livin' for the angst of it all

Welcome to Whumptober 2026 — Year Nine!

WHUMPTOBER is a month-long, prompt-based creation CHALLENGE (think: Inktober, but whumpier). There are four prompts for each day of the month, giving 124 for you to play with! There is also a list of 15 alternative prompts that can be subbed in for any day to give participants as much creative freedom as possible.

All prompts are meant to serve as inspiration without being taken literally (e.g. you don’t have to include the exact wording of prompts into your work, so if you need to slightly reword a quote, that's absolutely fine). Feel free to run rampant on interpretation. For example, if the prompt is “flame", you could create something with reference to a candle/campfire/fire, your character could have suffered a burn, or the flame could be a reference to an ‘old flame’ - an old relationship. It’s truly down to you!

You can produce work in any media you choose, including but not limited to: writing, visual artwork, photo/video/audio edits, paper crafts and elaborate recommendation lists (not just a list of links). You can participate as much or as little as you want (i.e. you don’t have to do ALL the prompts if you don’t want to) and prompts can be used in any order. They are also free to use even after the event ends.

Please make sure to read the Event Rules and Info and FAQ carefully, as most of your questions will be answered there already. For everything else, you are welcome to come to our ask box or ask questions in our Discord server here.

Information on how to TAG is here.

This year’s AO3 Collection can be found here.

The ‘Anatomy of a Whumptober Prompt’ post can be found here.

As always in the whump community, it goes without saying that these prompts are not intended to glamorize/romanticize real life topics, therefore research is encouraged where needed. Our 'Resources for Writing Sensitive Topics’ post is here.

We’re very excited to see the community come together for yet another year of Whumptober! Go crazy with the prompts, and support your fellow whump creators - we wish you all the best of luck, but most importantly: HAVE FUN!

Happy whumping,

Mods Vanne, Yenn, Kitty and Surro

Text versions of the prompts, including a google doc format, are posted below the cut!

IM CALLING IT NOW OK OK

The first photo is franks opening shot for the season. Hes sleeping at the pitt. He walks out of the room to see robby at the lockers.

and he told us to erase the mark.

when someone - rosie, i think - asked what the mark was for he smiled.

"if you give a novice student an expensive, blank piece of paper, they panic. they think if i start using that i will ruin it. so the first thing i want all of you to do, any time you stare at a blank piece of paper, is to ruin it a little and take the pressure off yourself. pencil erases. anxiety has to be managed."

Afraid of a recipe? Fuck up your prep a little- mildly sloppy knife work is usually easy to fix and ignore. Now something has gone wrong. Nervous about a conversation? Make a purposeful mistake in the beginning that you can correct easily. Move on and keep going. Anxious about public speaking? Screw something up in an easy to ignore way. I like to mispronounce a word.