[mod] New Rules Post
Rules Post! Don't we all love a rules post? \o/ This challenge will be slightly different (though probably less restrictive) than other fic bingos out there, so PLEASE read the rules, or...well, we will look at you kind of pityingly, and you'll probably be disappointed! Very little has changed from before, however. This was just to change out some dates, some old information, and give us a shiny new rules post. :)
How This Origfic Bingo Thing Works (Short Version)
How This Origfic Bingo Thing Works (Short Version)
We give you a card.
You complete a bingo by writing/creating at least five pieces. If you complete a bingo, you win a new card.
The first week of every month, you can request a new card even if you haven't completed a bingo.
Origfic only, please!
See? Really easy.
What Origfic Bingo Is and Is Not
Origfic Bingo is a challenge in which you strive to create at least five original fiction-themed "pieces", each corresponding to a prompt in a square on your own personal bingo card. Origfic Bingo is a personal creative challenge that will last indefinitely. There are various "bingos" of varying levels of challenge that can be made, but there is no formal scoring. As such, YOU are always in control of how much or how little you want to create during Origfic Bingo. As original fiction ideas are potentially copyrightable and publishable, how much or how little you want to share with the community is also up to you.
Finally, Origfic Bingo is a safe and fun space for everyone! Please no bashing of characters, settings, kinks, genres, creator talent, or anything else on this community, either in posts or in comments. Please be polite, respectful, and NICE.
Following Origfic Bingo
The main Origfic Bingo comm is on DW. Feel free to add us to your circle and to become a member. You will need to be a member in order to post any bingos or stories to the comm.
There is a sister community on Livejournal origfic_bingo that is also available for friending and posting. There won't be any mirroring between the DW and LJ versions, however, except for mod posts. PLEASE only post to one or the other comm, though. At the end of the month, the mods will crosspost a summary to DW of all the pieces posted to the LJ list, and vice versa.
You can also follow the comm through a feed on Insanejournal at
origficbingo_dw. Please note that comments on this feed are not visible on the main comm and aren't directed back to the original poster. We suggest using the feed only as notification and that you do all your commenting on the Dreamwidth or LJ comms.
How This Origfic Bingo Thing Works (The Longer Version)
Sign up. You can sign up with a DW account, OpenID, or even anonymously if you want. You can also sign up as a team/co-creators/whatever. There will be an Amnesty/Sign-Up post at the beginning of each month. New sign-ups should do so in a comment to this post. New sign-ups are limited to the first week of each month.
Pick what kind of card you would like. We have several flavors to choose from:
Totally Gen cards (general prompts not involving romance-specific themes)
Gen+Romance cards (which draw from the general prompts and also some romance themes)
Gen+Romance+Kink cards (which draw from the gen and romance themes as well as kinky themes a la Kink Bingo.
Prompt lists are here.
Receive a bingo card. We will post your randomly-generated card as a reply to your sign-up comment, along with the code you can use to share your bingo card.
Pick a bingo pattern (examples below) or make up your own. Be as traditional or challenging as you like!
Create your original fiction-themed pieces to fulfill that pattern. The number of pieces will be at least five pieces or maybe more, depending on the bingo pattern you're going for.
Post to the origfic_bingo comm. Tell us all about your success! \o/ Posting guidelines are below.
(OPTIONAL, bingo finished on active card)
Ask for another card. AND/OR
Do another bingo on your active card.
(OPTIONAL, no bingo finished on active card, during Amnesty Week)
Post completed amnesty pieces. AND/OR
Ask for a new card.
Lather, rinse, repeat!
Origfic Bingo Timeline
April 2 - New sign ups begin, with new bingo cards being sent out to those who want them. Any old cards can still be used.
May 1-7 - Amnesty Week. Amnesty posts for April made. New sign-ups cards distributed.
June 1-7 - Amnesty Week. Amnesty posts for cards from previous months made. New sign-ups cards distributed.
July 1-7 - Amnesty Week. Amnesty posts for cards from previous months made. New sign-ups cards distributed.
etc.
etc.
