January SNEAK PEEK! Rites of Passage

[dialecticdreamer]

Rites of Passage

Everyone is born, and eventually, everyone dies. These can be emotionally complex, difficult experiences, but they can also be the pivotal moment in someone else's life, too. The milestones which mark a path through life can be powerful, illuminating, funny, sad, terrible, warm, or comforting, and we want to read about them.

Here is a sample public card, chosen from a list of seventy-five possible rites of passage.

tying a necktie	choosing a gift	first legal signature	first word	getting a license
killing someone	first library card	first crush	wisdom teeth	first paycheck
first insult	death	???	carrying fire	first flirt
parenthood	school dance	first homemade meal	new disability	walkabout
first kiss	loss of parent(s)	marriage or handfasting	discovering your orientation	first residence

Feel free to use the sample public card or generate one of your own (instructions are in the introductory post on 1 January 2015). There are no minimum fills, no requirements for form, genre, or medium. PRIZES offered!

Comments

[gehayi]

Is this a theme you're supposed to work on overall for whatever you do in the month of January? Or is it just one of many themes that you can choose?

Theme

[dialecticdreamer]

It's one option, just for the bingo card fills. Other lists have consistent themes; for example, "cotton candy bingo" specializes in lighthearted "fluff" stories.

Many people play two or more bingo cards simultaneously, for example, they might choose a particular square from a hurt/comfort card (there is a H/c bingo list) and a square from this card and combine prompts. Allbingo /allows/ this specifically, as long as you've directly answered a prompt on the card for each item. A bad example: a rite of passage "prom" plus the prompt "car trouble" from another list's bingo card, could be combined IF the action at the prom is intrinsic to the story/scene in the same way the car trouble is. The first line of the fill reads, "On the way to the prom, Joey's rattletrap Fiat left him stranded on the side of the road." Unless you /also/ talk about how he gets /to/ the prom (probably the resolution of the story I have in mind), you're not answering the "prom" prompt because its an incidental, throwaway bit setting the stage for the "car trouble" prompt. Clearer?

I'm hosting this one, hoping more people will give bingo cards a try even as a five-minute writing prompt to unstick the brain staring at a blank page. There will be much more information on the post on Jan 1; this was a preview to whet people's appetites.