Did you get the Story Forge deck then? How do you like it?
The two "actual" oracles I'm using lately for fiction writing are the Enchanted Map deck and Madame Endora's Fortune Cards...and I use them completely differently.
It was Endora who made it clear to me that words tend to trigger my imagination/brainstorming more easily than images do, plus so many of those cards are based on myths and legends and story archetypes that I know well, which makes them easy for me to work with. With Endora, I'll usually pick a spread with positions and think on a character, then lay the spread out and read it from that character's viewpoint. Sometimes, they're very literal, but not always. The warnings they've been screeching at my poor villain have been hilarious though--they're full of dark foreboding for him, and rightly so!
The Enchanted Map cards are much more visual, with their photo collage styling. With that deck, I might put myself into the mindset of a character, then sift through the cards face up to find one that "feels" right for that character in that situation. Then I'll study the card for a time to see what details might emerge. They've been useful at times for getting at the emotions (at both a conscious and deep down level) of a given character.
The Tea Leaf cards, while I had them, were quite good at predicting future bits of plots where I already knew what was coming. I never got them to show me anything I didn't already know about those stories, but to be fair, I was already a bit off on that deck when I tried. In theory, they seem like they'd be worth trying for plotting.
I'm also finding that different decks work best with different characters--both in oracles and Tarot. One secondary character that I just could not get a handle on with Shadowscapes or Steampunk truly came alive with the Robin Wood deck & the Way of Tea spread (that's turned out to be a very useful one for understanding people's motives, thank you again!). In that case, RW gave me the 7/Swords for the first position...for a moment, I was totally blank, and then
click!, it all began to fall into place. Here was the central motivation behind this man, and how he gets into the position he does in the end. I found myself laying out the 7/Swords from every deck I had and comparing them, noting down what caught my eye in each. Then I threw down a 3 card Endora spread to help pinpoint why and where that particular card was such a key part of that character's being--because Endora works rather well for me with the darker characters and the darker aspects of even the supposedly good guys.
One thing that's also fun: same spread, different characters, and with more than one deck. This has been especially useful if it's a timeline spread. You can learn a tremendous amount from doing that, even more so when you combine the Story Forge deck with one or two others, laying out a card from each deck for each position. I use the SF cards almost like a second title for their given position...as a further framework to refine the meaning of the oracle or Tarot card drawn for that position. (SF is also the only deck that I can & will toss out a card from a blind draw that doesn't fit and replace it with another--though lately I've made myself think pretty hard on what comes up before I dismiss it.)
One oracle that flat out refuses to do fiction though surprised me...Froud's Faeries. I've tried to do spreads for characters with them hoping for some insights...the spreads I drew were all about me, EVERY TIME. I finally gave up. No other deck, oracle or Tarot, has outright rebelled on me like that one did. So long as I make it clear who I'm thinking of as I shuffle, the cards will generally provide something useful--how useful may depend somewhat on the deck, as in that one character above, but generally I'll get something from it. The Fae though, aren't willing to give me
anything so far for a fictional character or story--they'll read for other flesh and blood people, they're happy enough to nag me about getting the book finished, but not to help me work on it. It's weird.
