The Ink Well Prompt #65 - 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 create a strong arc in your story.

You guys are amazing! There were some really good demonstrations of this skill. An arc serves as the backbone of a story. Readers especially appreciate the last part of a story arc, the conclusion. This is when the central conflict of the story is resolved. Because developing a strong arc is so important, we'd like to include a few examples of stories in which this skill was clearly evident.

In selecting honorable mentions and the winner there are so many great stories to choose from. It's not ever an easy choice. One of the factors in choosing these stories is community engagement.

Here are this week's honorable mentions, and excerpts from their stories:

@dwixer Captain Wades

It was too late for captain wades when he realized he was heading toward an iceberg. The steering became stiff as he struggled to change direction, soon Adam joined the force but gave up trying when he realized the iceberg was closer than he thought. They feared death from being trapped in the middle of a large river.

@popurri Margarita's Voyage at Sea

On the beach the townspeople have gathered to wait for Mr. Jesus's boat and are greeted with applause and shouts of joy. Ana, Antonio and Carmen are among them and when they see them they embrace with tears in their eyes.

@rayt2 Don't Look at the Gold

No matter how Benno, the skipper, reduced the water quota per sailor, it was not enough for the rest of the journey. It was a little easier at night, but with sunrise, all sixty of the sailors, including Komu, his assistant, could hardly get out of the water, holding on to the ropes in case of sharks. The thirst was so intense that everyone stopped eating and was suffering from fever.

@doubleworld The Accursed>>A Different Story

I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one our ancestors were told.

@katleya Gina Navigates the Sea of Life

Giulia manages to deliver the girl. They too would leave the country immediately.
When the nurses on duty become aware of the baby's disappearance, they inform the authorities. The police search for them but do not find them. The next day Gina, depressed, leaves the hospital with her baby.

And the winner of the create a strong arc challenge is... @tengolotodo with the story Iceberg to the Rescue.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

Wee Johnny was sat on his bed polishing his pride and joy. He had been doing this for the last forty-two minutes. Last week for his fifth birthday his Uncle Archie had given him a white sailboat and promised that he would be back at the weekend so that he could take wee Johnny to sail his sailboat in the local pond.

Congratulations to @tengolotodo, 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, Sailing.

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

@popurri
@hopestylist
@davidbright
@merrymay22
@kingobonnaya
@ipexito
@theawesononso
@nurudeen081
@wrestlingdesires
@samsmith1971
@restcity
@smokyice
@merit.ahama
@chidubem26
@diikaan
@yhuddee111
@lordtimoty
@modifiers
@funshee
@katleya
@daniella619
@zyzymena
@isabelpena
@ddn688
@abigail04
@hdprinter
@idlemind
@rayt2
@dwixer
@tengolotodo
@diebitch
@lightpen
@fantom22
@cool08
@ghazale64
@repayme4568
@young-boss-karin
@kelseyimoh
@iyimoga
@anonymous02

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 Fortune. For this week we will revisit as our challenge an essential part of every good story: the hook. Create a story in which you begin with a strong first line, a hook, that pulls the reader in.

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

Fortune: We have all used this word in many ways. We can refer to great wealth, a fortune. Or, we can declare that someone is very lucky, fortunate. Or perhaps we might say that fortune has smiled (or not smiled) on someone. Use your imagination. Come up with your own interpretation.

The Hook. We've all experienced the challenge of writing a great first line, one from which a reader cannot turn. Make your story irresistible with the 'hook'.

What is this exactly? Details may be found in @jayna's excellent essay on the topic, Hook Your Readers, in the InkWell's Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips.

The examples below may be powerful first lines.

  • The howl pierced her soul.
  • She hung to the prow of the ship and prayed she would survive the night.
  • As the masked man counted down from ten, she trembled.

Think about your own story, and come up with 'hooks' that are more enticing than these examples.

If you read @jayna's article, you will get an idea of how to go about creating a great 'hook' for your story. Mastering this skill will help you to become a better story writer.

A week from now, we will select a winning story that has a strong 'hook'. 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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