The Ink Well Prompt #61 - Plus Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcem...

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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.

Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

As we announced in our February newsletter, we are now running a weekly challenge to generate some fun and excitement while also helping our members to work on the different skills involved in story telling. Last week's challenge was to work on story hooks to entice readers into your story.

You guys are amazing! There were some really good stories that skillfully handled the challenge, create a character who is faced with desire in the face of danger. Resolving this essential conflict in the character gives tension to the story and helps to drive it forward. People keep reading. They want to learn how the conflict is resolved. Because this is such an important skill, we'd like to include a few examples as "honorable mentions":

Hive account@rayt2 Rita

At that moment, the smell of dew soaked wet grass emanating from the atmosphere was mesmerizing me. The nearness of Rita was another factor that was disturbing me, as I was not sure what was attracting me more, the smell of dried autumn leaves or the fragrance coming from Rita's lovely body.

Hive account@abmakka Dangerous Choices

Franklin nodded as his words were getting more interesting by the second, the cold drink sitting at the table now looking more inviting as he took another brief glance at it.
"You can still take the drink if you want, feel free" James smiled as he observed Franklin was eyeing the bottle of cold drink.
Franklin stretched his hands and picked up the cold drink on the table, he couldn't any longer resist as he nodded his head in response to the enticing words from James.

Hive account@zyzymena Letting Go

She looked at his face wondering if he didn't recognise her or perhaps he did but didn't want to show it. She battled with the desire to wrap the stethoscope around his neck and pull it so hard until he was breathless. Perhaps, during surgery would be the perfect time to rid the world of his kind.

Hive account@kemmyb Jeremy's Dare

Jeremy stared at Solace. He could be with her now but he would lose everything that mattered to him. He nodded. "Can I hug you at least?" They both laughed and held each other.

Hive account@lordtimoty Ms Greta Baumgarten's Mithridatum of Despair

she felt overwhelmed as she imagined with a silly giddiness, that infatuation had stolen her sensibilities. But what of decorum? She had stopped listening to half of what he had said, in order to just be in the moment, losing herself in the hard wrinkles by his eyes.

And the winner of the challenge to create a character who is faced with desire in the face of danger is...Hive account@vincric, with his story, Fool's Treasure. The quality of writing was quite high in many of the stories, certainly in the honorable mentions. In the end, though, Hive account@vincric took the prize because of his surprising and very original take on the prompt. An excerpt from his story is posted below.

I debated, the eyes of the invaders were not good at seeing in the dark compared ours, they need those tools that carry fire. I can still move fast, my wound was actually light after I inspected it there was no serious harm, I only need to wash it and rest for a few days. But still the danger was still there I could lose my life! But this is one of the rare opportunities another might never come! But the treasure was so shiny and it glimmered beautifully, it was still tempting nonetheless.

Congratulations to Hive account@vincric, 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

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

Here are the stories that were posted in response to that prompt. Be sure to read and support these authors for their work.

What a great collection of stories. Thank you, everyone!

This Week’s Prompt

At last, the prompt of the week!

This week's prompt is Happiness. And your skill challenge for the week is the Writing Voice.

What should you do with this prompt? And what does this skill challenge mean? Here are some additional details:

Happiness: We all know what happiness is, but our idea of happiness may change depending on circumstance. Winning a prize may make us happy, but if it's not first prize that may not be true. We can have happiness, or we can lose happiness. In your story, that is your choice. We can feel happiness, see happiness in others, or aspire to happiness. Your story, your choice.

Writing Voice: In her essay, What Is Writing Voice, Hive account@jayna describes how every story has a voice. The voice of a story told from the perspective of an elderly woman facing a terminal illness would be different from that of a young girl on her wedding day.

This week we would like you to adopt a voice. Try to be consistent, and tell us at the beginning or end of the story what that voice is.

Examples of using a voice with the prompt Happiness:

Elderly woman looks back on her life with sorrow because it seems happiness always eluded her, although it favored others.
Elderly woman looks back on her life with happiness because she feels she has lived fully and richly.
Young woman faces her wedding with dread. There are secrets she has never told anyone and she fears her new husband will not love her if he finds out.
Young woman looks forward to her wedding with joy because her mother and father have managed to attend, although she has not seen them for five years.

We have a great resource for you. Read the article What Is 'Writing Voice'? in our catalog of fiction writing tips to learn more.

A week from now, we will select a winning story that demonstrates a consistent writing voice. 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
Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!

Hive account@jayna, Hive account@agmoore, Hive account@gracielaacevedo, Hive account@wrestlingdesires and Hive account@yaziris

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We would like to invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by Hive account@raj808 and Hive account@stormlight24 and run by Hive account@jayna, Hive account@agmoore, Hive account@gracielaacevedo, Hive account@wrestlingdesires and Hive account@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 Hive account@theinkwell, you can do this from the wallet section of https://peakd.com/