Image source: Pixabay
First, a word of appreciation for all in the community who have been posting stories, providing feedback on one another's posts, and helping our community to grow and thrive! Thank you!
Okay, onto the news. Here are the topics in this newsletter:
- Updates to our Rules and Guidelines — Yay!!
- The Ink Well Is Now Open to Creative Nonfiction!
- Winners from the October Contest!
- November 2022 Contest — 10-Hive Prize + 2nd and 3rd Place Prizes
- Find Us on Discord
- Creative Inspiration
- Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail
Updates to Our Rules and Guidelines — Yay!
The Ink Well is ever evolving. Our goal is to continually attract motivated, creative people with a desire to tell stories and entertain readers, and we are always striving to be one of the best communities on Hive.
As part of our evolution, we are making the choice to switch up a few of our guidelines:
- Old guideline on posting frequency: In the past we have asked our writers to aim for one post per week maximum in the The Ink Well. This was to address spam and content farming issues, which are now under control.
- New guideline on posting frequency: Post as regularly as you would like, but please note that — as always — quality is what matters in The Ink Well community. If you want more rewards, please spend time developing good stories, rather than posting more stories that are not well-written and edited.
We will curate to the best of our ability given the volume of posts in the community.
- Old guidelines on violence: In the past, we had a very strict policy about violence. This was because we very often faced the prospect of reading about bloody killings, which is just too hard to take on a daily basis.
- New guidelines on violence: Do not post graphic violence of any kind. Do not post about abuse of children or animals, or about rape, torture or brutality. And do not post NSFW (Not Safe for Work) content. Beyond that, please keep it "PG." We borrow this term from the movie world. It stands for Parental Guidance and means that as long as the content is not too disturbing for young teenagers, it is allowed.
But wait... there's more! Read on...
The Ink Well Is Now Open to Creative Nonfiction!
We are expanding our horizons! The Ink Well is now open to the genre of "creative nonfiction." We began this as a trial (see the initial post here, and it's going well! So we are now incorporating creative nonfiction into our community permanently.
What Is Creative Nonfiction?
We like this definition from an article on creativenonfiction.org:
Simply put: Creative nonfiction is true stories, well told.
With creative nonfiction, you are using the literary and storytelling tools of a fiction writer to craft stories from real life experiences. Set the scene. Give the details. Profile the characters. Give us the dialog, as best you can remember it.
You can learn more about creative nonfiction and see examples in our weekly creative nonfiction prompt posts. The newest prompt is always pinned to the top of the community.
Housekeeping Notes
Be sure to always use the appropriate tags:
- #fiction for fictional stories
- #creativenonfiction for non-fiction stories
- #inkwellprompt for all stories written for prompts in The Ink Well
And remember to add your story link to a comment on the prompt post. Otherwise, we may miss it.
Winners from the October Contest!
Thank you to everyone who participated in our October writing contest, with stories and comments. As always, we received some great stories!
The contest rules involved writing one story in The Ink Well during the month of October inspired by the prompt dare.
Thank you to all participants!
Winners!
Here are our three winners for the October, 2022 contest:
We have selected @katleya's story, The coffin, the coffin... as the prize winner! Congratulations to @katleya! You will receive 10 Hive.
In second place, we have selected @wrestlingdesires' story, I Dare You, You Dare Me. Congratulations to @wrestlingdesires! You will receive 6 HBI.
In third place, we have selected @fantom22's story: Dare. Congratulations to @fantom22! You will receive 4 HBI.
And the rest of the participants in the contest of the month are honorable mentions, for their wonderful stories. (And of course The Ink Well admins can post for the prompts, but we are not eligible for prizes.)
November Contest!
Get ready to put your creativity to work! For November we will again award a first place price of 10 Hive, second place of 6 HBI, and third place of 4 HBI for the monthly contest.
For the month of November, 2022, the prompt is leave!
Wait... what do we mean by "leave?" Are we talking about someone giving another person an order to "get out?" A person who is going away? Or are we talking about the things that fall from the trees and have to be raked up?
Well that's up to you! Interpret it as you wish. What's more, you can choose to write a fictional story or a creative nonfiction story.
Here's how to participate:
Write one story this month in The Ink Well inspired by the word "leave."
Post a link to your story in a comment on this post.
At the end of the month, we will choose three winners.
Hint: We are looking for a high-quality story. Don't rush. If you're writing fiction, be sure to use the skills we highlight in our weekly fiction prompts — great settings, good character building, strong dialog (which is often missing from stories we receive), and a good story arc that resolves well in the end. If you're writing non-fiction, employ your best storytelling skills and draw us in. Wow us with your prose!
And finally, we recommend using our tips in the article Help for the Grammatically Challenged to identify errors in your story before posting.
Good luck!
Find Us on Discord
Our Discord server is a great place to chat with other community members about the craft of writing.
Please pop into our Welcome channel, read our guidelines for conduct, and then feel free to interact with other community members or ask The Ink Well Team a question in the #ask-theinkwell channel.
Discord invitation link: https://discord.gg/Bng7mMsaQj
Creative Inspiration and Skill Building
Source: Myriams_fotos on Pixabay
In The Ink Well, we're not just about posting content and getting rewards. We are about building skills that help you earn the best possible rewards because your readers love to read your stuff!
We are here to nudge you to strive for greatness. You know how it feels when someone says, "Wow, just wow! I loved your story!" That's what it's all about. And the good news is that the rewards follow. If people love your work, they give you great upvotes. They seek you out. They want more of your creative content. And curation accounts like Curie, which we utilize and support, will give you the best possible upvotes too.
So what are you waiting for? Use our resources to build your skills and improve your writing. Here are some of the resources we provide:
- Creative inspiration
We encourage and support ideas and creativity by publishing a weekly fiction contest prompt on Monday nights, and a weekly creative nonfiction contest prompt on Saturdays. Additionally, we have a nearly inexhaustible list of ideas to spur your writing. And these resources are included in every weekly prompt for reference: 50 Loglines, 50 Story Ideas, and 50 Imagination Ticklers - Skill building opportunities
We have a great catalog of fiction writing tips that can help any writer learn and grow. You can learn about characters, conflict, scene building, dialog and more. We hope you take advantage of it. And here are some important tips that can help you improve your writing craft:
-- Draft your content in Google docs, or use Google docs for spell checking and syntax checking. It is very easy to do and it is explained in the post Help for the Grammatically Challenged.
-- Make sure your story has the key elements of a story, including character development, scene setting, dialog, action, a conflict, and a resolution. (A story arc is especially important for fiction, of course.) We provide resources to help you with all of these important fiction elements in our catalog of fiction writing tips.
-- Review your work before posting. You will most likely find a missing word, a grammatical error, a misspelling or a sentence that does not start with a capital letter, etc.
Thank you for reading our newsletter! We are here to encourage you and help you on your writing journey.
Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail
Want to support our community, our contests, and our rewards for great quality content? See the table below. We have made it super easy. Thank you, thank you, thank you! We have a goal to continue increasing the support we give to our wonderful, hardworking and dedicated authors!
You can follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.
We welcome delegations! These support our community in many ways, including helping us to provide support to quality content creators through curation and contests.
@jayna, @felt.buzz, @zeurich, @marcybetancourt, @agmoore, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @seeger, @itsostylish, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2, and @popurri.
We invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris and @itsostylish.
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