The Ink Well Prompt #69 - Plus Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

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Image source: ThePixelman 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

Time for the prize announcement and new challenge!

Last week's prompt was shadow and the skill challenge was to work on establishing a consistent voice in your story.

Great work, everyone! There were some wonderful demonstrations of establishing voice. Our selection of this week's winner and honorable mentions very much reflect how well writers developed stories about shadows, with a focus on establishing voice.

Selecting honorable mentions and the winner is never an easy choice. A significant factor that influences the decision is quality of engagement with others in the community.

Here are this week's honorable mentions, all of which created a strong and consistent voice for their 'shadow' story:

@litguru Mona

A light projected onto one of the cloths. An old movie reel of a little girl playing with a man by a pond. She picked flowers and gave them to him. Scenes shifted: a tropical beach, trails in the forest, mountain views, and many other exotic places. There was a woman too, but she stayed behind the camera save for the odd blurry snapshot of her.

@abigail04 A Shadow Behind the Scene

He stood just like a light that covers every other lights and the rock that is bigger than every other rock. He was the only man who is beyond every reasonable doubt in the eyes of men. The one surrounded by the heart of gold.

@zeraton The Shadowed Writer

His eyes opened wide in astonishment and alarm as he heard the question, and he answered rather hastily: "I fear that your safety depends solely upon your compliance with my instructions. I cannot answer that question, for I am forbidden to do so, yet I shall try my utmost to help you. Do you know where the place where the book is hidden?"

@dwixer The Withered Tree

"There are more strange things about this tree," Adams said, looking at the direction of the sun. "It's noon, yet the shadow of this tree is casted far right, this land is not safe". They had come to the cave with the intention of resting for some days and became worried about the land they had settled.

@diikaan Creating My Own Shadow

"I understand where you're coming from dad. Yes the company has grown, but I've been miserable." Mike complained "I have felt incomplete since I left my screenwriting job to take over the family's business. That's five years of unhappiness and I can't continue like this" Mike concluded as he hoped that his father would understand.

And the winner of the shadow/establishing a voice challenge is... @lordtimoty with the story This Is a Tale Told By an Idiot

The light slouching through the blinds continued to cut the room into slithers of grey and darkness, transforming the woman’s appearance from poised grace only moments earlier, to something far more sinister. She reached down to take a cigarette out of the case hidden by her garter belt, and with a practised flick of her wrist she demanded flame from her lighter. Further shadows danced around the room, offering enough luminescence to see the clock face. It was not quite time; not long, not soon, but not quite.

Congratulations to @lordtimoty, 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

@marbrym
@katleya
@riverflows
@young-boss-karin
@buezor
@davidbright
@raymondpeter
@hopestylist
@merit.ahama
@merrymay22
@matyr
@abigail04
@yhuddee111
@yuki-nee
@popurri
@diikaan
@idspecial17
@daniella619
@preshtrump99
@zeraton
@dwixer
@kelseyimoh
@nurudeen081
@iyimoga
@blackalbino1
@lightpen
@cool08
@madamnaomi
@maryjacy
@kingobonnaya
@itsostylish
@assegai
@ddn688
@mrenglish
@fantom22
@litguru
@diebitch
@lordtimoty
@bettyhandayani
Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt!

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 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 Motor. The skill challenge this week is to practice plotting your story. Not every writer plots a story carefully from the outset, but it is good to practice this when developing your personal writing style. You can read about this in @jayna's article, Should You Plot Your Story in the Inkwell's Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips.

What should you do with the prompt, Motor? And how do you handle the skill challenge? Here are some additional details:

Motor: People use this word in many ways. It can be a literal use, such as is depicted in the illustration at the top of this blog. It can be in a figurative sense, implying that one may have little energy--or a great deal of energy.

Plotting Your Story: Many times people write from pure inspiration. They sit down and the story pours out of them. Unfortunately, sometimes this results in a disorganized or illogical story line. Try plotting your story this week in advance. Know where your character is going before you sit down to write, and know where you want your character to end up. This exercise may help you to develop a more dependable, logical narrative arc. As suggested already, you will find a more thorough discussion of this issue in the essay Should You Plot Your Story.

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, 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 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, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2 and @deraaa.

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