The Ink Well Prompt #86 - 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 I can't believe you said that and the skill challenge was to use dialogue. This community really came through with many 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

• @stellageorge with the story June

Her eyes took in the colors of the house.
The walls are always painted white courtesy of her father but her mother took charge of the furniture which was done in different shades of cool blue all around the house.

• @balikis95 with the story The Magic Before and After...

She opened the door as silently as she could and walked out to the open. The weather caught up with her and she shook it off. She loves this weather as it brings people closer, walking round the village, she saw many decorations and lights which had been hung to welcome the day to come.

• @jackdeathblack with the story Five Minutes of Introspection

Sometimes you just remember good advice at the right time, but most of the time you remember it when it is too late. I think that yellow lights are for speeding up, although it is not really so, it is the rule of society, speeding up in life; that is why my grandmother's advice was always timely, I could not walk in life as if I was out of time and unforeseen event.

• @littlepiggies with the story A Cold Walk in the Woods

Ioana kept looking up. "Wait, Darius is coming tomorrow? I thought he --" she didn’t see the large tree root sticking up out of the ground in the snow. She tripped, but caught herself at a brisk speed.
Alin heard the commotion and turned around. "Watch where you're going, dear," he said, emotionless, with slight disdain in his voice.

• @abigail04 with the story Betrayal of a Friend

By all means, Savina was mad. The anger was very evident on her face and in her aura. Even the congregation knew her anger was not without cause as she was nothing but a kind, respectful and quiet girl. She was a typical good child and people liked her a lot. But today was not the day and it was very well known as everyone looked at her and paid extra attention to her.

Third Place: Wins 2 HBI

• @madamnaomi with the story Betrayals and What-nots

I went further down the hall to meet my friends at our “spot”. We were five in number, there was me- Brynn, my best friend- Grace, then the others- Amanda, Katie and Courtney.
Today felt weird. First off Grace wasn’t there and the others were whispering with sad looks on their faces. I don’t know if it was just me but they immediately stopped talking when I approached them.

Second Place: Wins 3 HBI

• @warpedpoetic with the story Syringe

"I am not a soldier. Why will you force me to fight in a war that I want no part of," I asked. I hated that my voice shook.
"The two thousand years war with the people from across the great sea has stretched thin the continent's military resources. Every kingdom in Africa is doing the best they can to take back our lands and drive the invaders back to the sea. Do you understand? We are desperately in need of manpower and we will take what we can get even if it is a thief or a drug dealer," the man replied.

And the winner of the I can't believe you said that/dialogue challenge is... @rammargarita with the story Recreation. Congratulations, @rammargarita. You will receive 5 Hive!

The young man follows his friend's instructions, and when he arrives at the site, several monkeys jump on Pedro, hug him and make faces at him.
He asks him, "Why are they doing that to you? The adolescent answers, "The hug is the greeting, the grimaces, screams and gestures are part of the emblem of their language, that's how they communicate".

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

Stories From the Previous Week

@restcity
@justine619
@kingsleymark
@fantom22
@mrenglish
@lordtimoty
@billionz
@stellageorge
@raymondpeter
@grindan
@bahnhoft
@boscohage
@smokyice
@littlepiggies
@lightpen
@balikis95
@abigail04
@warpedpoetic
@emeka002
@madamnaomi
@talon12
@bornben
@cool08
@buezor
@wrestlingdesires
@merit.ahama
@kemmyb
@nelson-george
@seki1
@khaleesii

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 Boo! Our skill challenge will be to creates a vivid story setting. This week's prompt and skill challenge go together easily. You don't have to use the exact words of the prompt. Derive inspiration from it.

@jayna discusses using story settings in her essay, What Is Your Story's Setting?

To jump start your story, we offer a few examples here of how the prompt/skill challenge might be used:

1. The room was silent as the class prepared to take its National Finals. Suddenly, Eric jumped from his seat and yelled, "Boo". Children shrieked and pencils clattered to the floor.

2. Halloween was Jessica's favorite holiday. She loved the colorful decorations, the candied apples and most of all the idea that people could scare each other and yet not really upset anyone.

3. The blinds in the hospital ward were closed and everyone tiptoed around without making a sound. Mari suppressed a chuckle as she thought of what might happen if someone yelled, "Boo".

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:

• 50 Loglines
• 50 Story Ideas
• 50 Imagination Ticklers

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:

• #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
• #71 Proud
• #72 Guide
• #73 Impression
• #74 Lost
• #75 Wonder
• #76 Tear
• #77 Splash
• #78 Brilliant
• #79 Sinkhole
• #80 Exhaust
• #81 Roll
• #82 Wishbone
• #83 Chatterbox
• #84 Foil
• #85 I can't believe you said that

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

Interested in joining our community? Start by joining Hive!

Join here at Hive Onboard

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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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