In this week’s episode, Crys and JP pull the tarot cards they will use to write their stories. They discuss the meaning of different cards and how to apply them to your story.
Show Notes
How to Write a Scene course with J. Thorn
Transcript
Crys: Hello, friends. This is episode 33–one of my favorite numbers–of the Write Away Podcast, and it is March 4th as we’re recording. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost JP Rindfleisch. All right, JP. We actually have comments that we have neglected to share. Why don’t we go through those and then we’ll talk about how our week was going?
JP: Yeah. So we’ll go back to episode 28, How Do I Write Realistically Flawed Characters? We have one comment from Abe, he’s my co-writer, and he’s talking about President Snow and how he, you get to see his motives and his reactions from the spinoff, The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes.
And it was just a really fun comment about how you can use different venues or different books to get more insight into characters that may otherwise seem like really bad guys.
Crys: And I hadn’t even realized that there was a spinoff and I definitely want to read that.
JP: I know, I’m like, “Oh, now I have something to add.” Yeah. Our next group of comments are from episode 31 for, Do You Journal? Our good friend Lon, he journals sorta. Not a giant thing, but he does it before bed.
I’m curious to know what his kind of intent is when he writes at that time. Is it like recollecting the day’s events or brainstorming for tomorrow’s plans? He didn’t reply because he didn’t want to, but he will eventually.
Crys: We’ll shame him into it. Like not shame. Guilt. I don’t like shame. Guilt is fine.
JP: Not shame. Heavily guilt.
But yeah, I think that’s actually a really good time to journal before bed because it kinda lets you decompress. That’s definitely one thing I want add into life.
And then our last one is from Janet. She uses journaling as a form to ask herself specific questions, keeping material focused, and also uses it for brainstorming when she’s not writing. This episode apparently got her rethinking on our process of journaling.
I really like this approach of using journaling to help build other pieces of your writing career. This is the approach I was trying to take when I was talking about journaling. So it was fun to read these comments.
Crys: Yeah, and I get angry with myself, but I’ve had to embrace this, that when I do need to brainstorm or dump, I just need to grab whatever notebook is near. I’ve gotten to the point where I only have two concurrently existing notebooks outside of my journal. I wish that I knew what things were going to be pertinent later on so I knew what things were… when I did more of the random things that they’d be useful in my journal. My journal is also small, because I want it to be portable.
I’m just really frustrated that there’s no magically expanding notebook. I just need to Harry Potter some shit. And be like, all right, we’re gonna, embiggify it for this brainstorming project, but then we’re going to shrink it down so we can travel with it.
Anyways, that doesn’t exist. So I’m out of luck. It’d be so good. So good. So how has your writing week been?
JP: Yes, it has been. No, it’s been okay.
I need to get better at revising. I’m not good at revising. I’ve come to find, or I think revising for me is like a compounding effort. It’s always really slow getting going. And then all of a sudden, it’s like an avalanche and it doesn’t stop.
Right now I’m on revising book two. I’m still in the slow moving, trying to get it going, and I think it’s just wrapping my head around where our outline was for the co-written project, and then where Abe took it because the one thing I want to do is retain what Abe took while working on the revising pieces. And so it’s fun working with a co-writer because you basically have this whole other voice that you’re like following their logic with.
It’s taking a couple of moments to get the gears going. But other than that, I’ve had an interesting and fun upgrade week, I guess one would say. One, I got the whiteboard paper. I found a cheap one after our friend Lon suggested which one to get and I attached it to my door and I’ve been storyboarding the TASM project, which has been fun.
And then I upgraded my iPad to the newest one. I got the keyboard, not the magic keyboard, cause I’m not a monster, but a different keyboard. That’s fantastic. It basically turned it into this little laptop. So I’ve been using that the past couple of days and it has been fantastic.
I’ve been using just like a normal laptop, but it’s heavier and I don’t know why, but I feel like this one’s more portable, so it’s been fantastic.
