The Ink Well Prompt #62 - Plus Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

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Image source: kordi_vahle on Pixabay

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.

Important FAQs about The Ink Well!

Here are answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about The Ink Well.

What Is The Ink Well All About?

The Ink Well is a short story community. This means we only accept short fiction. (Fiction means stories that came from your imagination, not from real life.)

It also means:

  • No novels, chapter stories or multi-part stories
  • No poems
  • No introduction posts
  • No essays or other non-fiction
  • No memes

Just fictional short stories!

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. We do not allow stories depicting violence, brutality, or abuse of women, children or animals. 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, dialog, 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.

Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

As we announced in our February newsletter, we are now running a weekly challenge to generate some fun and excitement while also helping our members to work on the different skills involved in story telling. Last week's challenge was to work on establishing a writing voice.

You guys are amazing! There were some really strong examples of stories with distinctive voices. This is a great skill to develop. It helps the writer to 'get in the skin' of the characters and it helps readers to relate to characters, and action. Because this is such an important skill, we'd like to include a few good examples of establishing a story's voice. Here are this week's honorable mentions:

@smilejerry Perception

He shook his head, trying not to recall what he had been dreaming about before the unwanted interruption by the alarm clock. Jide was already late for work, again, this has been happening several times now. He simple was losing it, nothing was going on as planned.

@lazythoughts On the Couch

“You should’ve called 911. Something might’ve happened. Call them now!” I fumbled through the pockets of my handbag. But as I see from my peripheral view, Calli wasn’t doing anything, so I thought she was too shocked and didn’t have the muscle to even pull her phone out of her pocket.

@itsostylish Puppy Love

At the time, I didn’t feel my heart at all, there was no stab of pain; just red-faced embarrassment. Good Lord, not even Gary, my best man could look me in the eye. Onlookers became bystanders to my shame. Quietly, but with a collective conscience, they hung their heads, but stole sidelong glances, furtively, as if I were bleeding to death in front of them rather than just playing the stooge.

@stormcharmer The Menu

The customer snorted slightly as the waitress walked away to retrieve the video monitor. Staring after her, she wondered if the waitress was trying to hold dentures in. She tapped against her own strong teeth and said a small prayer of gratitude that she had been born with a strong set of choppers. Some things in this life were simply the luck of the draw - like her teeth, or the color of her natural hair.

@piratethanos Stranded

“How could I have come to be so alone?” My mind raced back to the horror that got me stranded on this desolate Island somewhere around the South China Sea. The fear from almost drowning. The unsuccessful struggles to hold unto someone... anyone, so we could paddle ourselves to safely. I had blacked out only to be awoken by my now familiar friend and foe, slapping against my legs while gently caressing my face with its saltiness.

And the winner of the establishing a Story's Voice challenge is... @kemmyb, with her story The Special Bond. Here's an excerpt from the story:

Olette felt depressed. She felt the fading away had begun. Sighing deeply, she folded her translucent, shiny wings and dropped through a tiny hole where the big trees in the Pixie woodlands overlapped and formed a big canopy. She hovered a little above the ground to pick off an injured bee from a sunflower before dropping finally to the ground.

Congratulations to @kemmyb, who will receive 5 Hive as the winner.

Okay, let's review fiction entries from last week's prompt and launch a new one.

Stories From the Previous Week

Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt, Happiness.

Here are the authors who posted stories in response to last week's prompt.

@mrenglish
@merit.ahama
@kirlos
@cool08
@daniella619
@fantom22
@piratethanos
@kingobonnaya
@smilejerry
@young-boss-karin
@kemmyb
@davidbright
@blackalbino1
@danladi
@artworkers
@lenaspiritual
@hdprinter
@repayme4568
@modifiers
@buezor
@ddn688
@justine619
@itsostylish
@rayt2
@dwixer
@ipexito
@jmis101
@fragozar01
@stormcharmer
@ubani1
@zeraton
@lazythoughts
@iyimoga
@abdul-qudus
@alovely
@exceltogaming
@samsmith1971
@yhuddee111
@popurri
@khaleesii
@diikaan
@theawesononso
@raymondpeter
@wrestlingdesires
@juanvegetarian
@diebitch
@daveyjones7
@ghazale64
@temileke
@merrymay22

Thank you, everyone who posted a story!

This Week’s Prompt

The inkwell is fortunate to have many members who are eager to write. However, the curation team does not have infinite resources. In order to be fair to all writers, we have decided to ask our members to publish one, only one story per week. If members choose to publish more than that, they may. However, only one story will be curated.

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. Moving forward the Ink Well Team believes this will provide a better experience for writers and curators.

At last, the prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is Footprint. And your skill challenge is to create a story that demonstrates the much-repeated recommendation to writers: Show don't tell. To get a better understanding of this challenge, read @jayna's essay, Show Don't Tell in the InkWell's Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips.

What should you do with this prompt? And what does this skill challenge mean? Here are some additional details:

Footprint: A footprint can be a physical thing you see, or it can be symbolic. We speak of footprints when we speak of environmental impact, and when we speak of our legacy for future generations. This prompt has many possibilities. Surprise us with your interpretation.

Show, Don't Tell. Not every critic agrees that this is essential, but many do. In the stories you offer this week we want to 'see' people and scenes. Put us in the story by showing us what you want us to imagine.

For example:

  • A character looks out over the blue sea and notices an oily slick marring the surface: the footprint of an oil company that will remain for many years.
  • A child learns to walk and stumbles through a bit of flour that has spilled on the kitchen floor. The infant's footprints leave an unforgettable trail.
  • A picture in an art gallery by an anonymous painter demonstrates a unique technique. A class of artists observes and busily takes notes as they try to emulate the technique.

If you read @jayna's article, you will get an idea of what is meant by 'show, don't tell'. Mastering this skill will help to make your writing more effective.

A week from now, we will select a winning story that shows control of this writing challenge. 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, and stories featuring abuse of women, children or animals. (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 maximum 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, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @wrestlingdesires and @yaziris

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We would like to invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @wrestlingdesires and @yaziris.

We also invite you to follow The Ink Well curation trail on the Hive blockchain, at https://hive.vote/. Simply navigate to the curation trail section and search for theinkwell (all one word with no @ symbol) and our trail will pop up as an option.

Similarly delegations are possible on Hive using the fantastic https://peakd.com/ Hive Blockchain front end. If you wish to delegate to @theinkwell, you can do this from the wallet section of https://peakd.com/

A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @marlyncabrera, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @stormcharmer, @adncabrera, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2, @bertrayo, @deraaa, @rayt2 and @fantom22.

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