The Inkwell Combined Writing Prompt #15 ~ 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

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

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!

Last Week's Winning Story of the Week

Thank you to everyone who shared a story for the last prompt, "I'm not crazy"!

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 @happy080 for her story I'm Not Mad.

Here's what our curator had to say:

I really, really liked this story by @happy080. A lonely boy discovers he can turn into a dog at will. That's not the crazy part. The crazy part is the child he visits, and talks to. That child is also lonely. He wonders if he is crazy because he is listening to a talking dog. Eventually, the dog learns it cannot turn into a human again. That's alright. Dog and lonely child form a bond and grow up together.

Congratulations, @happy080!

Short Story Writing Prompt of the Week

This week's prompt is: "Heartfelt."

"Heartfelt" is a word that means a statement or sentiment comes from the heart, not just from one's mind or voice. A "heartfelt" letter could shed light on the sender's hidden emotions. A heartfelt tribute to a person who has passed on could give a congregation of mourners a moment to reflect on that person's contribution to the community.

The following are some short story ideas and examples from ChatGPT for both creative nonfiction and fictional stories.

Creative Nonfiction Inspiration

The Thank-You I Never Sent
A personal essay about realizing, years too late, that you never expressed the most heartfelt gratitude you felt &mdsash; to a teacher, neighbor, or stranger whose kindness altered your life in a lasting but uncelebrated way.

Learning My Father’s Hands
A reflection on noticing how a parent’s hands change over time — through labor, age, or illness — and how those hands silently carried heartfelt devotion long before the writer understood sacrifice.

When I Stopped Performing My Feelings
An essay about unlearning exaggerated emotion and discovering that truly heartfelt moments are often quiet, awkward, and unpolished — revealed through small gestures rather than dramatic declarations.

Fiction Inspiration

The Note in the Coat Pocket
A woman donates her late father’s winter coat, only to learn that there was a note to her in the pocket — one he once wrote to her but never had the courage to give. When the coat resurfaces in her life through an unexpected stranger, she must decide whether heartfelt moments belong to the past or can be reclaimed.

The Last Voicemail
A man accidentally deletes years of saved voicemails from his mother, except one fragment that resurfaces through a glitch. The story unfolds as he reconstructs their relationship from that imperfect, heartfelt remnant and confronts what he never said aloud.

What the Dog Knew
After a family fracture, a child notices that the family dog behaves differently around each person, as if guarding invisible emotional wounds. The dog becomes the quiet conduit for heartfelt truths the family cannot yet voice themselves.

We hope those ideas inspire you! Use this prompt as you wish in a fictional story or a creative nonfiction 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 memories!

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:

• 50 Loglines
• 50 Story Ideas
• 50 Imagination Ticklers

Rules:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Hashtags: Use the #fiction tag for fictional stories and the #creativenonfiction tag for creative nonfiction stories. You can also use #writing, #inkwellprompt and #theinkwell.

4. 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.

5. 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.)

6. 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.

7. 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.

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