Image source: LeandroDeCarvalho on Pixabay
Hello and welcome to the The Ink Well weekly fiction prompt. 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.
Important
Before you post in our community, please be sure to read the community rules (right side of the page) where we outline the "do's and don'ts" for posting in The Ink Well.
Our community rules are designed to make our community a safe, welcoming, plagiarism-free space for self-publishing original short stories.
Also, a word on community engagement. We want to thank all of the community members who have taken the time to read other members' work and provide comments. Authors, please remember that reading and commenting on at least two other writers' stories is one of the weekly prompt rules. This ensures that we have a thriving community. Note that we only select stories for the weekly highlights magazine by authors who are engaging with other members' posts.
Okay! Let's review fiction highlights from last week and start a new prompt.
Highlights of the Week
Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt, “Childhood Summers," which challenged our authors to share the drama and intensity of experience that is childhood.
Here are the week's prompt stories. Be sure to read and support these authors for their work!
- Clouds on a Clear Day, by @seesladen
- Innocence, by @almightymelon
- Memory Lane, by @bruno-kema
- David's Phobia, by @dwixer
- Jasmine's Short Break, by @iyimoga
- Kite, by @jadams2k18
- Always Remember the Kites, by @amirtheawesome1
- Childhood Tragedy with a Happy Ending, by @gracielaacevedo
- Childhood, Summer and The Ghost Ring, by @katleya
- Childhood Summer, by @mrwin
- Fate, by @young-boss-karin
- From Fisherman's Son to Gladiator, by @ricardo993
- Blame the Rain, by @jayna
- Summer All Year, by @deeanndmathews
- The Price of Sunshine, by @stormcharmer
- Collateral Beauty, by @kemmyb
- Free From the Sands of Time, by @kemmyb
This Week’s Prompt
The prompt for this week is 50 Imagination Ticklers.
What is it that tickles your imagination and makes you want to write fiction? Is it a sudden idea? A challenging situation? The interactions of people under unexpected situations? The notion of other worlds beyond our own?
Your goal for this week is to engage your imagination to come up with an interesting scenario to spark your writing - for example, the question of what it might be like to find out you were accidentally switched with another baby at birth. Then craft a story around it. Or use one of the 50 imagination ticklers we've listed below. Whatever you choose, be sure to provide the idea, and why you chose it, in your post.
Note: Please avoid themes involving brutality of women, excessive violence, or gore.
50 Imagination Ticklers
- What happens when Uncle Ned returns from the army?
- Why does the elder neighbor say “can you dig it?”
- What if two kids did a science experiment that resulted in one of them turning permanently green?
- If there was a monster living under the stairs, would you have to feed it?
- What are three character traits that show, without a shadow of a doubt, that a person is a sociopath?
- What if that loose floorboard was actually a hidden passageway?
- What would life be like for the polite children of the Smith household if the new family that moved in next door were a bunch of bullies and jerks?
- What is that floating down the river?
- What if Jimmy wished upon a star and the wish came true… but in a very dangerous and unexpected way?
- What happens when three young girls find a book of incantations in their grandma’s attic?
- What is moving through the tall grass under the moonlight?
- What if everyone thought you had died and you had total freedom to do whatever you wanted?
- What if genies were real?
- What should Josephine do when Michael proposes to her, especially since they are only 12?
- What would happen if two teenagers got separated from their group on a wilderness hike?
- Is it possible for two people who have gotten divorced to reconcile and remarry?
- What if purple had a sound?
- What is that crouching in the tree, humming an eerie tune?
- Is it okay to turn your back on someone who has wronged you, but clearly did so out of their own fear and self-loathing?
- What if cats ruled the world?
- What if all the children in a town banded together to hold the adults and leaders and city council members accountable for pollution or gun violence, or other issues of the day?
- Is there life after death?
- What if Angela gave up on finding the love of her life, chose to have a baby through artificial insemination, and then fell in love with a guy who doesn’t want children?
- What if a massive asteroid was hurtling toward the earth?
- If one member of a group has the worst possible bad breath, how do they let him know?
- What if a family moved into a house and it was alive?
- Is it possible to be in love with two people?
- Why should Amy apologize to Ruth?
- What is that sound of sighing and crying within the walls?
- What happens on the night of the Super Moon that can never be spoken of again?
