The Ink Well Prompt #87 - 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.

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.

Important tips!

  • Among the factors we look at is quality of engagement with others in the community
  • Please 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 Boo and the skill challenge was to create a vivid story setting. This community really came through with surprising, amazing stories!

Many of our writers created original, memorable stories in response to the prompt. Our selections of this week's winners and honorable mentions reflect how well writers dealt with this prompt and skill challenge.

Update! We are excited to share that in addition to our first place winner, we are awarding a second and third place, in addition to a few honorable mentions. For second and third place we are awarding Hive Basic Income (HBI). The third place winner receives 2 HBI and the second place winner receives 3 HBI.

Here are this week's honorable mentions, all of them written in response to the prompt and skill challenge.

Honorable Mentions

It's been three months since Mike died. Those lovely moments spent with him were very insightful for Philip, Mike was a jolly old man. He missed his friend. He pulled out Mike's phone to fulfill the request he made. Smiling down at Mike's phone, he made a post on his Twitter page,
Boo!!, I can see all of you.
Mike would be so proud.

They followed the lady up a flight of exquisitely carved wooden stairs. When they reached the second floor, each of the travelers was accommodated in a room as beautiful and clean as the rest of the house. The bathroom was large, bright tiles on the walls and a large, ivory-colored bathtub in the center of the room.

I take a deep breath as I step into the room with my mouth open, the word on the tip of my tongue.
But she turns around with a smirk on her face before the words leave my lips.
"Boo! Boo! I got you!"
I scream out anyway as I run to hug her, I got to sneak up on her at least.
She laughs out loud, mirth twinkling in her beautiful gray eyes.

"I hope this party turns out to be good," Asher grunted before we pushed the door open. Like her, we expected it to be the most thrilling and interesting it will ever be. Mabel found it kind of hard to get in because of her doughnut costume. With not too much effort, we dragged her in.

He told us scary stories, then he'd say his horrible characters would hunt us in our sleep. Most of the time, he would turn off all the lights and lock us up in the classroom. In one word, Mr Palmer was the weirdest and most scary human being that ever lived.

Third Place: Wins 2 HBI

Through narrow bars, I watch them build the gallows in the courtyard. Gregory coughs and begins to stir at last, I slip back into the shadows, feeling the barrier between us disperse. He sits up, and looks around with panic constricting his features. "Peak-a-boo!" I chirp as I jump out at him.

Second Place: Wins 3 HBI

Akiro and Raiko had a secret plan but had not told their wives. They would meet in Granada and later inform them. Raiko is afraid that his wife, Kyomi, will not understand and feel her loyalty betrayed. It seems that, immersed in his world of History, he had not realized Kyomi's subtlety and strength.
Akiro and Amelia entered the Alhambra in the morning.

And the winner of the Boo/story setting challenge is... @riverflows with the story Becoming. Congratulations, @riverflows. You will receive 5 Hive!

They walk on cobbled streets, up mountains to see monastries, waterfalls. His feet hurt, she carries him. He cries when his legs stay put for too long and she rubs and kisses them. He can sleep on a train on luggage and not wake for hours whilst she stares out of the window and imagines how life will unfold. He hides behind streetlights in Krakow, knowing she can see him, but making her laugh as he springs out and shouts: 'Boo!'

Okay, let's review fiction entries from last week's prompt and launch a new one.

Stories From the Previous Week

@merit.ahama
@kingsleymark
@justine619
@treasure-joshua
@madamnaomi
@abigail04
@wrestlingdesires
@iyimoga
@mide-ola
@seeger
@bahnhoft
@balikis95
@maryjacy
@nelson-george
@billionz
@popurri
@cool08
@officialvictor
@george-dee
@grindan
@royaldiadem
@ricardo993
@mrenglish
@tozill
@littlepiggies
@lordtimoty
@fantom22

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

This Week’s Prompt

The Ink Well 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 Midnight. Our skill challenge will be to create a strong story arc. @jayna discusses creating story arcs in her essay, What Is a Story Arc? A simple way of looking at the arc in your story is to ask yourself, Does this have a beginning, a middle and an end? Keep in mind that the end of a story offers readers a resolution to the central conflict of the story.

In writing for the prompt, you don't have to use the exact word of the prompt. Derive inspiration from it, and let your imagination go to work.

Here are some ideas to help get you started on your story.

  1. The teenagers planned to steal the ancient church bell so it could not chime at midnight.
  2. Alicia and Jason defied their parents and decided to elope together at midnight.
  3. Every night Andrea woke in a sweat at exactly midnight. Why?
  4. The moon disappeared behind dark clouds as the clock stuck midnight. A bloodcurdling howl pierced the air.
  5. The hooded figures hurried to their homes. No one wanted to be outside when the clock struck midnight.
  6. As soon as she finished painting the room she realized midnight blue was a very depressing color.
  7. "You can't come home after midnight on a school day," Janice's mother scolded.
  8. The scouts defied the Curse of Sunken Woods when they went treasure hunting in the middle of the night.
  9. The beautiful black stallion was given the perfect name: Midnight.
  10. "Jonathan", Marisa hollered. "I told you the party had to end at midnight. Send everyone home, now!"
  11. Andrew began his hike in the darkest, loneliest time of night.

These are just some ways in which the prompt might inspire a story. You can probably come up with much more interesting ideas of your own.

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:

  1. 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.)
  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.
  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 the source link.
  7. 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:

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Interested in joining our community? Start by joining Hive!

Join here at Hive Onboard

Already a Hive member? Click Subscribe at the top of The Ink Well community home page.

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, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris and @itsostylish.

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, @zeurich, @felt.buzz, @marcybetancourt, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @agmoore, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @kirlos, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2 and @popurri.

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