The Ink Well Prompt #92 - 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!

What Is The Ink Well All About?
The Ink Well is a creative writing community. Here are answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about The Ink Well.

  • No novels, chapter stories or multi-part stories
  • No poems
  • No introduction posts
  • No memes

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 Fire and the skill challenge was to create a strong hook. 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

"Did my fly spell hurt the boar?"
"Your fly?... no nothing like that, the stone hit him in the weakest place that every male creature has."
"Oh, what luck we have had, and what are you doing a princess in such a dreary place?" asked the magician.

I spent days in the house sobbing and crying so hard. I just lost the love of my life. I soon got a message from Dami that he wanted us to meet for the very last time. It was night already so I decided to sneak out. The moon shone its light on my path and allowed me to navigate through the bushes. The crickets made loud noises and birds of night sang different songs. I reached the spot we were to meet and saw Dami, he looked so miserable not that I looked any better though.

His face went beet red. "Under the circumstances, I think the best thing to do is get the women and children over to Coldwall before the dragons come back. Then we can build a stone fortification. I'll lead the women and children myself," the Governor announced gallantly.

Engr Rufus immediately called other Engineers and the problem was diagnosed. The ammonia used was of lower quality than the minimum standard.
After spending hours in trying to detect this, Rufus came back to Chief's office - who had remained in office to see to the solution of the problem - and informed him of the discovery.

I decided to stop staring outside, stepping inside my tent. This place is a hill slope, thin woods and almost near to the city, so I do not need to catch some fire to threaten the wilds. Also, since the flame so usually unintentionally makes the phantasm flicker in the foggy numbing night. That triggers him to run away to his nowhere dimension again.

Third Place: Wins 2 HBI

Theodore looked towards the smoking stove which was vibrating like it could explode at any second. “You idiots! You’re letting it burn!” Theordore quickly got up and ran to the stove.
“Wait! Dude! That’s a Pheonix Turkey! That means they burn and rise from the ashes finely cooked! Don’t open the stove or else-!”
But Theodore had already opened the stove. .

Second Place: Wins 3 HBI

I couldn't just ask her if she had a fire inside of her and if she could share some with me, right?
We stayed silent for more than 3 minutes. The bike man, clearly annoyed for being kept waiting, drove off, in search of more customers.

And the winner of the Light/create a vivid story setting challenge is...@samsmith1971 with the story Night of the Firefox. Congratulations, @samsmith1971. You will receive 5 Hive!

As he stared out across the vast snow-encrusted landscape, its stark beauty reflected back in the fine sliver of early afternoon. The Polar twilight brought a glowing sky that threw breathtaking purple, blue, and pink hues out across the distant tundra and undulating terrain, but this far north, the experience remained fleeting. The stunning vistas shifted very quickly, and soon the soft light would give way to the stars again, and night would fall

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

Stories From the Previous Week

@wrestlingdesires
@edystringz
@tozill
@amiegeoffrey
@cool08
@lordtimoty
@farahikram
@lightpen
@bornben
@bahnhoft
@iskawrites
@iyimoga
@balikis95
@restcity
@buezor
@nelson-george
@seki1
@kemmyb
@abigail04
@pjpavan
@fantom22
@popurri
@loveah
@samsmith1971
@madamnaomi
@diebitch
@mrenglish

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. 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.

Please Note: The Inkwell curators read many creative submissions each week. Ideally, we would comment and curate each piece. However, there are physical limitations, which include time. It may be the case that stories are submitted and are not curated. We do try to curate every piece but that may not happen.

At last, the prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is Tend/Tender. Our skill challenge will be to add action to your story. Action brings the story to life. It enables readers to 'experience' what is happening. Action gives energy to the story. @jayna has an excellent description of the role action plays in her essay Action, Dialog and Narrative: the Dynamic Trio.

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.

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.

  1. Amantha tended the roses as though they were her children.
  2. Tending sick patients is the chief function of a nurse.
  3. It was John's tender gesture that swayed the mob.
  4. You must pay for merchandise with legal tender.
  5. What is it that you tend to do when you see food?
  6. Alice, unfortunately, has a tendency toward cruel behavior.
  7. This meat is not tender!
  8. Maurice learned about death at the tender age of five, when his pet parakeet died.
  9. The knee was tender to the touch.
  10. Thomas tends bar in his spare time.

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:

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

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

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