Using oracle cards to study fiction or write stories

jolie_amethyst said:

Is Tarot for Writers useful for spreads and such? The biggest complaint I've seen in reviews is that too much of the book is devoted to a basic card overview, and not a terribly helpful one at that. Previews on Amazon were pretty useless, plus the ebook version is locked to a font that reads pretty poorly on screen. That makes me VERY reluctant to spend the asking price for it.

In other news: the Tyldwick Tarot makes a superb deck for fiction work so far!

Click to expand...

Tarot for Writers has a few spreads. The most notable one is the Hero's Journey spread. The first third of the book is dedicated to advice on using the Tarot for writing in a general way -- a few spreads, advice on character and scene development, etc. It's a lot of suggestions and not very in depth. The bulk of the book -- the final 2/3 of it -- has descriptions of each card. But it's not just descriptions. Besides a general description of how the card is traditionally read in a Tarot reading, it also lists keywords, key symbols, myths and legends, astrological associations, literary archetypes, a small blurb on what the card could mean for you as a writer, and finally -- a list of suggested prompts. So the reviews on Amazon saying that the biggest portion of the book is dedicated only to card meanings really isn't true. There's other stuff in there related to writing. The book doesn't get into great detail but what it does do is give you many jumping off points. It's very nice for brainstorming. If you're looking for something more in depth on the writing end, this probably isn't the book you're looking for.

For the Tower card, the "Tower and Your Writing Practice" section talks about that middle of the night flash of inspiration writers sometimes get. The prompts are: a storm, natural disaster, a blackout, a prison, a dungeon, an attack, an inspiration, a move, the ivory tower of academia, the Tower of Babel.

I always find myself brainstorming other things when I look at these kinds of prompts: a divorce, a car accident, emotionally feeling like the bottom has been pulled out from under you, discovery of an affair, losing your job, a police notification....

I like the book as it gets my creative juices flowing. I don't write many stories from scratch with it but I do find it gets me in the groove by making that connection between cards and symbols and language and flow.

Another thing you can do, besides reading for fictional characters, etc. is to work the opposite way. Read a book or watch a film and think about what cards would represent situations, events, people, etc. I love this kind of creative work.

Hope this info. helps. I also have a lot of pure writing books so if you want some recommendations, I can PM you. =)

Starlily, thanks for the review on Tarot for Writers, it does help. As it turns out, I discovered tonight that I'd actually bought the Kindle version back in July! Can't tell if I did that by accident and didn't correct it or what, because the formatting is definitely poor and I do check that sort of thing before buying normally. Maybe the characters took over the iPad while I wasn't paying attention and bought it for me.

Anyway, I'm going through the Writers Block section now, and if that doesn't help, I think maybe I need to set this particular cast of characters and their tale aside for a bit longer and start over from scratch, perhaps on something novella-length, just to get back into a routine of writing regularly again. (I'm way too wordy to produce an effective short story. LOL) Or take them out to play in a different plot for a while. Or something.

There's a version of the Hero's Journey spread in the Story Forge cards LWB (I think it's also on their Facebook page, as most of their spreads and a few others are in their photo album over there); a version can also be found linked here for those who want an idea of what such a spread would look like, along with a partial example of how it would be used.

Oh, thanks for the link. I'll enjoy checking that out after work.