The Ink Well Prompt #64 - 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 avoid author intrusion in your story.

You guys are amazing! There were some really strong demonstrations of this skill. It is a great skill to develop. It lends credibility to the story and encourages suspension of disbelief. When the author intrudes, it can be jarring to the reader. Because this is such an important skill, we'd like to include a few good examples of stories in which the writer avoided author intrusion.

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:

@davidbright with the story The Secret

The flare originated from the depths of the blackhole's singularity and immediately the ship's proximity sensors blared to life. Something was heading towards us and fast. But what? We couldn't see nor make out characteristics. We tucked ourselves in and braced for impact.

@litguru with the story Duality

The contact with aliens had rocked humanity to its core. They had received the first message thirty years ago as a complex sequence of auditory vibrations in the form of radio waves. Harriet had dedicated her academic career to deciphering this extra-terrestrial language, and the cultural context in which it was produced.

@itsostylish with the story Connection

Of course she wouldn’t jump, she had planned this terror, she knew what she was doing every month of the way, every day she’d purposefully invested in a precarious future. Every irresponsible action she’d taken with peril wafting about her; a welcome release. Respite from the mundane pointlessness that coupled with her inability so elegantly.

@idlemind with the story Emilia

Their neighborhood was small, so it was easy to know what was going on because news circulated there as frequently as the sun rose and set. Everyone would even know who snored the loudest the other night and which couple had the most fights; hence, Emilia’s departure back to her hometown wasn’t spared either.

@lordtimoty with the story 'Do You Come Here Often?' and Other Opening Lines

Without glancing down, he picked up the mug by instinct, and took his first slurp. I knew this move; it sought to unsettle an opponent, to rob concentration and focus – it was meant to make me look up from the board and arch my mouth in an indication of being aghast. I knew all his tricks, and in sitting down opposite, I knew he would move his King pawn to E4 after the charade of indecision was complete.

And the winner of the Avoid author intrusion challenge is... @diebitch with the story Agora the Explorer.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

I looked at the layers of heavy curtains protecting my worldview and shook my head. I did my usual rituals of watching some episodes of my favorite shows, reading a chapter of a book and went to sleep.

Congratulations to @diebitch, 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, Frequency.

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

@kingobonnaya
@isabelpena
@agmoore
@preshtrump99
@fantom22
@marbrym
@isabelpena
@lightpen
@rayt2
@ddn688
@cool08
@litguru
@isabelpena
@trifecta-tt
@katleya
@raymondpeter
@dwixer
@yhuddee111
@lordtimoty
@diikaan
@itsostylish
@zeraton
@joseph23
@nurudeen081
@trifecta-tt
@merit.ahama
@daniella619
@repayme4568
@theawesononso
@wrestlingdesires
@modifiers
@merrymay22
@chidubem26
@kelseyimoh
@smilejerry
@young-boss-karin
@hdprinter
@popurri
@hopestylist
@idspecial17
@fragozar01
@diebitch
@lenaspiritual
@ghazale64
@iyimoga
@davidbright

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 Sailing. And your skill challenge is to create a story in which you create a strong Story Arc.

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

Sailing: This can refer to a form of sea travel. It can refer to an attitude. It can describe the way an object is moving through an activity. As is almost always the case with our prompts, the word has many applications.

Story Arc. We often refer to this when we curate stories in the community. Although some authors like to leave a dangling conclusion, this week that is to be avoided. We would like authors to aim for a complete arc: beginning, middle and end.

What is this exactly? Details may be found in @jayna's excellent essay on the topic, What is a Story Arc? in the InkWell's Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips. We are going to look especially for a strong resolution to the essential conflict in your story.

The examples below offer a beginning and they present a conflict. They all lack resolution, however, a satisfying ending. Without that, the story arc is incomplete:

  • A nanny shows up for work and finds her charge is ill. The parents of the child are leaving on a sailing trip. They will be out to sea. The nanny soon realizes the parents have left no doctor referral and no insurance information.
  • The young man rushes to class. His final exam, the one that will determine his final grade, is about to begin. He slips, and goes sailing through air until he lands with a crash on his ankle. He cannot walk.
  • The artist wanted to paint the perfect nature scene, one devoid of human activity. He raised his paintbrush in the air, and then saw the unmistakable outline of a sail on the horizon.

If you read @jayna's article, you will get an idea of what constitutes a strong story arc. Understanding this concept will help you to avoid missteps in your future writing.

A week from now, we will select a winning story that shows a strong story arc. 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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