The Inkwell Combined Writing Prompt #39 ~ 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!

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, "Suspicion"!

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 Hive account@ximen66 for her story Surprise.

Here's what our curators had to say:

Hive account@ximen66 writes a story about unfounded suspicion. At the beginning of the story the suspicion is so strong that the protagonist "felt like someone drove a knife through her chest." The description of the protagonist's suffering is the strongest part of this quite strong story. We suffer with her. In the end, there is no betrayal but merely a plan for renewal of wedding vows.

Congratulations, Hive account@ximen66!

Short Story Writing Prompt of the Week

This week's prompt is: "Unexpected connections."

We never really know who will turn out to be our favorite people, our supporters, or our confidants. That is one potential theme of this prompt: when two people unexpectedly find companionship, or find solace in one another's company after a challenging situation.

But "connections" can mean many things. It can mean a surprise conclusion one makes after discovering new evidence in a mystery. Or it can mean a surprising spark between two people who would never be expected to have any reason to feel a true connection to one another — such as a prisoner and his or her captor.

There are of course other possibilities as well. Let your imagination take you wherever it wants to go for "unexpected connections."

Here are some fictional and creative nonfiction story ideas based on the "Unexpected connections" prompt from ChatGPT to inspire your creativity.

Fictional Short Story Ideas

The Book with Two Margins

A graduate student checks out a decades-old library book and discovers handwritten notes in the margins from two previous readers who never met. As she follows their back-and-forth commentary, she realizes they unknowingly solved each other's personal struggles through their observations. Inspired, she adds her own notes, creating an unlikely connection across generations.

The Wrong Suitcase

Two travelers accidentally swap identical suitcases at an airport. As they work to return each other's belongings, they discover they are both trying to accomplish the same goal for very different reasons. One is searching for a long-lost sibling, the other is trying to honor a dying parent's final wish. Their chance encounter changes the outcome of both journeys.

The Volunteer

A retired carpenter volunteers to build wheelchair ramps for strangers. One of his assignments takes him to the home of a woman who unknowingly owns a handcrafted rocking chair his late wife built decades earlier. As they uncover the chair's remarkable journey from one family to another, both discover how acts of kindness can ripple across generations.

Creative Nonfiction Story Ideas

Six Degrees of Home

Write about an unexpected connection that made the world suddenly feel much smaller. Perhaps you met someone while traveling who knew your hometown, discovered a colleague had crossed paths with a family member years earlier, or found a surprising link through a shared friend. Reflect on how that coincidence reshaped your understanding of community.

The Stranger Who Understood

Recall a brief encounter with someone you never saw again, such as a seatmate on an airplane, a cashier, a fellow patient in a waiting room, or a neighbor. Explore why this person's words or actions stayed with you and what they revealed about the quiet connections people can make in even the shortest interactions.

Following the Thread

Tell the story of tracing your family history, career, hobby, or passion and discovering an unexpected connection along the way. Maybe an old photograph, newspaper clipping, DNA result, or conversation revealed that your life had intersected with someone else's long before you realized it. Reflect on how seemingly unrelated events often weave together into a larger story.

Tell us a story inspired by Unexpected connections.

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:

• 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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