The Ink Well Fiction Prompt #107 - Plus Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

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Hello and welcome to the The Ink Well weekly fiction prompt and prize announcement! The Ink Well is a Hive blockchain-based social media community of creative writers. If you love to write short stories, we invite you to join us. Or peruse the work of our community members.

Note: We always launch our prompt posts with important information. So be sure to check it out first! Then we invite you to read on and see what we have in store for this week's prompt.

Special Reminder: In addition to the weekly fiction challenge we offer a monthly challenge. Check out our February fiction contest ending February 28! 10 Hive to the winner!

Important FAQs about The Ink Well!

What Is The Ink Well All About?
The Ink Well is a creative writing community. We only accept fictional short stories and creative nonfiction stories. This means:

  • No novels, chapter stories or multi-part stories
  • No poems
  • No introduction posts
  • No memes
  • No photography posts
  • No advice columns or self-improvement articles

The Ink Well is all about creativity, quality, community, and engagement. As such, we ask the following:

  • Please take the time to get to know the community and read other writers' work. Everyone who posts in The Ink Well is expected to read and comment on at least two other stories for each piece you post.
  • See our catalog of fiction writing tips and make use of our resources. (Many of our writers are developing awesome skills, and you can too!)
  • Put effort into your posts. Review and edit your content for errors before publishing.

What are the community rules?

You can find our community rules at the top of The Ink Well community (right side of the page).

Please read the rules before posting in The Ink Well, as we outline the "do's and don'ts." If you can't find them, you can read them here.

Our community rules are designed to make our community a safe, welcoming, plagiarism-free space for self-publishing original short stories suitable for all ages. We do not allow stories depicting violence, rape, brutality, or gore. If you have questions, please read this article explaining our stance on violence.

What does it take to get rewards in The Ink Well??

We refer you to the above description of what The Ink Well is about. If you are not getting great rewards, it is likely for one of the following reasons:

  • Your story has many grammatical errors. (This is easily fixed with the tips in our post, Help for the Grammatically Challenged.)
  • Your story lacks some important elements of good fiction, such as character development, dialogue, scene details or a story arc. (See our catalog of fiction writing tips for information on these important aspects of short stories.)
  • Your story lacks originality or does not follow our community rules.

Important tips!

  • Only post 100% original content that does not appear elsewhere in any form.
  • Engage with others in the community by reading and commenting on their work.
  • Make sure your story is clearly inspired by the prompt.
  • Remember to link your story to the prompt post.

Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

Time for the prize announcement and new challenge!

Last week's prompt was "reality TV," and the skill challenge was to write great dialog. You guys produced some fantastic and imaginative stories for this prompt!

Stories From the Previous Week

Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt!

Honorable Mentions
Our honorable mentions of the week are:

Third Place: Wins 2 Hive

'It's a television.' Bindy says. She can't help the reverence in her voice. It's been a long time since she's seen one. It's much easier out in the mountains, with no debris from the world that was. They have been able to create their own, however, on the edge of a lake, in a pretty little shack they would never have been able to afford in '23. Now, anyone could set up home wherever they like, and not pay a penny. The joys of the apocalypse.

Second Place: Wins 3 Hive

Mika looked at the others and opened her mouth to speak, but then realized she didn’t know where to begin. “He flies. But--” She blurted this out, then began to stammer. “Well first, there’s a whole process that -- You see, it was just the two of us one night after work… I was petting him and felt a small object attached to him.” She said this while kneeling down to show them. Mr. Hirata bent down to see closer as she moved some orange fur out of the way to show a valve stem. It looked almost like one you’d see on a tire. She looked up at the others, who were watching intently, then looked back down as she began to twist off the cap. Everyone gasped and stood back as there was a sound of air pressure being released. They watched in shock as the hefty feline not only began to deflate, but he also started to change appearance. As he shrunk in girth, his fur became scarce and a glossy vinyl material began to show through. It was as though Pilot was being transformed into a cartoon version of himself.

