🎃 Halloween Worldbuilding Worksheet 🎃

Establish the tone, era, and feel of your world. What kind of Halloween does this world experience? Begin with the broadest strokes before painting in the details.

Every haunted world has a past. Trace the origins of the darkness and how it took hold. The history you create here will echo through every other section.

Define how the supernatural operates. Rules create tension — what can and cannot be done? The scariest worlds have clear limits that force impossible choices.

Populate your world with things that go bump in the night. Be specific about biology, behavior, and lore. The best monsters have rules, desires, and histories of their own.

Power rarely goes unchallenged. Who holds sway in your Halloween world, and who opposes them? Every faction should want something — and be willing to do terrible things to get it.

The geography of dread. Name and describe six essential places that define your world. Every great horror story is inseparable from its setting.

Flesh out the people (and non-people) who drive your story forward. The best characters carry the world's themes in their bones.

How do the living (and unliving) mark the seasons, appease the dark, and celebrate survival? Culture makes a world feel lived-in and real.

Define the central tension. What hangs in the balance for your Halloween world? Without stakes, horror is just atmosphere — stakes make it a story.

Capture everything that doesn't fit elsewhere — seeds for future stories, unanswered questions, and world-expansion ideas. This is your sandbox.