Crys: My roommate’s girlfriend had to do a border run, which is where you leave the country to renew your tourist visa. So she went back to the States and will have to do the whole quarantine and then she’s going to spend four days running around doing errands and one of the errands she’s going to do is take my poor Apple pencil and hopefully get it replaced because I only had it a month before it got four year olded.
JP: So glad I don’t have a four year old.
Crys: They’re monsters, but they’re really good at cuddling.
JP: That’s true.
Crys: Best compliments.
JP: Yeah. Yeah. That’s fair. Our bird sometimes does that?
Crys: That’s basically a three-year-old, so…
JP: True. I also got, Paperlike is the brand, but it’s Paperlike screen protector. And I don’t know, I like it a lot cause I do a lot of drawing and whatnot. It just has a little bit more friction than like drawing on glass does. It’s very nice.
Crys: This week–
JP: How was your week been?
Crys: Oh, I have to talk about my week. I was just going to skip that.
JP: I’m not going to let you.
Crys: I actually have been writing… well, last week was lasik and my co-writer and I planned out our next book on Friday. We did our plotting session. So I started it this week, but it turns out she’s not able to work on it this week, so we will finish it next week.
It’s only 12 chapters. So I wrote my first chapter yesterday, today, no just yesterday. I don’t know. It took me two days. It wasn’t today. Regardless. I wrote my first chapter, which means that I really only have five days left of writing for five chapters. So next week we will finish the book. These are short books. They’re about 40,000 generally, and we each write about 2-3 thousand on it a day, and then it’s done.
But while I’m doing that, I’m also writing my next solo, which I’m going to try and write a thousand words a day on every day, even on Saturdays and Sundays. And I’m well aware that I might not hit my thousand words on those days because I do have the kiddo.
But if I get words down, even if it’s a hundred words, that is just momentum forward and the goal is to not have a stress out where I have to dictate 18,000 words in two days.
JP: That would be a great plan and very healthy choices.
Crys: Yeah. And that’s what we’re working on. Yesterday was really interesting though, because I had admin-y work, podcast-y work in the morning, and I got started really late because my nanny arrived late. I was just struggling with the idea of getting to the writing, but I had scheduled the first attempt at a sprinting group with The Author Success Mastermind crew.
So about eight of us, who came and went throughout the two hours that we did this, sat down and did sprints together. And it was lovely. I got… how many words did I get? 2300 minus… 1600 words. I got about 1600 words last night. And so I am definitely going to be setting up more sprint sessions with TASM and using that system to help me get words done.
I’ve been a part of Becca Syme’s Patreon for awhile, and they have a sprint group, a sprint zoom call going on basically 24/7. And the problem I have with that particular one is that, bless Becca Syme, good for her, she’s gotten really popular. The group’s gotten really popular. And so I never know how many people are going to be in the group.
Am I going to know the people in the group? And that upsets me enough that I don’t get work done and like upsets in the way that a ship gets upset when it gets tossed back and forth in the waves, not like I’m angry that people are there. And because TASM is such a close knit group, like it doesn’t matter who shows up or how many people show up. I’ve already, at least, met them all once. I’m much more comfortable with that. I’m really excited about getting more sprints going there.
JP: Nice. I actually heard rave reviews this morning in the accountability group. Cause we have the morning one. Yeah. So already doing well.
Crys: Woohoo. Alrighty.
Now we actually get to talk about the thing that we’re talking about this week, which people already know, because it’ll be in the show title. Anyways, we’re talking about using tarot for, I was gonna say show cards, that’s not it–tarot for stories.
You have done this. I have thought about doing this.
So you’re going to guide us through how we can do this, then we’re going to pull some cards. This is going to be a two-parter. We’re going to write stories based on the cards we’ve pulled, and we’ll come back with talking about how we did it.
So this is the setup episode.
JP: I’m so excited.
Okay. I’m so excited. I took a whole page of notes for this and I am just ready to talk about tarot to you. First of all, for our listeners, I want to go over like what the tarot portions are really quickly. It won’t be boring, I promise. But just to get a main concept of it.
So tarot. There’s the Major Arcana, those are 22 cards and those are your big concepts.