This challenge will continue on for as long as there is interest in it. Feel free to post stories from before the mod change, if you have them, during any amnesty weeks.
Prompts and Pieces
Please note that the cards all simply DRAW RANDOMLY from the gen/romance/kink lists. We make no guarantee of what percentage of your squares will be gen/romance/kink prompts. (ie, even someone who signs up for the GRK card is not guaranteed to get a mostly-kink card, just the POSSIBILITY of one.)
For the sake of simplicity, we are not accomodating requests for prompt exceptions (ie, "Can I have a card without X and Y?"). There are ~183 prompts on the gen list alone. The chances of getting a certain few in positions that make it IMPOSSIBLE for you to bingo (especially when you can make your OWN bingo shapes) are fairly low. Besides, no one is obligated to write anything just because it shows up on their card. If you get something you don't want to write...don't write it! You can always ask for another card during Amnesty of the next month.
The middle square of every card is a free space or wildcard. You can use any prompt you want for this square. Pick something off another card that looks tasty, or something completely different of your own devising.
If you are unsure of what a particular kinky prompt means or are looking for ideas of how to implement it, might we suggest the Kink Wiki?
Your pieces do not need to be any specific length/format/medium. Fics, poems, drabbles, icon sets, podfics, knitting projects, interpretive dances, pottery, paintings, little sculpey figures, soundtrack, pictograms, essays, art, picspams, photo manips, etc. are all fine, so long as they relate to an original fiction idea in some way. Maybe they are actual original fiction. Maybe they are illustrations for one of your fic ideas. Maybe they are particular outfits your heroine wears, or paintings that your gentleman thief has stolen, or mockups of settings your characters will visit, or a mixture of these. This challenge is for YOU, and whatever you want to create is fine, so long as it relates to your original fiction in SOME WAY.
This challenge is for original fiction only. No one will beat you with sticks if you plop your original characters down into a serial-numbers-filed-off fanmade world, but all stories need to be firmly based around original characters, not fandom ones.
Interpret your prompts in whatever way you'd like. Feel free to write a gen fic about a kinky prompt...or draw a kinky piece about a gen prompt. ^_~
Please only create pieces for your OWN original fiction/worlds/ideas. If you want to create something for someone else's world/fics/ideas, get permission first.
Bingos
The different types of bingos that we suggest are like so!
These are only suggestions. If you want to make some other shape for a bingo, that's fine! Cyrillic letters or futhark runes? All of the border of a card? Something even more random that consists of "everything that I really like on this card!"? That's fine! We only ask that any bingo consist of AT LEAST FIVE PIECES.
Bingos can be traditional or more complicated, but none are better or "worth more" than others. There is NO SCORING in Origfic Bingo. There are no prizes other than a job well done and many pats on the back. Origfic Bingo is a way to whet the creative whistle, not a competition. We have suggested bingos with varying levels of complexity so that YOU can choose how much you want to challenge yourself. This way, everyone is a winner! \o/
You can reuse squares on your card as much as you'd like in making successive bingos, but each reuse must have its own piece associated with it.
You cannot use previously-created pieces to fulfill squares. The idea is to make NEW things!
Getting New Cards
You can work on a bingo card for as long as you want. If you want to work on your first card for an entire year, making one bingo or fifty, that's fine. You are not REQUIRED to ask for new cards at any time if you don't want to. Should you want a new card, though, we can provide!
But first, some terms:
active card - your active card is the last card you were given. You need to make a bingo on your active card to earn another new card (should you desire it.)
previous card(s) - any card you've been given other than the active card. You can still make and post bingos on your previous cards, but they do not win you a new card.
That said, there are two ways to get a new card:
WIN it by completing a bingo - Once you complete a bingo, you can ask for another card. To do this, make a bingo post to the comm (guidelines are below). Then, comment to any card request post, ask for another card, and we will provide! At this point your first card becomes a "previous" card, and your second card is your "active" card. You can still write on any card, but before you can win a new card, you need to bingo on your active card.
