Writing Prompt – How about a Little Rebellion with Your Tea?

Today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a key event in the American Revolution.

On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of Colonists boarded the ships — some dressed as Mohawk Indians — and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor.

(Governing officials thought Colonists would give in, accept the tax, and purchase the tea. They had no idea that the burgeoning American Spirit would incite such rebellion.)

Here’s Your Prompt:

• Write about rebellion: a time in the world’s history, or a time in your history. Have you ever gone against the establishment? Or fought for something for which you believed you were in the right?
   
• Write a rebellion into your current manuscript: it could be a tiny little thing (breaking a small infraction) or the telling of a war.
   
• Write about tea. Do you like or not? Do you drink it often? If not, when are you compelled to drink it? Are you a ‘ritual’ tea drinker…. following a precise set of rules for the heating of the water (and the teapot) and the correct timing of the brew? Or, are you a ‘boil a water and toss a bag into it’ kind of person?
   
• Do your characters drink tea? How about coffee? Beer? Soda, whiskey, wine? (Do you find your characters consume the same foods you do?) Write a scene where one of your characters drinks something other than what you have him normally drink. Do his actions change? His thoughts? Does this make the scene better or worse?