Image source: DanielAlon 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
Time for the prize announcement and new challenge!
Last week's prompt was embarrass and the skill targeted was to add conflict to your story.
Great work, everyone! There were some wonderful stories that contained strong conflict. Our selections of this week's winner and honorable mentions reflect how well writers dealt with conflict in their stories.
Selecting honorable mentions and the winner is never an easy choice. A significant factor that influences the decision is quality of engagement with others in the community.
Here are this week's honorable mentions, all of which added strong conflict to their stories and also featured the prompt, 'embarrass':
@restcity with the story Shook
Jallah’s heart beat like it was running a marathon. The girl he had just kissed, the girl he liked, had the same feelings for him as he did for her!? That still didn’t erase the fact that they had just kissed in someone else's house! And she liked it!
@mrenglish with the story Ashton's Perversion
What would he want with my number she wondered. Sure, Mary had always had a little crush on Ashton I mean who wouldn't but him asking for her number was weird, really weird but something in her told her to give him her number and she did not knowing how stupid it was for her to do so.
@cool08 with the story Sham of a Marriage
Everyone was silent as we all watched the whole drama. From the back, I could hear her chuckles. A big embarrassment. Omolewa getting married to a dunce.
@popurri with the story The Inner Combat
After this performance, the students and all the staff of Los Jardines del valle school felt emotionally committed to this oath, they remembered it as in a fantastic dream. Samuel kept his promise and the Ninja suit was stored in a trunk in his room, because he knew he would no longer need it
@yuki-nee with the story Monster
That was the last straw. Unable to hold his temper any longer, the aging general kicked the ground and dashes towards the monster and did a downward slash. The slash was so fast that one would be hard-pressed to believe that it came from a man of Hector’s age. However, despite the speed of the slash, the sword hit nothing but air
And the winner of the embarrass/adding conflict to your story challenge is... @lordtimoty with the story Secrets and Sugar.
Vera’s cheeks turned the shade of a sweet strawberry syrup, and she sunk into herself as the segment producer chuckled, ‘Desserts Queen dethroned’. Yet, as the footage rolled on the television later that night, Vera felt a sense of relief wash over her.
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
@wrestlingdesires
@zyzymena
@radenkusumo666
@diikaan
@assegai
@kei2
@katleya
@lordtimoty
@abigail04
@popurri
@iyimoga
@bettyhandayani
@mypathtofire
@agmoore
@humor0404
@marynn
@riverflows
@lightpen
@cool08
@fantom22
@mrenglish
@kingobonnaya
@restcity
@itsostylish
@diebitch
@danladi
@young-boss-karin
@madamnaomi
@dwixer
@farahikram
@raymondpeter
@buezor
@merit.ahama
Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt!
This Week’s Prompt
The inkwell is fortunate to have many members who are eager to write. However, the curation team does not have infinite resources. In order to be fair to all writers, we have decided to ask our members to publish only one story per week. If members choose to publish more than that, they may. However, only one story will be curated.
It would be wise to use talent on the best story you can write so you can receive the optimal curation. Remember, Quality over Quantity. Moving forward the Ink Well Team believes this will provide a better experience for writers and curators.
At last, the prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is proud. The skill challenge this week is to focus on character description. You can read about this in @jayna's article, Writing Character Descriptions in the Inkwell's Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips. Describing your characters is one of the most direct and perhaps fun parts of writing your story. You have to consider motivation, circumstance and physical traits in creating characters for your readers.
What should you do with the prompt, proud? And how do you handle the skill challenge? Here are some additional details:
Proud: This is an interesting word because it can have positive and negative connotations. Pride can motivate us to do better, and pride can be our downfall. What does the word proud mean to you? What does it mean to your story? Surprise us.
Describing Character: Usually, if readers are not interested in a character, then they lose interest in a story. Try to create dynamic, unique characters in this week's story. As suggested already, you will find a more thorough discussion of this issue in the essay Writing Character Descriptions.
A week from now, we will select a winning story that demonstrates this skill and utilizes the prompt. 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
- #55 Lense
- #56 Perfection
- #57 Making and Breaking Rules
- #58 A Reckoning
- #59 Blossom
- #60 Temptation
- #61 Happiness
- #62 Footprint
- #63 Frequency
- #64 Sailing
- #65 Fortune
- #66 Worry
- #67 Adventure
- #68 Shadow
- #69 Motor
- #70 Embarrass
Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, 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 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/
@zeurich, @jayna, @felt.buzz, @marcybetancourt, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @agmoore, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @kirlos, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2 and @deraaa.
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