#fastandfurious | The Ink Well Fast and Furious Festival - Day One

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Authored by @shanibeer

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Image by alan9187 from Pixabay

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to Day 1 of The Ink Well's Fast and Furious Festival! Good to have you here - have you signed up on the Launch page yet? Pop over and leave a comment.

Remember to vote for this post and follow @theinkwell.

Twenty days of fast and furious writing, reading, commenting and having fun. Every day for twenty days, there will be a new prompt focusing on a different aspect of writing each day from character development and dialogue to setting and style and everything in between.

You can join the Festival at any time during the twenty days and respond to as many of the prompts as you want (prizes for completing all twenty), and do all your comments in one day each week if you want to - it's up to you!

DEADLINE FOR ALL POSTS AND COMMENTS: 9 FEBRUARY 2021

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Day 1 Prompt - Character and Dialogue

CHECK THE LAUNCH POST FOR RULES OF ENTRY

Dialog is one of your best tools for bringing your characters to life. What they say and how they say it will give us a sense of who that character is. Do they shout? Do they laugh or open their eyes wide while talking? Do they lapse into their native Spanish when frustrated?

Get your characters talking when it can help inform readers of something important, when you want us to see a personality trait, or when you have an opportunity to tell part of the story through characters talking to one another. (Writing Tip #26: Action, Dialog and Narrative - The Dynamic Trio)

Task One

In your post, take what you learn about each of the three characters from the dialogue in the extract below and then develop them until you have a paragraph describing the character more fully.

A woman in a restaurant whispers to her friend:
"You know who that is over there, don't you?"
The other woman surreptiously glances at the other table:
"No, who?"
"That's just it, she's had so much work done you don't recognise her. That's Betty Grainger."
"No!"
"Yes, she's had her nose done, cheeks lifted, even a hair transplant."
"Whatever for?"
"She's going into politics."
"Seriously, that's really her?" * (69 words)

What do you learn about each of the three characters? How old do you think they are? What kind of life-style do they lead? Have they got a job? Where do they live? Do they have a family or friends? What do they wear? Have they got a secret in their past? Do you like them? Tell us all about them in your post - a paragraph for each character.

Task Two

Write a short dialogue, like the one above, no more than 70-100 words, where two characters are talking about a third one. What can you reveal about your characters in your dialogue?

Some ideas:

  • nurses talking about a new doctor
  • zoo-keepers talking about a gorilla
  • gang members talking about a rival gang boss

Or make up one of your own!

You're going to have to work fast and furious to get this done in 25 minutes!

* the dialogue in Task One is adapted from this video by Jerry Jenkins

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Tags for Your Post

The tags you use on your post are really important for:

  • letting people know what your post is about
  • helping people find your post in the future

We want to make sure both these things happen, especially if we are looking to develop a long-term income for our work through tipping. Think about which tags would be useful in two years time when a potential reader is looking for your work.

In peakd.com, you can have up to ten tags. The first five tags are used to categorise your post - these are the tags that people will use as search terms. The very first tag is the most important one. The second five tags are for tribes and affiliations.

Let's have a look at possible tags for the post you have just written:

First Five Tags

Compulsory tags

The Rules of Entry for the Fast and Furious Festival say that you must include #theinkwell and #fastandfurious.

Type of post tags

Usually we would have tags like #story #writing #fiction for complete stories. For this kind of post you might want to choose a tag like #assignment or #workshop or #writerdevelopment or #writingpractice.

Content of post tags

For a completed story, we might use tags that describe the type of genre like #romance #thriller #comedy #horror. For this type of post you could use tags like #character or #characterdevelopment or #dialogue or, on another day, #setting or #style or #editing or #presentation.

Choose five for your post. Which one are you going to put first?

Second Five Tags

These are for tribes and affiliations like #teamuk and are important if you receive additional voting support from a tribe or affiliation. Be careful, though, if you use these tags, about whether your post appears in another feed as well as The Ink Well community and your own blog.

If you are thinking about a long-term future for your writing, how important are the second five tags? Would your post be better without them?

😱Tag Spam😱

This is when you see a list of, usually, curators and curation trails like #blocktrades #ocd #curangel #curie #appreciator #posh to name a few. This is a waste of your tags for these reasons:

  • curators and curation trails usually have conditions similar to the Rules of Entry for the Fast and Furious Festival. Unless you meet those conditions, curators will not be interested in your post.
  • it tells potential readers nothing about your post and they have no way of finding it in the future.
  • it looks as if your post and story-writing is not good enough in its own right and you are reduced to begging for votes.

