Friends, I have a question

[lea_hazel]

Does anyone have experience with using bingo cards to try and kickstart writing a long-form story? Has anyone tried to do this? Generate a card, somehow, for the prompts to help yourself get going, except each prompt corresponds to a section of a longer tale, instead of one whole complete story.

I am trying to move past the planning stages of a project, and freely admit that I'm starting to get desperate.

Comments

[jtthomas]

I do, actually. I use bingo for worldbuilding , which in turn gives me new ideas for where the plot might go. Works a bit better for fantasy, though. (I don't formally do any of the bingo challenges with those, though. Frequency is different so it works better at an individual pace.)

[lea_hazel]

A worldbuilding bingo is a very good idea. That's another piece I've been stalling on. Thanks.

Edit: It will however have to wait, because the library mysteriously blocks the card generator.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> A worldbuilding bingo is a very good idea. That's another piece I've been stalling on. Thanks. <<

There's a worldbuilding list already up on the generator, as we did a fest on that theme a while back.

>> Edit: It will however have to wait, because the library mysteriously blocks the card generator.<<

Library censorship is the opposite of helpful. It teaches people not to bother with libraries, and then they lose funding and go away. >_

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I've seen it done, so I included a few bingo options that use multiple prompts.

One prompt per chapter would give you a book with 25 chapters, or whatever size card you decide to use.

If you have lots of characters and a plot that many people would see as it unfolds, then you can randomize the characters with a bingo card and let that set the order of POV or other focus.

If you want to have a character or party wander around a very large area, you could name parts of it and use your card to choose the settings.

If you plan to riff through many themes or moods in different scenes, you could use those in a card.

Putting plot into a bingo card for one story is hard to do, because plot usually needs to have order.

You can also mix-and-match different types of prompts.

[vexed_wench]

I have done it as well. I blacked out a card for a big bang. I cheated I had 24 chapters and one prompt was used for the overall style. Bingo is a great thing to fire up the muse.

[samuraiter]

Once upon a time, this exact thing was the province of longfic_bingo, but the community has been inactive for a long time.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

The community is still visible, which means their instruction posts are too. The Longfic prompt list(s) could be added to the Bingo Card Generator.

Of course, this is also an option for anyone who wants to host a fest. I think it'd be a good choice for overlapping other fests, since not everyone writes longfic -- or you could let people use the individual prompts as they wish.

[lea_hazel]

Oh, thank you! This should be very useful.

[cornerofmadness]

That's almost all I ever do with these cards. It's a help to me.