The Ink Well Prompt #31 and FLASH FICTION CONTEST! Read the post for rules!

_{Image source: Free-Photos on Pixabay}

Hello and welcome to our week-long FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

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 Community Notes

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.

Please Read Stories by Your Fellow Writers!

Authors, please read and comment on other writers' stories. We request that you read at least two stories weekly, or two stories for each one you publish in The Ink Well. It only takes a little time, and this ensures that we have a thriving and supportive community. It also builds your following and improves your rewards!

Also note that we only select stories for the periodic highlights magazine by authors who are engaging with other members' posts.

Thank you to all of the community members who take the time to read other authors' work and provide comments. You are so awesome!

Okay! Let's review fiction entries from last week's prompt and launch our FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

Stories From the Previous Week

Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt, “Three words: scooter, river, midnight," which invited The Ink Well authors to get creative and craft stories that include the three prompt words. You guys are amazing! You came up with some wonderful and imaginative tales!

Here are the week's stories. Be sure to read and support these authors for their work. We have also featured several of these stories in The Ink Well Highlights Magazine from September 12.

• Learning a New Skill, by @readthisplease
• The Midnight Scooter Ride at Tanda River, by @sunnyag
• Honor Amongst Friends, by @onwugbenuvictor
• The Night Drive, by @yuki-nee
• Midnight Stroll, by @b0s
• Scooter Competition Between Cats and Dogs, by @katleya
• Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, on a Scooter, by @agmoore
• The Pandemic, the Apocalypse and the Bike Thief, by @prayzz
• Scooter, Midnight, River, by @iyimoga
• He Promised, by @ubani1
• Midnight Escape from Manila to Kuala Lumpur, by @juanvegetarian
• Miracle on the Seventh Anniversary, by @kemmyb
• Ringing in the Midnight, by @rokhani
• Grandma, by @gracielaacevedo
• Your Forever Never, by @kaerpediem
• The Dark Scooter, by @dwixer
• The Magical Scooter, by @esther-emmanuel
• The Strength Meets You on Both Sides, by @deeanndmathews
• River, Scooter, Midnight, by @ricardo993

This Week’s Prompt and FLASH FICTION CONTEST

Welcome to our Flash Fiction Contest. This contest replaces our weekly prompt and will last one week. Please be sure to have all contest entries in by 6 pm Central Daylight Time (CDT) on September 20. We will announce the winners within a few days of the contest closing.

For your contest entry, choose one of the following sentences to incorporate into your flash fiction piece. Write a story with a word count between 500 and 1000 words.

Here are your choices. You must include one of these sentences in your story:

1. No one knew where she was going.
2. We watched the spaghetti slide slowly down the wall.
3. The surface of the pond began to bubble and gurgle.
4. We took the long way to avoid the cottage where the troll lived.
5. There was unrest in the city that night.
6. When the curtain moved, I felt a creeping sensation and gasped.
7. The second time Mike and Maxine got married was better than the first.
8. The sign by the door said, "Take an umbrella in case of rain."

If you're not familiar with "flash fiction," you can read about it here.

Contest Rules:

1. Deadline: 6 pm Central Daylight Time (CDT) on September 20.
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 #inkwellcontest #flashfiction #theinkwell.
4. COMMUNITY SUPPORT: Visit the work of at least two other community members and comment on their work.
5. Title and content: 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. For the content, you must include one of the sentences supplied above.
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: No less than 500 words and no more than 1000.

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.

Prizes!

We will select three winners from the submitted stories:

• Best overall story (15 Hive): We will look for a great story line as well as character development, scene setting, story arc and resolution.
• Most original (10 Hive): The winner of this prize will surprise us with an unfamiliar theme or unusual story line.
• Best story arc (10 Hive): For this prize, you must entice us with a great story conflict, build tension, and provide an excellent resolution to the conflict.

If you don't feel confident aiming for any of these achievements, just write a good story. (We may issue additional prizes at our discretion!)

Tip: Edit your story. We cannot emphasize this enough. Read your story carefully before posting it, to look for errors. Better yet, use Google Docs, as described in the post Help for the Grammatically Challenged in our catalog of fiction writing tips.

Have fun and good luck!

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

Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!

@jayna, @agmoore and @gracielaacevedo

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.

_{Click banner to visit our community page}

_{Find us on twitter by clicking the banner above.}