ASK for a new card during Amnesty Week - The 1st week of each month is Amnesty Week. During Amnesty, ANYONE, whether they have completed a bingo or not, can ask for a new card. To do this, simply comment to the Amnesty Week request post that will magically appear on the 1st (or thereabouts) of each month. Amnesty is also the time to post anything you've created that will not result in a bingo (ie, pieces for bingos that you're giving up on completing.)
Posting
So you've completed a bingo! yay! Or, you're posting amnesty pieces that didn't quite make a bingo! yay! Either way, some general guidelines about posting to the comm:
One post = one bingo, please! Do not post about pieces individually. Wait until you have a bingo, then post about all the pieces in that bingo. One exception is during the Amnesty period, where you can post about any items (even just one) that didn't quite make a bingo.
We realize that not everyone will be comfortable posting their original works on an open comm. Maybe it's very personal. Maybe you want to send it to publishers later. Maybe you're worried about someone stealing your work. That's fine! For this challenge you can post with as little or as much privacy as you'd like. We suggest you post in one of the following ways:
Post your work to the origfic_bingo comm. Simple! Use the header below and post your work.
Post your work to another (public!) place and link it on the comm. Format the entry as below, but instead of a cut, give us links!
Post your work to the origfic_bingo comm as "members only". Equivalent to friends-locking, this is a way to post your work for others to read without it being accessible to the general public. Please note, though, that members-only posts will NOT show up on the feeds on Livejournal and Insanejournal.
Post to origfic_bingo comm with only a summary/description of your work. If you want to participate but don't feel comfortable sharing, you can just give us a description of what you've done. ("I have this short story anthology about mutant spacecats that I'm working on, and I wrote a bingo of stories for it for the 'kitchen disaster', 'mirrors', 'snuggling/cuddling', 'xenokink', and 'food' prompts!") Don't forget to tell us why your work is awesome!
No matter what or how you post, remember to keep a copy of your work. Though we don't expect to disappear, this community is not meant as an archive.
When you post, please use the following Subject, Header, and Tagging conventions. Please follow this template:
Subject: [Type of piece(s)] Some Collective Name
examples:
[Fics] The Hazards of Making Catnip Brownies and Other Stories
[Poems] AwesomeUser's Odes to Spacecats
[Art, Icons, Knitting Project] Things Spacecats Do In Their Spare Time
Header:Always use a header for each work. Headers go like so:
Title:
Prompt:
Rating: (use standard MPAA ratings: G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17)
Content Notes/Warnings: (Warn here to elaborate on or note things above and beyond what's in the prompt or in the rating. These things include: nonconsensual sex/rape, underage sex, incest, graphic violence, and anything else you think it would be polite to tell us about your work. REMEMBER, this challenge is both kink AND gen friendly, so let's all be very clear in our warnings, eh? Surprises are nice, but not here.
Other optional header items could be a genre, or some kind of series identifier if it applies.
:CUT TAG OR LINK TO WORK GOES HERE:
Leave the headers of the piece visible, and if you are posting the work in the bingo post, always post the actual pieces behind a cut tag. This is important, as we don't want to take over folks' reading lists with uncut posts. Also, the feeds will cut after the first cut tag, so we want to make sure that we have one. If you are unsure how to use multiple cut tags in an entry, just ask!
If you are posting a blackout or any other bingo that would require more than five headers/fics to be posted, please put your full headers behind a cut tag, in the interest of saving space on folks' reading page. Feel free to give a bit of a blurb outside the cut, to entice folks to look under the cut at the full headers.
Tagging: The comm is set to allow members both to add and remove tags and create new ones. This can change if things get too messy or people start abusing the system, but at the beginning we'll roll with it! PLEASE check the tags to see if an appropriate tag has already been created before creating a new one. When you post, please tag for the following things:
creator tag (by: awesomeuser1)
prompt tag (prompt: mirrors). Use more than one if posting multiple pieces at once. If you've done a wildcard piece based off a prompt you got somewhere other than our lists, use prompt: wildcard.
media tag (media: fic, media: art, etc. Mods will pre-create some of what we imagine the most common types will be.)
bingo (*bingo) or amnesty (*amnesty) tag
Any questions? Ask them in the comments! :D