This also applies to tagging accounts in your post like this: @theinkwell @blocktrades, @appreciator, @curangel, @curie etc ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️

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Finally ...

When you've completed the tasks and chosen your tags and published your post:

Remember to link your post in a comment below.

As you read and leave a comment for other posts that have responded to today's prompt, come back and edit your comment below to add the links to the comments you've made on other posts.
Aim to make five comments for each post.

How did you get on today? Hard or easy? How did you manage your time? Did you allow five minutes to read the post, five minutes for each character description and five minutes to write your dialogue? Or did it take you hours? Tell us in the comments.

Remember - have fun! 😁

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We would like to invite lovers of short stories to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and run by @shanibeer and @stormlight24 with support from moderators @carolkean, @jayna and @agmoore.

Read The Ink Well Manifesto for Writers, Readers and Investors.

It is now possible to follow The Ink Well curation trail on Hive blockchain with Hive.Vote. Simply navigate to the curation trail section and search for theinkwell and our trail will pop up as an option.

If you wish to delegate to @theinkwell and support creative writing on Hive, you can do this from the wallet section in PeakD.

A big thank you to all our delegators

Click banner to visit the community page

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24 comments
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(Edited)

My entry... can't believe I'm first off the bat for once in my life 😂 Usually I'm late for everything.

https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@raj808/the-ink-well-fast-and-furious-festival-day-1-dialogue

I've added some insights learned through the process in my post, and also tips I've learned in the past for dialogue. I didn't manage my time very well though, it took about 2 hours all in all after messing around in GIMP to create the title image.

I had a lot of fun writing characters in response to your dialogue though 🙂


Comments on others posts:

Hi soyunasantacruz.

I love the way you have explored the motivations of the three character, especially the two gossiping women. Their character traits elaborates on why they might be gossiping about the third.

And your dialogue effectively portrayed how a boss sometimes doesn't see how they have created a problem by overloading a worker... they so rarely see or admit it though.
This is why after my last job I vowed I would only work for myself from then onward 😂

soyunasantacruz post


Hi Jayna

Great character descriptions. I particularly liked the way you built a past between the three women. I tried to intimate similar between two of my characters, but I think I might have been too vague. There was more of a 'mean girls' or ladies vibe going on in mine 😂

The dialogue is fantastic. It builds really nicely to a real mystery cliffhanger type moment, leaving the reader wondering 'what is this disease'? Will Mr Caldwell be OK? The descriptive actions also progressed and informed the dialogue perfectly. Very nice!

jayna post


Hi dwixer

You effectively build a picture of the social standings and friendships between the three women in your character study.

I also liked the dialogue section and how it shows the way people often become conceited upon winning professional awards.

dwixer post


Hi kaerpediem. How are you? I hope you're well.

I liked how you filled out the back story of the three women, especially the first gossiping woman, so different to mine who were both pretty mean spirited people 😂

Interesting that we both painted the politician who had had 'work done' as a good person. I wonder how accurate that is to reality... a politician being a good person 🤣 Wishful thinking maybe.

The dialogue was clear and concise and left me with a strong impression that it was two family members talking about another family member who is considered the black sheep.

Nice work!

kaerpediem post


Hey iamraincrystal 👋 How's things? It has been a while.

Great character descriptions; a psychic, a bookworm and a political powerhouse. Quite a combination 😉

It is interesting the way you continued the dialogue from theinkwell post, sticking with those characters and further developing it to express the back story you created.

Nice 🙂

iamraincrystal post

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Congratulations for being the first @raj808 🎉

Yes, me too. I took over 2 hours. Then I forgot to post it through The Ink Well community and quickly deleted it. Good thing I copied it first before deleting. Then I had to wait to be able to post, and then finally got it done. Something like 4 hours with the wait-time included 🙃

Here's to both of us getting it done within the hour in the next one... 😃

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Congratulations for being the first

Ha ha... well I think it has more to do with the fact that theinkwell posts in the same time zone that I live. So, when I saw it pop up just after I'd eaten dinner, I thought why not have a go ;-)

Here's to both of us getting it done within the hour in the next one.

I'll second that @kaerpediem
I'm gonna see if I can be both fast and furious next time around 🤣

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(Edited)

Hello @theinkwell thank you very much for this challenge, it was very satisfying to participate, the creation lasted 30 minutes.