So your life, death, change, life journeys, all those great themes and big transformations. Fun fact, this is known as the fool’s journey, which is closely aligned to the hero’s journey, but it is not the same. And it’s the moments from naivete, to meeting the mentor, dark night of the soul, and finally that full illumination and understanding. The fun part about the Major Arcana is that it’s a cycle.
And so even though you start off as a fool, taking your first steps on some great change in your life, you then come to the full realization of that step only to take your next step, your next journey on. So it’s a constant cycle through life that goes on.
Crys: I want to just say for people who, if you’re still confused about that, think about how the ace plays the beginning and ending, but it can be the highest or the lowest card and adapt depending on how you’re playing the game.
JP: Exactly. And then we have the Minor Arcana. Whereas we’ve got big themes in Major Arcana, Minor Arcana are everyday world experiences, daily life. These are the details, whereas the Major Arcana are the themes. And then we have four suits. We have the Wands, this is all about creativity, energy, passion. This would be like your spiritual side. Cups, those are your emotions, imagination, intuition. So that’d be your emotional side. Swords, your thoughts, mental energy. That’s more of your mental side. One big thing about Swords is they’re always double-edged. And so you’ve got your destructive side as well as the clearing of paths. And then lastly, you’ve got Pentacles.
This is your health, money, work. This is your physical side of things. And then lastly is the court cards. So all of the suits have courts. You’ve got Knights, Pages, Queens, and Kings, and these overall represent people in our lives. And so they can be used when doing readings as either characters or if you ever do it for divination, it would be actual people in our lives, or it could be representations of oneself.
Crys: Yeah, rockin. Now you can do this with a normal deck of cards. What you will miss out is the Major Arcana elements, but it would still give you enough to just play around with the idea of using cards to draw for things. You can also find online apps that will do this.
So if you don’t have a deck of tarot cards, don’t worry. You can still follow along with this.
JP: I really like to use an app called Galaxy Tarot. It’s for Android and you can get the free version and it’s super helpful. You can do pulls on them. You can do the deeper meanings. It was like paragraphs of meanings for things.
I find that tool really useful. And then I of course have my own decks that I like to play with as well.
Crys: Okay. How do we get started? What are our options here?
JP: So my favorite spread to do for writing is the three-card spread for the 3 Cs. So you’ve got in a scene, the conflict, choice, and consequence.
These, you can use for a scene or you can expand it broader, but ultimately these are the pivotal events that change the scene or the event that’s taking place. Then the choice that a character has to make, and then the consequences of those choices, this is taken heavily from the Three Story Method. And then I love using tarot to add a little chaos into it.
Crys: I think we can link to J Thorn’s free class on how to write a scene, because it does go into deeper into the 3 Cs than we have time to right here.
JP: Yeah.
Crys: I have a question for you. When you pull your three cards, do you pull them in order of the first card I pull will be my conflict, the second card will be my choice, and the third card will be my consequence? Or do you pull all three and then just decide which fits better where?
JP: So I am one that if I don’t say, “When I pull this card, it means this,” I will then pull a hundred cards until I get the one I want to see. That’s great, except it’s not great because the intent of using the tarot is to get that random chaos into it. And also it’s to get the quick ideas, the quick kind of sparks of randomness. The more that you keep pulling the cards, I almost think that it’s a little bit of a resistance because you’re trying to pull for something you want to see.
And if it doesn’t work scrap it, but the problem is that if you keep scrapping it, you’re going to run into a cycle of resistance, at least I will.
Crys: Okay. Excellent.
JP: Okay. Three-card spread is 80% of what I do. Then there’s also the single card pull.
This is whenever, maybe I’ve stopped, I’m not really sure where I want to go, but I just kinda want a quick idea. So either something that can drive like a tone, an action, or an outcome. I’ll just pull a single card, read it, get an idea, and then move from there.
One big thing about reading tarot, and one thing I recommend, is any cards that have keywords on them, because for writers, like that’s super easy, you don’t need to memorize tarot. Leave that to the psychics, would be my statement.
