The Ink Well Prompt #41: See this post for prompt and rules

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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.

Important FAQs about The Ink Well!

Before we get to the prompt, we have 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. We do not accept essays, poems, chapter stories or other content. Just short stories! And we are all about creativity, quality, community, and engagement. This means that just dropping by to post some stuff is not acceptable. 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 you post in our community, please be sure to read the community rules (right side of the page) where we outline the "do's and don'ts" for posting in The Ink Well. If you only use a mobile phone and can't see 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 invite you to use the #creativecoin prompt. We are pleased to announce that we are getting some curation attention from the Creative Coin Fund. You can read about it in our recent newsletter.

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 appears to be a retelling of an old folk tale. There's nothing wrong with folk tales, but here in The Ink Well, we are looking for 100% original fiction. We want to see fresh new stories from your imagination, not age-old stories with well-worn themes.

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, “Feast."

We are so very impressed with this community, and all the wonderful and well-crafted stories you produce. But you really "knocked it out of the ballpark" for the feast prompt. Well done, everyone!

NOTE: We were not able to put together a magazine of highlights for last week, but we will be back on our regular schedule at the end of this coming week.

Here are the week's stories. Be sure to read and support these authors for their work!

Thanksgiving Feast, by @sunnyag
Homecoming, by @mrenglish
The Rejected Feast, by @mcluz
A Never Ending Feast at the Writer's Block, by @amirtheawesome1
Sleeping with a Princess 'noodles', by @khoola
Starday, by @wrestlingdesires
Guess Who's NOT Coming to Dinner, by @blueeyes8960
Reunion, by @dwixer
A Celebrated Hunter, by @cool08
"Feast Mode!", by @beautifulwreck
Magic Table on a Caribbean Beach, by @gracielaacevedo
The Ezego Family, by @milezofplay
Party Go Wrong, by @iyimoga
A Strange and Different Thanksgiving Day, by @katleya
This Office Is Not the Exception, by @gabmr
Feast of Fury, by @diebitch
The Cobweb in Our Closet, by @khaleesii
Blood in the Clouds, by @doziekash
Progress Over Time, by @ricardo993
The Coronation, by @chidubem26
Annoying Family Feast, by @cookkris
The World Is a Banquet House, by @deeanndmathews
A Hero's Feast, by @yuki-nee
A Meal with Friends, by @vincric
Food for Home, by @mrnightmare.net
Habits Die Hard, by @ozohu
Mr. Terrorist, by @bruno-kema

Well done, everyone!

This Week’s Prompt

As we enter the holiday season for many cultures around the world, let's discover the traditions through short stories. We will start with the tradition of gift giving.

This week's prompt is: gift. Use this prompt as you wish. If you are part of a culture that celebrates Christmas, feel free to write a story about a Christmas gift. Otherwise, you can write about gift giving in another religious or cultural tradition.

Things to think about:

What is the importance of a gift?
What might happen if a person doesn't like a gift they received?
What might happen if two gifts that are wrapped in a similar way get confused and sent to the wrong people?
What if two people in a new romance agree to exchange gifts, and one purchases something simple and the other gives a highly extravagant gift?
What if a gift given long ago was never opened?

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, NSFW (not safe for work) themes, 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.
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 (NEW!): 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

Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!

@jayna, @agmoore and @gracielaacevedo

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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 and @gracielaacevedo.

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:
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @marlyncabrera, @owasco, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @barge, @lacrucita, @stormcharmer, @adncabrera, @vision-of-esca, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @rypo01, @evagavilan2 and @bertrayo.

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