The Inkwell Combined Writing Prompt #43 ~ 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, "The chair"!

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 @rinconpoetico7 for his story Two Paths, One Destination.

Here's what our curators had to say:

@rinconpoetico7 weaves a very satisfying tale about a doctor who is on his way to an interview. The interview is to be with a very successful surgeon. On the way there is an accident. It is an accident from which the doctor learns that he wants to do something entirely different with his life. He wants to run a hospital in a small village where there is poor medical care. It's a very good read. The doctor's character is fully developed, and the resolution works well.

Congratulations, @rinconpoetico7!

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Short Story Writing Prompt of the Week

This week's prompt is: "The Apology."

Apologies come in all forms. Sometimes a person who has said or done something wrong will send flowers, buy gifts, or ask to be forgiven. And sometimes, an apology is just meaningless words. People can say "I'm sorry" in a way that indicates they are not sorry at all. Needless to say, this makes for many interesting story possibilities.

If you want to write a creative nonfiction story from your own life, think about times you have apologized without meaning it. Or times when you felt that mere words were not enough to show how sorry you were, and so you went to extra measures with gifts or acts of kindness. Or perhaps you have a story to tell about someone apologizing to you. Did they mean it? Did they stop doing whatever they had done in the first place? Or did they repeat the same act again?

For fictional stories, you may find inspiration from real life that can be fictionalized. Or think about the many things people do that they must apologize for, and then imagine a fictional character and scenario from those ideas. For example, people make all kinds of mistakes from forgetting to pay the bills to leaving the dog out in the rain. And they do all kinds of bad things that they must atone for later, such as lying, cheating, stealing, breaking valuable property, and so on.

What ideas come to mind for you? We hope you have fun with the apology prompt!

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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You can follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.

Note: The Ink Well pays out curation rewards to our delegators!

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A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@jayna, @felt.buzz, @carn, @cliffagreen, @ricardo993, @itsostylish, @agmoore, @marcybetancourt, @marlyncabrera, @jasonbu, @stormcharmer, @mosin-nagant, @nathy33, @ozd, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @timix648, @samsmith1971, @betholoji12, @jackdeathblack, @josemalavem, @generikat, @mineopoly, @hazmat, @kingsleyy, @popurri, @nancybriti1, @rinconpoetico7, @iyimoga, @kachy2022, @monster-hunter, @whatmidesays, @raymondpeter, @gabmr, @rishagamo, @morey-lezama, @evagavilan2, @funshee, @amiegeoffrey, @rukkie, @tomiajax, @stuartcturnbull, @almadepoeta, @ubani, @wesphilbin, @amakauz, @zoe01, @estilodereba, @ellizy, @faithwellington, @patienceakpan, @artofkylin, @ricurohemi28, @benwesterham, and @shakavon.

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