Image source: TheDigitalArtist on Pixabay
Hello and welcome to the The Ink Well weekly fiction prompt! 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.
Announcements Coming: Challenges and Prizes!
We have some fun announcements coming for February, so be sure to look for our February newsletter, in which we'll be launching weekly challenges. Stay tuned!
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.
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, “Three Words: Shoes, Mood, Adventure."
It was a great week for interesting, fun-to-read stories on a wide range of themes, and it was wonderful to see how your imaginations took flight based on these three prompt words. Thank you, everyone!
Here are the week's stories. Be sure to read and support these authors for their work.
- Mariah's Garden, by @piragethanos
- The Blind Man on the Bridge, by @juanvegetarian
- The Shoes Spoiled Mood and Adventure, by @fantom22
- Shoe Thief, by @mosin-nagant
- The Rebirth, by @myztiqakusuk
- I Failed in My First Attempt, But I Will Try Again, by @rayt2
- Little Anita, by @princessbusayo
- The Violet Jade Medallion, by @katleya
- The Diligent, by @raymondpeter
- Shoes, Mood, Adventure, by @lordtimoty
- An Adam and Eve Story, by @haveyaheard
- My Shores, My Accessory, by @iskafan
- Spirit of Wedlock, by @mrenglish
- Her Passion for Adventures, by @farahikram
- The First Date, by @khaleesii
- To Blow in a Storm, by @itsostylish
- Diary of a Reluctant Runner, by @strangegravy
- Adventures of a Shoe's Mood, by @doziekash
- Left for Failure, by @idlemind
- The Golden Island, by @cool08
- Two Friends, One Heart, by @deraaa
- The Kingdom of Milk and Honey, by @filipz
- The Adventure to Disneyland, by @abdul-qudus
- Prompt #50, by @joseph230
- The Enemy, by @dwixer
- Wrong Way, by @apeboy
- A Story About Adventure, Shoes and Mood, by @ghost.queen
- The Prince's Achievement, by @merit.ahama
- Shoe, Mood and Adventure, by @iyimoga
- Rush In, by @joalheal
- Appointment with the Dentist, by @popurri
- The Adventurous Travel, by @carlynn
- Like the Other Guys Do, by @philomenob
- The Trip, by @b0s
- Agu the Great Healer, by @ellenklech
- AI Customer Service, by @littlepiggies
- Grandpa and Technology, by @diebitch
- Don't Skip Any Adventures, by @deeanndmathews
- Shoes, Mood, Adventure, by @tough
- The Adventures of Witch Anya and the Shoe House, by @khoola
- Black Belt, by @samsmith1971
- Next Dance, by @vincric
- Going on Adventure for My Son, by @ricardo993
- Beloved Mountain, by @marbrym
- Taking a Break Off Work, by @onwugbenuvictor
- A Forest of My Dreams, by @yaziris
- The Seven-League Boots, by @gracielaacevedo
- The Story of the Barn Ghost, by @jayna
Well done, everyone!
This Week’s Prompt
At last, the prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is They're here.
This prompt hardly needs an introduction, especially paired with the featured image. If you love science fiction, here's your opportunity to shine! Let's see those alien invasion stories.
But wait... what if you're not called to write sci-fi? That's fine too. This is actually a very open-ended prompt. You could tell a story where the persnickity in-laws arrive. Or one in which a band of thugs show up at a beloved local tavern. Or anything else that those two words inspire in you.
Important: there will be an announcement about a new challenge starting February 1 that will nudge our writers to work on certain aspects of writing — with prizes! So don't rush. Be sure to take your time to write a quality story and proofread before posting.
We hope that will get your imaginations started. We look forward to reading your stories!
Note: As always, please avoid 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.
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 tend to get fewer readers. Additionally, The Ink Well admins appreciate keeping to that maximum story length for our time management!
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
Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo and @wrestlingdesires
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 @wrestlingdesires.
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/
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @marlyncabrera, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @stormcharmer, @adncabrera, @vision-of-esca, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2 and @bertrayo.
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