- Are those twinkling lights in the meadow really fireflies?
- If time travel was a choice, what day or period in history would you visit?
- Why does cousin Mabel always cheat at Monopoly?
- If three people have absolutely nothing in common but are the best of friends, what binds them together?
- Why does Bradley keep thinking he’s seeing his ex-girlfriend on the street? Didn’t she move away to Texas?
- Who is that person, silhouetted against the setting sun, walking into town?
- If you had a choice to marry your true love, knowing that he/she is still attached to a former relationship, or marry someone stable and kind and loyal, which would you choose?
- What if there was only one road out of the city and disaster struck?
- What if you were sucked up into a spaceship?
- What does Sally do, when she gets to design the perfect mate using some cool new software, and the only catch is that he’ll be an AI?
- What happens when Jerry orders a kit online for making beer, and it comes with a bonus hair-growth kit?
- Why is a stream of ants carrying a family’s possessions out the door?
- When Cecilia and Mary decide to give Julia a full life make-over, does it turn out to be a really good or really bad idea?
- What is out there howling in the backyard?
- What happens when Roger’s best friends set him up with a blind date and she turns out to be a rich heiress - but Roger thinks anyone with money is evil?
- What if the pandemic really ended for good, and some people forgot how to socialize?
- What happens when three kids pretend to pan for gold and actually find some?
- What would happen if Garth Brooks met Elvis?
- What if chocolate was better for you than vegetables?
- What if evil spirits could possess household appliances, like toasters and washing machines?
If you don't feel inspired by any of these imagination ticklers or the featured image, feel free to peruse Prompt #6: 50 Story Ideas.
Where will you take your story?
Good luck! And be sure to remember the important elements of good fiction:
- A good setting
- Character development
- Conflict
- Dialog
- A story arc and resolution
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 of highlights.)
- Hashtags: Please use these hashtags: #fiction #writing #inkwellprompt #theinkwell.
- Story link: Post a link to your story in a comment on this post.
- 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.
Reminder: Be sure to also read our community rules. (The reason for the reminder is every single week we see stories about brutality of women, and we must mute them. Please do not post these stories in The Ink Well.)
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
We look forward to reading your stories!
@jayna, @agmoore, and @gracielaacevedo (who is joining our moderator team!)
We would like to invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna and @agmoore.
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 @theinkwell, you can do this from the wallet section of https://peakd.com/
And finally, a big thank you to all our delegations from:
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @shanibeer, @marlyncabrera, @owasco, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @barge, @lacrucita, @adncabrera, @vision-of-esca, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @rypo01, @evagavilan2 and @bertrayo.
Click banner to visit our community page
Find us on twitter by clicking the banner above.
Ooooooooh that 46 one is SO GOOD, too deep to get into within a week but will definitely keep it in mind for the future.
Can't wait to see what people have in store for these prompts though.
I was also looking at that same prompt. I might try to tackle it next. If you write it also, please tag me in a comment so that I might come read your perspective on it! 😅
Drat!
I just posted my story, and I see that I didn't post inside the community until I had already seen it on my blog. Is there way that I can update this now, or is it too late?
It seems I'm the first to write my post on this prompt today, so I will be checking back for others to support on the post for my two comments. I will also look for some outside of the prompt to support today and come back to edit my comment with their names.
This will be my post for this week. I do see some more exciting topics, so I will be having a grand time this week with them! Thank you for the work in this community. I am enjoying my time here :-)
https://peakd.com/fiction/@stormcharmer/teatime-with-kate
One of my comments was for @almightymelon 's https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@almightymelon/arachnid-thoughts - what a post! 😁
Another of my comments was for @bruno-kema - be prepared for that one. It was so well written!
Another of my comments was for @ubani1 -a peaceful journey into the unknown.
I'll continue to read more posts this week, but I will not update my comment anymore with the comments that I've left. 😅
Hi @stormcharmer ,
I don't know about cross posting or other platform niceties. Not my area of expertise. However, you seem to be a fluent writer. Write another story, with another prompt and post it here. The more you write, the better you get. I look forward to reading that story.
Good advice, @agmoore! @stormcharmer, we generally disallow cross-posts as we are trying to establish a magazine type publication resource in The Ink Well. (I'm not sure of that makes sense, but essentially, a magazine would only publish original content.) However, we can certainly make an exception since you accidentally posted to your blog instead of The Ink Well community. I did the same thing yesterday with The Ink Well prompt post! Go ahead and cross-post.