First Place: Wins 5 Hive

Kruzmaka fires a shot of intensity on his young listener and continues: "Do you see the metaphorisation of Mother Earth - you could also call her the Virgin Earth - in these expressions of doing violence? Where man is seen as the brutal monster, causing Gaia pain and sorrow? Where you felt just a minute ago the urgent need to rush to the poor maiden's aid?"

"Ah, that is why you told me the story? Because you think that we humans treat our earth monstrously?"

Congratulations to @riverflows, @littlepiggies, and @erh.germany!

Okay, let's launch the new prompt!

This Week’s Prompt

The Ink Well is fortunate to have many members who are eager to write. It would be wise to use talent on the best story you can write so you can receive the optimal curation. Remember, Quality over Quantity.

Please Note: We try to curate as many stories as possible, but do not curate every story published in The Ink Well, due to the volume of posts.

Prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is: the things that go bump in the night. Our skill challenge is the story arc. See if you can create a conflict and build suspense, and then resolve the conflict with a satisfying resolution. That's what makes a great story arc! Be sure to have a look at the article on story arcs in our Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips for inspiration.

What to do with this prompt?

Tell a ghost story, if you like, or a story about the fear of spooky things.

Maybe a child must visit her grandparents each year when her parents travel to a conference, and their house is old and creaky. What's that sound down the hall? Was there a bump under the bed?

Or perhaps a couple thinks it would be fun to stay overnight in a house that is known to be haunted... and it turns out to be more "bumpy" than they bargained for.

Of course burglars, intruders, and rodents go bump in the night too... there are many possibilities!

But whatever you do, don't make it end with "it was just all a dream." (See our article on dream endings.) Good luck!

A week from now, we will select a winning story that demonstrates this skill and utilizes the prompt. Of course, we will also be looking for overall quality in the winning story. Good luck!

Note: As always, please avoid violent, gory, bloody, brutal, sexist or racist themes and language, erotica and other NSFW (not safe for work) content, stories with a political or religious agenda, and stories featuring abuse of any kind. (We have a complete article about The Ink Well stance on violence and brutality for more information.)

If you don't feel inspired by this prompt or the featured image, feel free to peruse any of our past prompts or our collection of idea-generators:

Weekly Prompt Rules:

  1. Deadline: You have a week to write for the prompt, until the next one is posted. (Note: You can write for any of the prompts anytime. This is just a guideline to be included in the weekly round-up in the next prompt post.)
  2. Story link: Post your story in The Ink Well community, and post a link to your story in a comment on this post.
  3. Hashtags: Please use these hashtags: #fiction #writing #inkwellprompt #theinkwell and #dreemport, if you are also posting your story to the DreemPort site.
  4. COMMUNITY SUPPORT: Visit the work of at least two other community members and comment on their work.
  5. Title: The title is up to you. You can come up with any title you wish. You do not need to name it after the prompt or include the prompt word.
  6. Images: Please only use images from license free and creative commons sites, like Pixabay, Unsplash and Pexels. Images you find on the Internet are copyright protected and cannot be used. Be sure to provide the source link.
  7. Length: We request that story word counts are a maximum of 1,500 words in length (preferably 750-1000 words). This is just a guideline. Longer stories are okay too, but they tend to get fewer readers. Additionally, The Ink Well admins appreciate keeping to that maximum story length for our time management. Thank you!

Reminder: Be sure to also read our community rules. The reason for the repeat reminder is that we see many stories describing brutality of women, children, or animals, or that have excessive gore or violence, and we must mute them. Please do not post these stories in The Ink Well. We want our community to be a safe and comfortable place for all readers.

Here are the past prompts if you would like to use them or refer back to them:

Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!
@jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @millycf1976 and @grindan

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We invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @millycf1976 and @grindan.

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You can follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.

How to Delegate to The Ink Well

We welcome delegations! These support our community in many ways, including helping us to provide support to quality content creators through curation and contests.

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A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@jayna, @felt.buzz, @zeurich, @marcybetancourt, @agmoore, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @samsmith1971, @grindan, @jackdeathblack, @josemalavem, @riverflows, @itsostylish, @stuartcturnbull, @morey-lezama, @evagavilan2, @popurri, and @mrenglish.

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