Image source: Faruk Tokluoğlu on Pexels
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 now running 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 work on character descriptions.
Wow, you guys did it! We read so many fantastic stories, with really rich and detailed characters. We hope you enjoyed the exercise and that you'll keep it up. Even one paragraph that tells us something about a character's facial expressions or character flaws helps us to get involved with that character and your story.
And the winner of the character description challenge is... @kei2, with her story The Canvas. Here's an excerpt from the story:
A man in perhaps his sixties came to sit beside Sesei. He spoke in a strange accent. He had well groomed silky grey hair and beards. His eyes were white and deep like the oceans. Fine wrinkles lined the side of his eyes and his skin was smooth as olives.
Isn't that delightful? Be sure to read her story, because it is well written and interesting from beginning to end!
Congratulations to @kei2, 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, “Artist."
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.
- Just Another Day, by @piratethanos
- The Mural, by @itsostylish
- The Artist, by @samsmith1971
- A Person, by @abmakko
- The Museless Artist, by @khaleesii
- The Blind Artist, by @zeraton
- The Wine and Blood Were Red, by @lordtimoty
- Through Her Hands, by @popurri
- Family or Paintings?, by @kemmyb
- Titan: Spirit!, by @deraaa
- The Canvas, by @kei2
- Deep in the Mind of an Artist, by @cool08
- The Lone Artist, by @dwixer
- In Tinyville, Good Painting Paints You!, by @deeanndmathews
- The First Artist, by @merit.ahama
- A Tale of an Artist, by @davidbright
- True Art, by @diebitch
- Music and Love, by @ghost.queen
- The Signature, by @iyimoga
- The Artist, by @joseph23
- The Love at First Sight, by @raymondpeter
- End of an Artist, by @fantom22
- The Real Artist, by @rayt2
- The Triathlon Artist, by @ricardo993
- The Guest Who Showed Up, by @princessbusayo
- A Passionate Heart, by @emeka002
- Poker Along the Dark Sea's Deep, by @jin-out
- Ristretto, by @mosin-nagant
- Art Festival on a Cruise Ship, by @katleya
- Kimbili and His Mysterious Art, by @mrenglish
- The Art Contest, by @chidubem26
- In the Real Realm, by @abigail04
- Aron the Lonely Artist, by @wahyunugraha
- The Pat of His Eyes, by @joalheal
- I Lost You Again, by @marbrym
- Dead by Midnight, by @doubleworld
- A Million-dollar Painting, by @radenkusumo666
- William an Artist, by @raymondpeter
- You Have an Angelic Beauty, by @farahikram
- The Delimma, by @myztiqakusuk
- Feelings, by @smilejerry
- Meeting an Artist, by @erh.germany
- The Artist, by @chocolatescorpi
- Painter, Gatherer and Hunter, by @gracielaacevedo
- The Artist, by @tough
- The Art of Fortune, by @wrestlingdesires
Well done, everyone!
This Week’s Prompt
At last, the prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is Headlights. And your skill challenge for the week is hook your reader.
What should you do with this prompt? And what does this skill challenge mean? Here are some additional details:
Headlights: First, note that you don't have to write about headlights. A prompt is something that fuels your imagination. You could write about someone who has a recurring nightmare that a car is coming at them and they can't move. Or two kids driving on a lonely country road in the middle of nowhere, and their car headlights go out! Now for the next part.
Hook your reader: In fiction, the "hook" is something that captures the reader's attention fast and makes them want to keep reading. It could be the language or imagery you use in the opening of your story, for example. Or it could a teaser about the character and storyline at the very beginning of your story.
A few helpful notes:
- As a story teller, your job isn't just to tell a sequence of events. Your job is to entice and entertain your reader. A "hook" is one way to make your story compelling so they can't stop reading. When they're hooked, they will not only keep reading to the end of this story, but they will be looking for your next one too!
- We have a great resource for you. Read the article Hook Your Reader in our catalog of fiction writing tips to learn more about the hook and why it's so important.
A week from now, we will select a winning story that provides a great hook. 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
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.
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