Image source: Engin_Akyurt 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
As we announced in our February newsletter, we are launching a weekly challenge to generate some fun and excitement while also helping our members to work on the different skills involved in story telling. Last week's challenge was to incorporate "world building" into your story.
And the winner of the world building challenge is... @lordtimoty, with the story Humanity's Paradox: A lesson in how to be human. Here's an excerpt from the story:
The mountains loomed ominously over the plains beneath it. They were shrouded in a tangled maze of deformed trees, each ruthlessly reaching for the limited light which filtered through the deep cloud cover above. Large brown flying creatures busied themselves in the canopy, concerned to hunt for lesser prey before the weather turned, and the ice took them into death. The earth further below was not hospitable. In places, it was hard and cracked and rough mounds of dirt would seek to trip, and in other spots, the mud would thicken and ooze and a wrong step would leave you gurgling for breath.
This is such an excellent example of world building. We loved it!
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
Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt, “They're Here."
You guys did great. We got a nice view into some worlds outside our own, and saw some great scene and setting descriptions. Thank you, everyone!
Here are the week's stories. Be sure to read and support these authors for their work.
- Inheritance, by @raymondpeter
- Rain, by @itsostylish
- Hey Roney, They're Here, by @rayt2
- The Green Creatures Are Here, by @mrenglish
- ANANKÉ, THE DEMON, by @piratethanos
- Hey There, by @ricardo993
- You Can Go Home Again, by @litguru
- Finally, At Last, by @khaleesii
- Shhhhh... They're Here, by @fantom22
- Still Alive., by @milezofplay
- Shhh, Quiet!, by @mosin-nagant
- Kruzmaka, by @erh.germany
- Amusement Park in Forest, by @radenkusumo666
- She's Stoop to Conquer, by @prinzemike
- Aliens and Humans, by @emeka002
- The Messy Wedding, by @princessbusayo
- Wages of Sin, by @sonofremi
- The Land of MAGIK, by @blueeyes8960
- They Came from Above, by @zeraton
- Either/Or, Fine, by @amirtheawesome1
- Frontline, by @deraaa
- The Drifting Sparks, by @jfuji
- The Alien's Valley, by @dwixer
- Trees, by @wahyunugraha
- What Will You Do When They Are Here?, by @iyimoga
- Lost in the Woods, by @stellageorge
- They're Here, by @farahikram
- Mr. Rohan to the Rescue, by @abdul-qudus
- Rowan Miracle, by @kemmyb
- The Greedy Mayor, by @joseph23
- They're Finally Here, by @smartgirl5
- Is There Any Bond Between Friends, by @abidemiademok21
- They're Here, by @rimamty
- Invisible Voice, by @smilejerry
- The Mind Seekers, by @joalheal
- Humanity's Paradox: A lesson in how to be human, by @lordtimoty
- His Biggest Wish, by @merit.ahama
- They Come Here, by @rokhani
- Hey Boy!, by @ghost.queen
- They're Here!!!!!!, by @chincoculbert
- Welcome to Zeelis, by @khoola
- When the Monster You Hate Saves You From The Monsters You Built, by @deeanndmathews
- Your Mind, Your Passion, by @abigail04
- Stage Fright, by @b0s
- The Robot, by @strangegravy
- The Day I Saw Him, by @marbrym
- Algorithmic Husband, by @diebitch
- They're Here, by @raymondpeter
- The Veil, by @myztiqakusuk
- They Are in the Stars, by @gracielaacevedo
- TV show: Shoes, humor and adventure, by @katleya
Well done, everyone!
This Week’s Prompt
At last, the prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is Artist. And your skill challenge for the week is character description.
So, tell us stories involving artists or artwork... and include great character descriptions. Give us a lens by which to see what your character looks like, how your character talks, what kinds of things he or she wears. For inspiration, we have a great article our catalog of fiction writing tips called Developing Memorable Characters.
A week from now, we will select a winning story that wows us with great character descriptions!
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
- #51 They're Here
Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @wrestlingdesires and @yaziris
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, @wrestlingdesires 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/
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @marlyncabrera, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @stormcharmer, @adncabrera, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2, @bertrayo, @deraaa and @rayt2.
Click banner to visit our community page
Find us on twitter by clicking the banner above.