Are you ready? This will test your mathematical, historical and creative writing skills.

Imagine a Beloved of your own. What kind of animal are they? What is their name? Who was their special person? How long have they been a ghost? The thing about ghosts is that they might be 125 or 763 or 492 or even 891 years old. All you have to do is subtract your ghost’s age from the current year and you will get the last date they were alive. Like this:

2020 ( current year) – 354 (ghost’s age) = This ghost died in 1666

This tells us a lot about your ghost animal. For example they would have lived in a time of plague and fire, King Charles II was on the throne and great scientific breakthroughs were being made. Maybe your character is a cat that once belonged to Thomas Farriner, the owner of the Pudding Lane bakery where the Great Fire of London began? Or maybe they are a parrot that belonged to Issac Newton? There are endless choices!  Click here for a timeline  which will help you to roughly figure out what was happening in the world when they were alive .Were they a Victorian or maybe a Norman? Did they live in a time of battles or discovery?  Did they meet Darwin or Shakespeare? These things can really affect who a character becomes. Let your imagination go wild!

Once you start to think about the time a character lived in, it really brings them to life, even if they are dead!