- Jo and Joe (twins) are taken by their father to a department store to buy winter jackets. When that’s done, he shops for shoes for himself. The twins sneak away to explore. They find themselves in the vast warehouse behind the store, where there is no cell phone connectivity. When they lose track of time and are locked in for the night, they discover the warehouse’s terrible secrets (which you will make up). Write what happens.
- On a stormy day, Jo and Joe and their mother visit the Cloisters, a medieval art museum. Because of the weather, the museum isn’t crowded. While their mother loses herself in admiring the Unicorn Tapestries, they wander on to the rest of the exhibits. In one room—no visitors, no guard—they see an ancient chest. They know they shouldn’t, but they open it and find a parchment, yellow with age. They know they shouldn’t, but they take it home with them. Write what happens.
- Alex goes to the Halloween Scare Fair to enter the Haunted House Hypnosis competition. Before they go inside, Alex and the other competitors are hypnotized. When they do go in, nothing seems to be what it really is, but there are similarities. For example, the white refrigerator appears to be an upright coffin. The winner of the competition will find the real door to the outside through its disguise before the hypnosis wears off and will win a prize (you decide what that is). Write what happens.
- Jake and Jackie are part of a hiking group. They’re both fast walkers and have gotten ahead of the others. They don’t know each other well. Jackie isn’t much of a talker, and Jake talks almost all the time because silence makes him uncomfortable. Write their conversation and what develops between them—good or bad.
- https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/unit-history/conflict/world-war-2-1939-1945#:~:text=New%20York%20State%20had%20a,in%20the%20US%20armed%20forces: “With the boom in defense production, raw material shortages began to appear. Thus…” New York State “…responded with scrap collections on the town level. …More than 300,000 people participated, mostly New York State schoolchildren, in collecting used rags, rubber, and wastepaper for the war effort.” Samuel and Samantha look for scraps along the bank of the Hudson River. They find something surprising, possibly important for the war effort—and dangerous. (If you don’t live in New York, you can adapt this to where you do live.) Write what happens. If you like, you can tell this as diary or journal entries by one or both characters.