Image source: jameswheeler 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 lost and the skill target was to create vivid scenes.
Great work, everyone! There were some very vivid scene descriptions in the stories submitted. Our selections of this week's winner and honorable mentions reflect how well writers dealt with this prompt and skill challenge.
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 provided great scene descriptions in response to the prompt.
- @madamnaomi with the story The Eve of Christmas
It was that time of the year again. A festive period, it was Christmas Eve and the mall was packed full. People were shopping, trooping in and out of stores and into the next one. Everywhere was hustling and bustling. Anyone could get lost in the crowd due to the beehive of activities.
- @amaponian with the story The Time Machine
He was a physicist in the year 2741. The ship that carried him, designed and built by himself, was a kind of complete, self-sustaining ecosystem, capable of sustaining the lives of three crew members indefinitely. It was pyramid-shaped and capable of creating energy from several different sources, including air, earth, water, light, cold and heat. Recharging the proton batteries often wreaked havoc on the sorrounding land, so he chose remote regions for that operation
- @lightpen with the story Lost in an Imaginary Future
John is a handsome guy with such a kind heart. He's the kind man every girl wants. I wish I have him as a friend and probably as a lover going forward. That heart melting smile. The lovely diastema. Oooooh my God. We will make a perfect couple.
- @fantom22 with the story The Loyalty of a Lost Dog
One day, Anthony saw that a very small, cute little, about 1-month-old, dog in the shape of a cotton ball was crying while sitting under a tree, Anthony picked him up in his lap and brought him home, bringing it home, he made a beautiful puppy home for him and kept the puppy in that house and started taking care of him.
And the winner of the lost, scene description challenge is... @mineopoly with the story Lost
The tranquil reservoir violently erupted and I begun to spin in the direction of the current. Luckily I knew how to hold my breath and remain calm. Still I drank more water than I had ever planned to. As I spun from one side of the reservoir to the other side in circles I looked around for any signs of life. I didn't see any other creature in the entire reservoir just endless walls of white porcelain.
Congratulations to @mineopoly , 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
@lordtimoty
@gi-de-on
@bettyhandayani
@humor0404
@mrenglish
@lightpen
@fantom22
@iyimoga
@popurri
@greatideas
@emeka002
@itsostylish
@samdove
@madamnaomi
@katleya
@cool08
@abigail04
@stellageorge
@kelseyimoh
@giftjames
@wrestlingdesires
@assegai
@eunoia101
@buezor
@merit.ahama
@dennnmarc
@jane1289
@young-boss-karin
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 wonder. The skill challenge will be to try writing in a particular genre. @jayna explains what a genre is in her essay, Characteristics of the Genres. This essay may be found in the Inkwell's Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips. The genre we will try this week is magical realism.
There are writers in the Inkwell community who write often in this genre. To other authors, the genre may be a stretch. That's how we grow as writers, by reaching and trying new things. As @jayna explains in her essay:
This genre is characterized by magic that is part of our everyday world. To write in this genre, you don’t build an entire world; you incorporate the supernatural into this one. Everyday people walking among us can have spectacular powers, and that is perfectly natural within the context of the story.
There is also an essay in Thought.com that offers a good description of magical realism.
What should you do with the prompt, wonder? And how do you handle the skill challenge? Here are some additional details:
Wonder: This word is a gift to writers. It can be a verb, or a noun. It can be modified slightly to be an adjective, as in 'wondrous'. The word and the prompt are invitations for writers to exercise imagination.
We have all felt wonder, or have wondered at some time in our lives. Use your imagination, and create a story in which wonder and magical realism come together.
Here is an example that might help you to get started:
- It was an ordinary evening, on an ordinary day. Ten-year-old Jason skipped along his familiar path into the forest. There he leaned against his favorite, time-gnarled oak. The tree shifted a bit, reached down, and lifted the boy onto its loftiest branches.
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:
- 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.)
- Story link: Post your story in The Ink Well community, and post a link to your story in a comment on this post.
- Hashtags: Please use these hashtags: #fiction #writing #inkwellprompt #theinkwell and #dreemport, if you are also posting your story to the DreemPort site.
- COMMUNITY SUPPORT: Visit the work of at least two other community members and comment on their work.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- #1: Heart and Soul
- #2: The moment when...
- #3: Beauty with a twist
- #4: The Way Home
- #5: A Matter of Time
- #6 50 Story Ideas
- #7 The Library
- #8 All the way to tomorrow
- #9 Legend
- #10 Three Words
- #11 World Building
- #12 Childhood Summers
- #13 50 Imagination Ticklers
- #14 Railroad
- #15 Cats - 750 words
- #16 Your Birthday
- #17 Action, Dialog and Narrative
- #18 Change
- #19 Tea Time or Tee Time?
- #20 Summer Camp
- #21 Main Street
- #22 Fireworks
- #23 Picnic
- #24 Run
- #25 A word of advice
- #26 Winding road
- #27 Mirror
- #28 Shipwreck
- #29 School Notes
- #30 Three Words: Scooter, River, Midnight
- #31 Flash Fiction Contest
- #32 A Fork in the Road
- #33 Shadows
- #34 Three Words: Island, Witch, Cake
- #35 Full Moon
- #36 Graveyard
- #37 Jack-o-Lantern
- #38 Family Ties
- #39 Longing
- #40 Feast
- #41 Gift
- #42 Season of Light
- #43 Believe
- #44 Elf
- #45 Holiday
- #46 New Year
- #47 Unlikely Hero
- #48 Inheritance
- #49 Under the Light of the Moon
- #50 Three Words: Shoes, Mood, Adventure
- #51 They're Here
- #52 Artist
- #53 Headlights
- #54 Tomorrow
- #55 Lense
- #56 Perfection
- #57 Making and Breaking Rules
- #58 A Reckoning
- #59 Blossom
- #60 Temptation
- #61 Happiness
- #62 Footprint
- #63 Frequency
- #64 Sailing
- #65 Fortune
- #66 Worry
- #67 Adventure
- #68 Shadow
- #69 Motor
- #70 Embarrass
- #71 Proud
- #72 Guide
- #73 Impression
- #74 Lost
Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo and @yaziris
Interested in joining our community? Start by joining Hive!
We 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.
You can follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.
We welcome delegations! These support our community in many ways, including helping us to provide support to quality content creators through curation and contests.
@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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