Tarot Cards
I used to read tarot cards as a teenager. I wasn’t in high demand or anything, probably because my readings were a little too creative. Stuff like “okay, the five of cups in the future position means nature … you will be visited by a herd of rhinocerous!” It was a storytelling structure for me. Using the creative prompts provided by the images on the cards combined with what I knew of my friends, I had fun coming up with some highly suspect fortune telling. At first I was, like many teenagers, fascinated by the possibility of divining the future. After a few readings, though, I was like, oh, man, this is easy, anyone could do this. Nobody even checks your work.
Recently I bought a new deck of tarot cards. I don’t know what happened to my teenage-years deck, but this one is much nicer. I’m planning on doing some readings for my main characters. Want to give it a spin? Let me know about your character and his or her main dilemma. For example: Ruth is a 15-year-old girl in 1899 from a poor fishing community who has discovered Spanish gold on the beach. What should she do with the treasure?
Just be aware that I might come up with a herd of rhinocerous. But maybe it will give you a new way to look at your plot. And I’ll get some divination practice.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Kate, this is far too much fun!
Okay, so this is a story that’s been rattling around in my head since I wrote Chosen Warrior but this one is about a girl, 16, and she and her best friend are both warriors.
But they have a big fight and it ruins everything. What did they fight about?
I was thinking the discovery of kimchi… but that does seem rather cliche.
Sure, Christy, I’ll email you a reading this week. Or should I do it as a blog post?
And if anyone else is interested, leave a comment and let me know how you want your results delivered. You can leave an email address but make sure you use spaces and spell out punctuation to prevent spam, such as “tarot for fictional characters at migwriters dot com.”
If you haven’t already done so, pick up a copy of Corrine Kenner’s fabulous book Tarot for Writers. There are a lot of great ideas for using Tarot cards as a tool to help you in your writing. There are a zillion exercises, plus info on each of the cards themselves. Every writer can benefit from using the cards to help explore characters, plots, settings, etc.
I’m not affiliated with Corrine, just a fan. Her weekly online meetup (also called Tarot for Writers, found at meetup.com) showed me how to use Tarot cards to help me doing NaNoWriMo ’08.
Wow, Michelle, this is so cool! Thanks, I’ll definitely check into that.