Crys: And if you don’t have cards with keywords, my favorite resource outside of Galaxy Tarot is Biddy Tarot .
And there’ll be links to these in the show notes.
JP: Another, this one is a bigger pull, it’s the character wheel. This is an eight card spread. And actually it’s a 10 card spread cause I added one to it. And this kind of gives an idea of–
Crys: Wait, JP, eight plus one doesn’t equal 10?
JP: I’ll explain why.
Crys: Okay.
JP: Don’t worry. I know, I sound insane. Okay, so there are five questions to ask. The fifth one I added. And you do an opposite. So two card pull. So one is what they do, and one is what they don’t per each question.
So you’ve got, what kind of character are they versus what kind of character aren’t they?
Where are they from mentally or where aren’t they from? This would be more of the, like what kind of things would they be willing to do mentally versus what kind of things would they not be willing to do mentally?
Then where have their relationships been? So this would be a good representation of a positive relationship and a bad relationship. This could be anything from friendships to partners, et cetera.
Next one is what is their internal landscape. Whereas like we have mentality, this is more of the emotions. So what are they willing to let in versus what are they not willing to let in?
And then the last one is how do they talk? So this one I added as a kind of figuring out how dialogue might work for characters.
So this would be like, what kind of themes or understated tones would a character have versus which ones would they not have? This one is very deep in the weeds. I wouldn’t recommend doing this one if you’re about to pull for a scene, this is more like character developments. This is at the beginning.
And then the last pull I have is wants and needs. So this would be a two card pull, external presenting wants and internal needs. So you can pull a card and say, what does your character tell others they want? Or what they tell others they feel? And then the second card would be, what do they need and what aren’t they telling people?
Crys: Excellent. All right. So how are we going to start pulling cards?
JP: I think the three-card spread for sure.
Crys: I think definitely the three-card spread, but maybe just start there. And then when we come back around for round two, we can talk about any other spreads we felt we needed to do in our figuring out of the story.
JP: Perfect.
That makes sense. Especially cause the character pull is very cerebral, so it’s going to take some time to think it through.
I’ll probably do a character pull and then when we come back in the next one I’ll write it all down so that I say where I came from.
Crys: Okay. Excellent. Go first, sir.
JP: I’m shuffling. And hopefully you can hear that on the audio, so that it’s proof that I didn’t plan this at all, unless…
Crys: Oh I pre-shuffled, but I didn’t… I’m just gonna promise that I didn’t set my cards up.
JP: Alright. So three-card pull. I’m going to do a conflict. I have Judgment in reverse. Choice, I have the Eight of Buttons in reverse. Oh God. And then lastly, consequences. I have The Beyond.
So one thing about the deck that I pulled from, which is Ms. Clara’s Five Cent tarot. She has four additional Major Arcana cards. So this just happened to show up and we’ll be using it.
From the indicators for choice, I have indecision, self-doubt, and life lessons, and it is in reverse This would suggest to me that it is a character who is about to learn something that they aren’t prepared to learn, that they have a lot of this nervousness, that’s me, or like resistance.
With Judgment reversed, a lot of it is about feeling judged or being judgmental. It’s a difficulty tuning into your higher calling, or when judgmental thinking is an obstacle. So to me that suggests someone is not being aligned with maybe the people around them, either they are being judged or they are being judgmental of others.
I’m curious to just see where this goes, but yeah. It’s definitely a character that wouldn’t be trusting of their own voice.
I’m gonna move to the next card. So next for choice, we have the eight of buttons. This represents perfectionist, and mediocrity, and uninspired.
Oh, and Eight of Buttons is Eight of Pentacles.
With this one, some more keywords are no progress, unfulfilling work, lacking skills, and cutting corners. So to me, that sounds like this choice is not a positive choice that the character is going to make. Ultimately, if they’re feeling judged, if they’re feeling that sense of not belonging, they’re probably going to be cutting corners and taking these kind of easy ways out. So that’s an interesting thing, especially when we end up with the consequences of being the beyond, which is all about the soul, a higher being, and belief. So it almost feels like It would be a character that is being very shut in, pressed. There are a lot of expectations on this character, a lot of assumptions that this character has to make, and they almost have to make a bad choice in order for them to get out of that situation.
