The Inkwell Combined Writing Prompt #36 ~ Fiction or Creative Nonfiction

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Welcome to the Weekly Writing Prompt from The Ink Well

We provide one weekly writing prompt for short story writers. You may choose to use the prompt to write a fictional story (made up from your imagination) or a creative nonfiction story (based on your real life experiences).

IMPORTANT: To be considered for curation, you must include one of these tags on your post:

Fictional stories: #fiction
Creative nonfiction stories: #creativenonfiction

You must also read and comment on the work of two other community members. Remember: We look for this when we curate your story. If we don't see this engagement, we will either provide a reminder or skip curating your post.

It is also very helpful to the admin team when authors add Fiction or Creative Nonfiction (or CNF for short) to the story title!

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Before You Post in The Ink Well

Be sure to check out our community rules before posting in this community. You can find them at the top of our home page. They also appear at the top of a new post window.

Please also check out these additional helpful resources:

Learn more about our community and the expectations of community members in our FAQ post and our treasure trove of tips and guidelines.
Peruse our collection of great writing resources on everything from character development to how to write dialogue in our catalog of storytelling tips.
Learn more about creative nonfiction, how it differs from fictional stories, and tips for success in our post on creative nonfiction tips.
Remember that we are always about quality first. Never about quantity. To achieve awards in The Ink Well, take the time to write quality stories and check them for errors. See the topic of the month, "Don't Miss This Step" in the March 2025 newsletter to learn about using tools (and using them properly) if you are not already doing this. We do notice when you don't take the time!

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Last Week's Winning Story of the Week

Thank you to everyone who shared a story for the last prompt, "Super power"!

Each week we pick one of our favorite stories of the week and award the author 5 Hive.

And we have a winner! Congrats to @nova94 for his story Sixty Seconds.

Here's what our curators had to say:

@nova94 writes a great story about a special super power. Adaeze has the ability to turn the clock back. The young lady uses that ability to reverse serious accidents her family had. However, every time she uses that power she bleeds. It takes something from her. The implication is that possibly using it too much can drain her, even to the point of no return. She is willing to pay that price if it saves her family. Really nicely written.

Congratulations, @nova24!

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Short Story Writing Prompt of the Week

This week's prompt is: "An item left behind."

Everyone loses items, drops belongings unintentionally, and leaves items behind at the homes of friends, at bars and restaurants and other venues, or on buses, public benches in parks, lockers at the gym... and more!

Let's write stories about those lost and left behind items. Are they memorable and important? Do they have monetary value? Do they get returned to their owners? Or do they become the possessions of new owners? And what then?

There are many directions you could go with this prompt. You could tell a fictional story from the perspective of the lost item, and its experience being abandoned by its owner. You could write about the panic the owner experiences in realizing that their item (wallet? passport? cell phone?) was inadvertently left in a taxi or on a bus. You could tell the story from the perspective of the person who finds the item. What do they do? Do they attempt to return it to its rightful owner?

If you want to write a creative nonfiction story from your own experience, perhaps you remember a time when something important to you disappeared, and you finally recalled that you had it at a certain point in time... and that must have been when you got distracted and left it behind. Did some kind person find a way to get it back to you? Or did you have to let go and realize you would never have that item back in your possession?

Tell us a story!

As always, you do not need to actually use the prompt word(s). They are here to inspire your creativity!

We look forward to reading the product of your imagination or your personal experience!

Good luck! And of course, you are welcome to use AI to generate ideas and images, but the writing must be your own! We do not accept stories that are AI-generated or heavily edited by AI. Only use tools like Grammarly to fix spelling and grammar issues.

Remember, as always, we are looking for the elements of story. These include:

Great first lines
Good settings
Well-developed characters
Integration of action, dialogue and narrative
A conflict that intrigues the reader
A "story arc" which results in the resolution of the conflict and brings the story to a satisfying conclusion
And of course, we are looking for well-edited stories that are not littered with typos or grammatical errors — please use the free Grammarly tool for grammar and spelling checks (and not AI writing or rephrasing tools for revising)

You can find more on all of these topics in the catalog of storytelling tips.

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:

Rules:

Accepted content: Remember that we only accept short stories (fiction or creative nonfiction). We do not accept advice columns, personal development articles, reviews, chapter stories, recipes, etc. We also do not accept posts about violent, gory, bloody, brutal, sexist or racist themes, NSFW (not safe for work) stories like erotica, stories with a political or religious agenda, or stories featuring abuse of any kind. (We have a complete article about The Ink Well stance on violence and brutality for more information.) And do NOT use AI tools to write or manipulate your stories. You must provide your own unique content.
Post link: Please be sure to publish your story in The Ink Well community, and post a link to your story in a comment on this post.
Hashtags: Use the #fiction tag for fictional stories and the #creativenonfiction tag for creative nonfiction stories. You can also use #writing, #inkwellprompt and #theinkwell.
Images: Please only use images from license free and creative commons sites, like Pixabay, Unsplash and Pexels. You can also generate them with AI tools. Images you find on the Internet are copyright protected and cannot be used. Be sure to provide all image source links.
Length: We request that story word counts are a maximum of 1,500 words in length and ideally 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. (Note: We generally consider stories less than 750 words "too short" and they tend to be missing important character development. See the "story length" topic of our September 2025 newsletter for resources on how to improve and further develop your stories.)
Translations: If you post a story that has been translated from another language, please include the English version first, followed by content in the original language.
Community support: When you post in The Ink Well, please be sure to visit the work of at least two other community members and comment on their work.

Past Prompts

After 241 straight weeks of fiction prompts (and nearly as many creative nonfiction prompts) we have started a fresh new series! If you'd like to see the full list of previous fiction prompts, you can find them at the bottom of fiction prompt #241.

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

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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, @gracielaacevedo, @agmoore and @yaziris

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