The Ink Well Prompt #63 - 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.

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 show and not tell in your story.

You guys are amazing! There were some really strong demonstrations of this skill. It is a great skill to develop. It brings readers into the story. It allows them to be in a scene, to feel and see what the characters are experiencing. Because this is such an important skill, we'd like to include a few good examples of establishing a story that demonstrate the skill, Show, don't tell.

In selecting honorable mentions and the winner there are so many good stories to choose from. It's not ever an easy choice.

Here are this week's honorable mentions:
@harlowjourney The Unicorn Whisperer

For example, the average unicorn emits sparkles from his forehead horn at a rate of approximately five million sparkles per minute. In case you are concerned about the environmental impact, the sparkles counteract pollution, and have the side effect of making people feel better and behave better towards one another.

@the-last-elf Elf Prints

Back at home, Braves room was decorated like a tree house. With several elf knights standing on his little war table. He had the complete Elf attire, Caps, socks and all, locked up in his cupboard. Next to his elf staff was a green box with bold paintings which read; Elf gems. In that box was all the tiny clues I have ever sent his way. His obsession for Elves was cute.

@idlemind Mirror

I was already a few walks away from Granny’s place when a bush of wild tiger orchids caught my attention. Its yellow petals with brown spots were like dancing fairies, waving me to pluck them. But I stopped and instead went on my journey. The whistling cool breeze of the mountains was calling me. The swaying, dancing branches of the gigantic trees beckoned me to follow them so I can dance with nature. The melodious singing birds pitched their most lovely tune just to invite me to come over.

@theawesononso Peace After War

I already feel my knees getting sore as I walk up the stairs of the old building. With every step I take, I can hear the squeaky sounds of the old creaky floor boards. Finally I get to the last step and knock on the door right in front of me. The old wooden door hasn’t been replaced in years. Unlike other doors in the building, this one has a lot of moss growing on it and fine parts breaking out making it look like it would fall apart in no time

@lordtimoty When Clichés Are Footprints on Our Minds, or Ursula Writes a Novel

Looking around her room, she attempted to find something which would act as her muse – to allow her to find a flourish in her expression in the pursuit of a dust jacket on her debut novel which praised every word from the opening sentence. She spied her slippers poking out from her cupboard and she felt overcome with a coldness that only the warm fluff around her feet could cure. She raised herself indelicately from her seat and fetched her shoes

And the winner of the Show don't tell challenge is... @abmakko with the story Home.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

The tires crunch against the gravel as Henry abruptly stops the car in front of a courthouse building, he steps down from the car, welcomed by a choir of chirping cicadas in the hot summer

Congratulations to @abmakko, 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, Footprint.

Here are the authors who posted stories in response to the prompt.

@temileke
@itsostylish
@lazythoughts
@rayt2
@farahikram
@brujita18
@mrenglish
@harlowjourney
@cool08
@lightpen
@lordtimoty
@abmakko
@repayme4568
@abdul-qudus
@fantom22
@the-last-elf
@kingobonnaya
@iymoga
@katleya
@dwixer
@zyzymena
@raymondpeter
@kemmyb
@diikaan
@buezor
@merit.ahama
@kingkenny44
@fragozar01
@idspecial17
@theawesononso
@samsmith1971
@popurri
@daniella619
@davidbright
@merrymay22
@ghazale64
@luckydrums
@jazzhero
@diebitch
@joseph23
@wrestlingdesires
@jmis101
@ddn688
@lenaspiritual

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 Frequency. And your skill challenge is to create a story in which you avoid Author's Intrusion.

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

Frequency: This is a word that has many applications. You might think of someone of another generation to whom you don't relate. You might say they are on a 'different frequency'. Or you might refer to the way radio waves are transmitted. More commonly, frequency refers to how often an even might occur. Use your imagination. Surprise us with your interpretation.

Author Intrusion. This is a phrase that some of you may not have come across before. There are times in a story (some stories) where the author deliberately intrudes and speaks directly to the reader. If done correctly, this can be fine. However there are other times when the author intrudes without intending. In this week's stories your challenge is to avoid author intrusion.

What is this exactly? Details may be found in @jayna's excellent essay on the topic, What is Author Instrusion? in the InkWell's Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips. Basically, if the author offers information in a story that the character could not possibly know, that is author intrusion. Or, if the author writes dialogue for a character that demonstrates information or background inconsistent with the character, that is author intrusion.

For example:

  • A child looks out the bedroom window into an especially dark night. It seemed so long since her father had come to see her, but she could not even tell time so had no true way to gauge the frequency of his visits.
  • "That is a terrible noise," a man exclaimed to the radio operator. "Whatever it is I wish it would stop."
  • A woman exclaims to her reading group that she cannot communicate with her children anymore. The children seem to be operating on a completely different frequency and she does not understand them.

If you read @jayna's article, you will get an idea of what is meant by 'author intrusion.' Understanding this issue will help you to avoid missteps in your future writing.

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:
@zeurich, @jayna, @felt.buzz, @marcybetancourt, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @agmoore, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @kirlos, @semarekha, @adncabrera, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2, @deraaa, and @rayt2.

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