Crys: We were talking about trying to write these for Sacha Black’s villains anthology. And this… yours seems like the perfect setup for a villain origin story.
JP: Yeah, I, I don’t–
Crys: Because the beyond doesn’t necessarily have to be in our realm of morally and good, but like his or her concept of now I have a purpose and now I know better.
JP: Oh, that’s so monstrous. I love it. And that’s exactly it. It’s all about the soul, the belief. So it’s the belief that you are beyond wherever your means have led you.
Okay. I don’t have any other setting. Usually when I do this, I have an idea about genre. So this is like taking it a little backwards, but I love that I have this framework to build off of.
Crys: I suspect, so I have two cards in front of me and my plan is to pull my 3 Cs from one deck, which is my Wild Unknown deck, but then I’m going to pull three cards to represent characters in the Lightseers tarot, because these…
My Wild Unknown is very abstract and animal related or nature and animal related while my Lightseers is… every card is focused on a person or group of people. I’m going to use the visual representations more than anything for my characters, but also taking hints from the meanings of the cards themselves.
Okay. So conflict, we have Strength, the Major Arcana, and I believe that we’ll be sharing pictures of these in our follow up email tomorrow, where we talk a little bit more about what our further thoughts were, and that’s just the easiest way for us to share. But maybe on the website too, we’ll see. You’ll find these somewhere.
Then for my choice, I have Mother of Wands, and my consequence is the Three of Swords reversed. So I have almost the opposite trajectory than you did. You go from negative to positive, and mine goes from positive to negative.
All right. So let’s look at Strength. Now, my image of Strength on my deck is a lion with a rose in his mouth, an infinity symbol on his head, and a sun behind him. So like we’re talking all levels of awesome here. So somebody who is starting out at the top of their game. And so what we have for strength for keywords are: instinctive drives, inner strength, survival, courage.
And immediately I’m thinking some kind of warrior is at the top of his game and he’s about to fall, but through the Mother of Wands, so let’s see what Mother Wands is, but that’s a growth card.
Mothers are almost always growth cards, and Mothers equate to Queens in traditional. So the Queen of Wands: creative, independent, confident, beautiful, passionate, friendly, optimistic, influential, sexual… and this. I’m getting some Samson and Delilah vibes off of this right now that the choice is not necessarily a thing, but possibly a person.
So interesting. All right. Now, three of swords, but reversed. And our key words are: recovery, reconciliation, and ignoring pain. The three of swords reverse will often appear after you’ve made some sacrifices or if you’re thinking about releasing something in your life…
I’m getting a sense of a fantasy setting. And we’re definitely going to go from some kind of warrior, king, general. Possibly posed a difficult choice by a woman, but make it gay, and then giving something up, but I don’t know which. But we’re also going for villain origin stories here, I think. So. Yeah.
JP: A bit villainy origin. I’m looking at the three of swords… you’ve got: this card also appears when you’re making sacrifices, but not the right ones and that you may blame someone else for a circumstance in your life and aim to end that relationship without considering how your own thinking contributes.
Crys: Yeah, I’m excited about this.
JP: I know, right?
Crys: All right. If anyone would like to join us on this storytelling adventure, we’d love for you to tell us what your cards were pulled and where you pulled them, whether you have your own deck, what deck it is, we’re deck nerds. And if not, like what sites you used. We will be back in a week talking about our stories and where it took us. So we’re gonna take a week to write them, hopefully finish them. We’ll see where we get. We’ll see. But we’ll at least know where we’re going with it.
Excellent.
JP: I think for sure, I’d probably have a draft. The thing for Sacha Black isn’t until June 30th. So definitely a lot of time to refine that. We’ll probably show off the final stuff too, but…
Crys: Because we’re hoping to submit this, we may not be able to share the actual story soon-ish, but we’re excited to at least share the process and we will share the full story at some point.
JP: Indeed.
Crys: All right. Talk to you later.
Leave a Reply