History That Never Was

It’s time for my favorite writing prompt batch of the year, the October prompts! I am an “Every day is Halloween” sort of person (as possibly evidenced by my improbable skeleton collection, which is the photo on this post (though the octopus skeleton is hiding under the filigree skull)), so October is one of my favorite months in general!

This month it seems earlier than normal, but that’s just the way the weeks fall! October 1 is a Thursday, so you get this five days before October begins!

As always, the first column is Mab’s Drawlloween Club list for 2026. Drawlloween delights me as a name, and Mab is the reason I know about yokai, which I absolutely adore!

Column 2 this year is Hextober 2026, which also has some spooky-themed prompts, but there’s a nice mix there of spooky and non-spooky so you have some alternatives!

Finally, column 3 is Catober 2026. The conceit for Catober is to draw cats doing things, inside of things, etc. I modified these slightly to match the style I do for prompts, but you can click through to the official page for the full prompts as written there, in case you decide to go all in with cats for your October writing prompts!

There is, unsurprisingly, quite a bit of overlap this month, and I haven’t added asterisks for the duplicates. I felt like doing so this month would have resulted in a very cluttered look. As always, do what you like when things are duplicated–skip one, work on the same piece on two days, or try for an alternate interpretation of the duplicate. Whatever you want to do is fine, as I am not your real mom. (I’m probably also not even your fake mom, unless you’re one of my twelve adopted “children.” And if you are one of them, HI!)

Check back on the last Friday of each month (or occasionally the first day of a new month, when that falls on a Friday) for my History That Never Was writing prompts!

Day	Word 1	Word 2	Word 3
1	Moth maiden	Music	Submarine
2	Vampire	Cemetery	Twins
3	Werewolf	Whimsy	Mouse
4	Owl	3D	Witchy
5	Mythological	Frog	Fishbowl
6	Mushroom	Dopamine	Flower field
7	Grave	Snapshot	Space
8	Haunted house	Digital	Pickle jar
9	Frankenstein	Bloom	Bull
10	Jabberwocky	Lattice	Skull
11	Yokai	Liquid	Jumping
12	Raven	Nostalgia	Zombie
13	Mirror	Skater	Ugly sweater
14	Witch	Bird	Sugar skull
15	Tiny terrors	Story	Sushi
16	HistHORRORical	Collage	Apple
17	Lantern	Portrait	Bubble
18	Giant!	Farm	Treasure hunt
19	Cat	Neon	Rain
20	Vile viper	Tattoo	Octopus
21	Strange shadow	Knight	Disco
22	Ghoul	Hobby	Clouds
23	Cryptid	Heart	Kitten
24	Pumpkin	Baby	Ghost
25	Ghost	Pet	Bird
26	Moon	Bookshelf	Pumpkin
27	Siren	Moth	Web
28	Beast	Gamer	Dinosaur
29	Toad	Retro	Leaves
30	Tricksy treat	Dragon	Cactus
31	All Hallows Eve	Monster	Skeleton

Tags: drawlloween, fun for friday, october, writing prompts

This entry was posted by dawn.vogel on Friday, September 25th, 2026 at 6:00 am and is filed under For Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.