Oh, I didn't mean to another site.
I meant to my hive blog. This is not cross-posted. This was just not posted via the Inkwell community. It is just merely on my own hive blog instead. I will be sure to check that it is posted inside the community and not just from my hive page from now on! Thank you so much @jayna!
It is definitely only posted here, and 100% original.
It has not been posted on any other site. It just had the fiction tag first and so it put it into the fiction community, I think?
I think I confused everyone. ha ha!
I did not post to another site first. I posted it to Hive via my own Hive page.
The last times that I posted, I clicked on the "post through InkWell" button, and this time I forgot to hit that first.
I won't be doing that again. :-) Sorry for the trouble and confusion.
No I understand completely. You just posted to your blog instead of The Ink Well. I was just encouraging you to go ahead and use the cross-post function to make the post appear in The Ink Well even though we typically say "no cross posts." I hope that clarifies!
As I said, I made the same mistake yesterday with the prompt post. It's easy enough to do. If you don't make sure you select "post to The Ink Well" it only posts to your blog.
Oh!
I can post it again? The same post in the Ink Well - but again?
Am I understanding? ha ha!
Where is the cross-post function then? 😅
Maybe I better just leave everything alone and make sure the next one is posted correctly! Don't mind me, I'm laughing over here!
Normally what I would do would be to edit the post, and delete it completely, change the title and leave it blank or a message saying: post deleted. And create a new one.
Thank you @jadams2k18!
This will hopefully be the last time I make that mistake ha ha!😅
Also, I enjoyed your profile summary. I did read it, I do almost always pay very close attention. You are very welcome, and I also truly appreciate people like you.
Glad to have met just briefly now, followed you, and hope to get to know you even more.
You are very welcome ^_^
Thanks for your kind words
I hope to get to know you too
Thank you for sharing that tip, @jadams2k18!
Here is my work.
I will comment on other people's works when there are a greater number of them.
on Hive:
https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@almightymelon/arachnid-thoughts
and on Twitter:
I commented on this post - and enjoyed it, line by line!
Followed you, because I need more of this in my life. 😅
Due to a funeral, I went on a trip, but I'm back now. I have a story going around in my head. Although it's a bit complicated, I'd like to post it here. It seems to me that it has created quite a few tickles in my imagination.
Hello everyone, here's my entry
https://hive.blog/hive-170798/@ubani1/life-after-death-inkwellprompt-1350-imagination-ticklers
My comments includes
@cryptofi
@stormchaser
Hello everyone, hope you all are having a good time?
Well, my entry for the week is here
Hope you enjoy it.
My comments include:
@stormchaser
@ubani1
Hello family,
Here's mine for the week.
https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@seesladen/sarah-the-innocent-a-genies-story
Comments following shortly.
Cheers!
My entry
https://ecency.com/hive-170798/@iyimoga/dele-s-terrible-moment-the
Hello everyone, almost late but for sure hehehehehehehe
I leave my story here:
https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@ricardo993/the-first-human-or-the-ink-well-prompt-13
My story was born from 50 Imagination Ticklers number 39.
What if you were sucked up into a spaceship?
Here's my submission for this week's prompt
https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@young-boss-karin/the-jetty
I read and left comments on posts by
@bruno-kema
@seesladen
@ricardo993
I decided to try my hand at another of the ticklers today...
https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@seesladen/what-if-purple-had-a-sound-short-story-for-the-inkwell-community
But what I really want to talk about is @almightymelon's piece. Oh Lawd, that was brilliant!
I had initially commented on @bruno-kema 's piece and thought it the best of this round, until I read Mr. ALmighty melon's take on the prompt(s). Boy oh Boy! He gave us some beautiful nonsense there eh?
Lol, I dropped a few more comments on other posts, but really Melon Man just made my day.
Finally, I wrote my story. This is not the one I mentioned before
https://hive.blog/hive-170798/@jadams2k18/handkerchief-el-panuelo-the-ink-well-prompt-13-50-imagination-ticklers
My post Link
https://ecency.com/hive-170798/@dwixer/the-spot-the-inkwell-prompt
Commented on
@young-boss-karin
@ricardoo993
@jadams2k18