Image source: geralt 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 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 the story arc. An arc introduces a conflict that is essential to the narrative and resolves that conflict.
The community was amazingly successful in meeting this challenge. There were many stories with strong arcs. The conflict was well defined and the author provided clear, satisfying (though not always happy) resolution. An arc in the backbone of your story. It gives the story structure. In addition to the prize winner, we'd like to call out a few stories that have great arcs!
Here are the honorable mention stories of the week, with an excerpt showing the conflict the defines their arcs:
The doctor came back with the blood test results and he looked more worried than before. Adrian met him half way. > “What is it, doctor?” He asked as Kelly joined them.
“What I’m about to tell you, you have to think deeply about and act fast, but not irrationally
Ah, I can no longer hear the sound of the piano. At this rate, my hearing would be completely gone by tomorrow.
She was a little afraid of what she would face, because even though she had experience in rescuing trapped people and putting out forest fires, she was not used to seeing death up close.
Tara sits still, her eyes focused on her hands while her mind runs amok. Lance wouldn't really stand her up would he?
After losing everything, he only plunged himself into the misery of the streets as penance for his guilt. He wouldn't let another father go through that. Something had to be done.
The Winning Entry
And the winner of the story arc challenge is...@doubleworld, with the story Today Is Tomorrow. Here are some excerpts from the story:
"Tomorrow is going to be the best day of my life."
And so begins a harrowing saga, which grows more confusing as the day progresses.
"Is this your constant route now Mr Best in the nation."
The plot thickens:
"Why is everyone acting weird today."
Because this is a story with a great arc, we learn why everyone is acting so weird. Read the story and find out for yourself.
Congratulations to @doubleworld, who will receive 5 Hive as the winner!
Stories From the Previous Week
Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt, “Tomorrow."
Here are the week's stories. Be sure to read and support these authors for their work.
- Tomorrow Never Knows, by @litguru
- Hertz by @joalheal
- A Little World by @diebitch
- 24 Hours to the Big Day by @joseph23
- Again [EN|ES] // Otra vez by @marbrym
- Tomorrow Is Promised, But Is It Promised To YOU? by @deeanndmathews
- Finding His Voice by @killerwot
- Tomorrow by @milezofplay
- The Revelation by @daveyjones7
- We Are Not Promised Tomorrow by @abdul-qudus
- My Tomorrows are Few-and Yet They Are Many by @wrestlingdesires
- Beth Macdonald plagiarizing Shakespeare's Plot by @lordtimoty
- Tomorrow by @raymondpeter
- Life and Grief by @kirlos
- Her Tomorrow by @ozohu
- Living together Forever by @boscohage
- Hold on With Me by @deraaa
- Tomorrow Is My Birthday by @darkrose
- The Truncated Future of Vicente Fabian de Moncada y Alarcon by @katleya
- My Million Dollars! by @dlmmqb
- Tomorrow's Silence by @zeraton
- The War by @dwixer
- Today is Tomorrow by @doubleworld
- No Tomorrow by @khaleesii
- Better Days Ahead by @jessy01
- If Tomorrow Never Comes by @samsmith1971
- Who Knows Tomorrow by @fantom22
- The Witch's Curse by @kingkenny44
- Woldoff the Brave by @cool08)
- Fatal Assumption, by @blueeyes8960
- A Flight to Tomorrow by @mrenglish
- An Unfortunate Visit by @princessbusayo
- Will Tomorrow Ever Come? by @iyimoga
- Hey, There Is No Signal by @rayt2
- The Journey of a Goddess' Oracle, by @kemmyb
- Fake Friends by @restcity
- The Church by @prinzemike
- The Temptation by @itsostylish
- Greedy Desires by @kingobonnaya
- The Second Chance: Tomorrow May Be Too Late by @emeka002
- A Miracle in the Mountain by @popurri
- The Last Leaders of Tomorrow, by @ghost.queen
- The Greedy Man by @jerryzikko
- Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow by @haveyaheard
What a great collection of stories. Thank you, everyone!
This Week’s Prompt
Finally we come to it, the prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is lens. And your skill challenge for the week is establishing a story's setting.
What should you do with this prompt? And what does this skill challenge mean? Here are some additional details:
Lens: This word has literal and symbolic meanings. Does it refer to a camera? Binoculars? A telescope? The eye? Or does it merely refer to a perspective, a way of seeing the world? What kind of a lens will you use to tell your story? To establish your setting? What will you see, or what will the reader see, through that lens?
A story's setting: Your setting establishes the place and time of your story. It places the reader in the environment you envision. You want to provide enough details so that the readers feels part of the story. In establishing a setting you give the reader clues about what a place looks like, sounds like, even smells like.
For example:
- She could hear nothing but the sound of her tires. The trees were starkly outlined against the full moon.
- The kitchen reeked of rotted meat and the sink was overflowing with unwashed dishes.
- The midday sun was relentless and the deserted stretch of beach offered no refuge from the blistering heat.
We have a great resource for you. Read the article What Is Your Story's Setting? in our catalog of fiction writing tips to learn more about the art of a story arc and why it's so important.
A week from now, we will select a winning story that includes a vivid setting. 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
- #53 Headlights
- #54 Tomorrow
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, @rayt2 and @fantom22.
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