I guess expert writers should do it in 10 minutes. But I am very happy, I did all the homework and I will go to bed with excitement waiting for the second day.

Thank you 🙋🏽

Also take advantage and make the first comment, I leave it below.

https://hive.blog/hive-170798/@soyunasantacruz/fast-and-furious-ink-festival-challenge-day-one

This is the comment I made to @raj808

I laughed a little because of the description of his characters, a little eccentric but the dialogue also gives us the opportunity to blow up our imagination and exaggerate the description.

I liked very much his post, very organized his presentation, has helped me with the options of the labels always I doubt with them.

congratulations🤝

This is the comment I made to @jayna
Good work on task 1.

I felt that it was not a description of characters, but a story that enthralls the life of those characters. The first part I loved the second part I missed a little bit.

On task 2.

I liked the dialogue but again I had the perception that it was long, so I went to check with a word counter 🙈 and

This is the comment I made to @kaerpediem
It is curious to see the different personality traits of our characters, they are so different.

However there is something in common between you and me and the other participants. We all assume the average age for each character being the last one older.

I liked your dialogue very much, I felt the person's anger and I think I even took their side. 🤣😬 Good job.

This is the comment I made to @iamraincrystal

It's interesting that in the description of your characters you haven't included age, I think you're the first to do that.

I liked your dialogue, especially the firmness and security of the man. He really liked that woman 🤣👏 @iamraincrystal

This is the comment I made to @dwixer

Hi, to comment and vote on your post I had to look for you at hive.blog because I don't have the application you post from.

Maybe it's better to share the links from hive or peakd so you don't miss the opportunity to comment or vote.

Going back to your post, I really liked the dialogue. I think that nurses' conversation is more common than fiction 😜

This is the comment I made to @gilliatt

What a good story, it surprised me several times in the development of the events.

Excellent, I think you have a talent for this, go ahead and don't be discouraged. 👍 Congratulations.

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(Edited)

Greetings to all and welcome to this fast and furious festival, we hope to have fun and learn from each and every one of the participants, it took me just over an hour, since seeing the demands of day one, I tried to cover all of them in this little story , Success for everyone. Here is my entry:
https://hive.blog/hive-170798/@gilliatt/the-ink-well-fast-and-furious-festival-day-1-good-luck-short-story-by-gilliatt

Commented

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(Edited)

Here's my Day 1 - took me longer than the 1 hour I was supposed to have dedicated to it... but it will get faster
https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@kaerpediem/the-ink-well-fast-and-furious-festival-or-or-day-one

🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌
Comments:
raj808

Could relate to all three characters
I find most times, the gossip is the one that has plenty of time to do it, and then there's that friend who is more of an introvert, ever ready to soak it all in ;p
Could feel Mary's indignance :D

soyunasantacruz

Hah! Party animal is going to have to tone it down eh, to run for politics ;p
A lesson in the dialogue, guess that's the last time he is helping her out ...:D

jayna

Ooooh, I like that you connected them
Now I know the dynamics of their relationship :D

dwixer

I have seen many like Doctor Williams
Give them a little power and they start gloating
Let's hope he is as good a doctor as his ego...
....

And also
iamraincrystal
justclickindiva
morey-lezama
mayifiestas

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Happy day, I am looking forward to the second challenge.

Although I'm exhausted with the dynamics of the comments, that of going to comment and bringing it back, I don't think it will work for me, I'm a little confused and it's hard for me to organize my own commentary.

It would be good to analyze that dynamic. Thank you and sorry if it causes you any inconvenience. @theinkwell

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(Edited)

Hello. This was an interesting exercise for Day 1. I haven't participated in a workshop before, so it was refreshing to look at my dialogue and character development and analyze it against what you propose in your example. Thanks for the fresh approach I will adopt in the future to narrow my focus:

Here is the link to my Day 1 Festival:

https://peakd.com/hive-170798/@justclickindiva/the-ink-well-fast-and-furious-festival-day-1


LINKS TO COMMENTS:

This section of the Festival is essential, I think, to the future success of the Community. Encouraging engagement on each other's content is a way to keep a high level of activity in the Community.

  1. @morey-lezama

  2. @ricardo993

  3. @dwixer

  4. @kaerpediem

  5. @soyunasantacruz

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

  1. @gilliatt
  2. @deeanndmathews
  3. @notacinephile
  4. @marcybetancourt

ADDITIONAL COMMENT ON 1/30/21:
@faith65

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