The Ink Well Fiction Prompt #109 - Plus Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

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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.

Special Reminder: In addition to the weekly fiction challenge we offer a monthly challenge. Check out our March fiction contest ending March 31! 10 Hive to the winner!

Important FAQs about The Ink Well!

What Is The Ink Well All About?
The Ink Well is a creative writing community. We only accept fictional short stories and creative nonfiction stories. This means:

  • No novels, chapter stories or multi-part stories
  • No poems
  • No introduction posts
  • No memes
  • No photography posts
  • No advice columns or self-improvement articles

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 suitable for all ages. We do not allow stories depicting violence, rape, brutality, or gore. 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, dialogue, 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.

Important tips!

  • Only post 100% original content that does not appear elsewhere in any form.
  • Engage with others in the community by reading and commenting on their work.
  • Make sure your story is clearly inspired by the prompt.
  • Remember to link your story to the prompt post.

Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

Time for the prize announcement and new challenge!

Last week's prompt was the first line: "two strange things happened that day," and the skill challenge was to create interesting characters.

Stories From the Previous Week

Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt!

Honorable Mentions
Our honorable mentions of the week are:

Third Place: Wins 2 Hive

Two strange things happened that day —my birthday, a day fated by the gods for me to discover my true identity, and a falsehood that lurked at the heart of my home.

The loud beat of the local drums in the early hours woke me up from a deep sleep where I dreamed of a weeping woman who called out to me from the recesses of a dark cave. I shivered from the cold morning air despite the beads of sweat on my face and chest.

It was still dark outside, the perfect time to gear up and sharpen my weapons in preparation for the hunt.

Second Place: Wins 3 Hive

We scrambled through thickets, leaped over bluebells, falling over each other, venturing off the well-trodden path and into the arms of the untamed wilds. We ran until the only sound - pounding hearts, and blood pulsing hard and fast beneath our temples. Having escaped, we paused to catch our breath. We took the time to examine our bumps and bruises, battle scars to be brandished proudly in the days to follow. Taking in our surroundings, realisation hit that we had ventured into unfamiliar territory. We stood aghast, staring at each other.

First Place: Wins 5 Hive

Two strange things happened that day. The day the stars from the sky fell, Laila came face-to-face with her wishes, and she rode on them like a chariot into the night.

Laila sat beside her father while they grilled the last batch of sweet potatoes they had harvested from their small farm. The evening was crisp and quiet around the hill where Laila and her father camped in their little hut made of clay and thatch. Only the melodious sounds of crickets and chirping birds could be heard around. Laila listened intently far down the hill. The distant sound of villagers retiring was the highlight of her day.

Congratulations to @kemmyb, @samsmith1971, and @kei2!

Okay, let's launch the new prompt!

This Week’s Prompt

The Ink Well is fortunate to have many members who are rising talents! We would like everyone to think of these weekly prizes as a showcase of just a few of the very best stories, as well as an opportunity for our members to be inspired by reading some polished stories that demonstrate excellent storytelling skills.

Please Note: We try to curate as many stories as possible, but do not curate every story published in The Ink Well, due to the volume of posts.

Prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is inspired by item #6 in our collection of 50 imagination ticklers: "What if that loose floorboard was actually a hidden passageway?" Our skill challenge is creating a story hook.

By "creating a story hook," we mean we are looking for a really interesting opening that pulls the reader into the story. Be sure to have a look at the article on hooking your readers in our Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips for inspiration.

What to do with this prompt?

Follow your imagination. Explore the passageway! What is there? A treasure? Something alive? Something... that was once alive??

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! Be sure to read the contest rules below.

Note: As always, please avoid violent, gory, bloody, brutal, sexist or racist themes and language, erotica and other NSFW (not safe for work) content, stories with a political or religious agenda, and stories featuring abuse of any kind. (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:

  1. Deadline: NEW: You have SIX DAYS to write for the prompt. We are now adding countdown timers to our contest posts so the contest ends one day before the new one is posted. This will give us more time to read all contest stories.
  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 #inkwellprompt #theinkwell and #dreemport, if you are also posting your story to the DreemPort site.
  4. COMMUNITY SUPPORT: Visit the work of at least two other community members and comment on their work.
  5. 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(s).
  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 all image source links.
  7. Length: We request that story word counts are a maximum of 1,500 words in 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:

Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!
@jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @millycf1976 and @grindan

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Questions? Ask The Ink Well on Discord.

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We invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @millycf1976 and @grindan.

How to Follow Our Curation Trail

You can follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.

How to Delegate to The Ink Well

We welcome delegations! These support our community in many ways, including helping us to provide support to quality content creators through curation and contests.

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A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@jayna, @felt.buzz, @zeurich, @marcybetancourt, @agmoore, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @samsmith1971, @grindan, @jackdeathblack, @josemalavem, @riverflows, @stuartcturnbull, @itsostylish, @morey-lezama, @evagavilan2, @popurri, and @mrenglish.

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