairs creak every now and then and she saw a dark shadow enter her room. It was holding something and smacking it against its hand. She tried to turn on her lamp. The light bulb must have blown. Then the person turned on a flash light and the person was her dad. He said that the power had gone out and he had gone down to turn on the generator. He had to turn on our car headlights to see.

Posted: 10.30.20

Oct 30

fiction challenge: Dark

[email protected]

The Adventures of Getting Sugar

I crept through the dark basement, trying to make as little noise as possible. My dad had asked me to get a bag of sugar, and I wasn’t about to tell him that I'm scared of the dark. I heard a light footstep behind me, and I started sprinting in the opposite direction. I let out a scream and powered my legs faster. The red basketball fell before me so I dodged it and kept going. When I thought I was just about to hit the brick wall of the basement, I stopped and felt for it. When I didn't feel it, I kept going. After a while, I knew I had somehow gone through the wall. I sat down and thought for a moment.

Posted: 10.30.20

Oct 30

poem challenge: Dark

It's the cat

When you turn off the light

That moment when you reach to turn out your light at night and for a flash of a second,
You are unprotected.
Your blankets can not wrap themselves around you to keep your safe,
And you have no earthly way of knowing,
What's about to kill you.
It could be an angry spirit,
The kind your cat sees when she suddenly lifts her head up at night to look at some unknown spot on the wall.
Or a horrible, decaying monster with eyeless white eyes that bore into your soul right before it rips into your flesh.
A cold, bony, clawed hand that grabs at you,
Pulling you toward it.
A corpse could fall on you from a nonexistent trap door in the ceiling,
It's rotting flesh crumbling over you and getting under your blankets.
But usually,
There's just a bug that might fly onto your head,
Which is still creepy, just not as much.

Posted: 10.30.20

Oct 30

fiction challenge: Dark

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The Dolls' Attic

The kids next to me in class were talking about the scariness of the dark.

“Are you scared of the dark?”

“No! I’m not, are you?”

“Of course not If you're scared of the dark, you're a scaredy-pants!”

And so they would go on talking about this. Weird topic if you ask me. I, Linda Sorts was not, ever, a part of these conversations. Was it because of my fear of the dark? No. Was it because they were the school bullies? Well I can’t lie, yes. I might as well have a small fear of the dark. No, not the dark itself, just the things that come out of the dark.

“Now Linda, may you please come up and do problem ten on the board?” asked Mr. Bentley, my 5th grade teacher.

“Why of course, but just so you know, I did problem two. Would you still like me to go again?” I said strongly.

Posted: 10.30.20

Oct 30

fiction challenge: Dark

[email protected]

What Is In The Dark?

Posted: 10.30.20

Oct 29

nonfiction challenge: Dark

Treblemaker

I Am NOT Afraid Of The Dark!

I am NOT scared of the dark.
The soupy inky blackness hardly phases me.
Monsters under the bed?
Pu-lease
Creepy spiders in the covers?
Borr-ing
Electric tentacles of death swooping inside
from the inky blackness of night to paralyze
me with one sheer look from its terrifying face?
What is this? A bedtime story?
Do I look four to you?
You can put me in a room so devoid of light
I can't see the hand in front of my face
and I swear, I will be content. Happy even.
Because in that void of darkness there is nothing I am scared of –
ghosts, banshees, bears, demons, blood sucking vampires –
give me a break.
I'm not scared of shadows, or prehistoric swamp monsters or claw crazy fury beasts.
None of that is real. Besides, monsters are way too big to fit underneath my bed.
I'm rational that way.
I am one with the colorless, shapeless hues of the night.

Posted: 10.29.20

Oct 29

poem challenge: Dark

ZoeBee

Grey

I hate the dark
But recoil at the thought of sun
An idyllic community
Slathered, lounging in joy
Innocence
Conformation
While I may recoil at the wisp of dark curling around the thin of my wrist
At the silence that deafens a jet room
It would be so so so
So
Much worse
To be forced to bloom in the light
So I am stuck in bleak, desolate, stark, barren
Grey
For now

Posted: 10.29.20

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