Launch Your Story With A Tarot Card

As long as you have a tarot deck, you will never have writer’s block again. All you need to launch your story is a simple card. I can hear your objections. But your story isn’t the right genre for tarot. Or maybe the tarot is too archaic for your story. You’re afraid you will write too formulaic and the card’s meaning doesn’t work with your story. To all of those, I say, you don’t know the tarot. Any genre of writing can benefit from the application of a tarot card. Whether she’s the heroine of a romance novel, a Queen in a fantasy book, the hard-nosed leader of a secret agency in your mystery, or the parent or teacher in a young adult novel, one of the Queen Court Cards could launch your character with depth and realism. The journey portrayed by each of the pip cards in the suit plays out in every walk of life, and in every novel in one way or another.

And sometimes, to break through our blocks we have to write something completely new. Getting away from the troublesome story with something new will free up your muse and perhaps bring your spark back to the work in progress.

So how do you launch your story with a tarot card? All you need to do is pull a card. In fact, I did the exercise here. It doesn’t need to be a long story, though mine could possibly go longer here. Mostly the idea is to get the words and the creativity flowing.

In fact, for the first five commentators, tell me about your work in progress, and I’ll pull a tarot card and tell you how it could apply. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter, and I’ll let you know when Mary’s Muse Warriors officially opens!

My Card: 3 of Pentacles (Deck: New Palladini Tarot)

The idea I took away from it: work, apprenticeship, pleasing the investors/overseers

The story:

I pinched the bridge of my nose in a futile attempt to stave off the growing migrane. Somewhere in this morass of code was the bug preventing us from launching in less than twenty-four hours. I sighed and went back to the start of this section. Play testing had revealed that when the orc stepped from the castle it through an unhandled exception error. I grumbled and started the scenario once more.

“Holly, phone!” Bobby, my business partner yelled over the roaring orc coming from my speakers.

“Damn it! I’m busy. Take a message,” I hollered back at him. He knew better than to bother me. I’d told him I had to find this bug, and his job was to keep the hungry investors and anxious customers happy.

“It’s Harold.”

Crap! I bit back several more curses–I didn’t know if Bobby had Harold on speaker–and took a deep breath to calm my temper. “I’ll take it at my desk.” I paused the game play. So far so good, though I hadn’t reached the buggy portion of the code yet. Picking up the handset, I put a smile on my face. “Hello. Holly Viewood, here. How can I help you?” …

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