She doesn’t know what she’ll have to sacrifice to truly serve and protect her people. She believes that she can do it all, manage the family estates, lead their militia, and become fenwoman. She has no idea what life has in store for her. The first card I picked, interestingly enough, was the Fool. They want Miko to take control of Saara’s family lands, a goal Miko shares. His parents have been trying to negotiate his marriage to Saara. Miko is the son of a neighboring earl, an experienced warrior who has been exploring and raiding foreign lands for years. The card I pulled for my antagonist was the knight of wands. Saara is also bonded to the land as her grandmother was before her and has been training with her grandmother to become a fenwoman, a true lady of the land. Though there is still pressure for Saara to marry and have children to carry on the family line, Saara does not want to marry. Though it is not traditional for a young woman to inherit her family’s wealth, Saara’s parents want to keep their wealth in the family and have been educating her to take over management of their estates, including leading their militia. Saara is the only daughter of a wealthy landowning family. The card I pulled for my protagonist was the page of pentacles. It’s the most recognizable of the tarot decks. Though I have a few decks-my interest in tarot predates my discovery of it as a mythic storytelling tool-I chose to use the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith. As you’ll see, however, my random drawing of the cards proved to be eerily on point and no clarifying cards were needed. If I got stuck at any point, I would have pulled what I’m going to call a “clarifying card.” The clarifying card would have been read in tandem with the card pulled for the stage, to see if the deeper reading could pull me past the road bump. I read each of the cards intuitively at first, and then looked up the standard meaning, to see if it would provide further insight into the stage. Then, using these cards as my focus, I shuffled, cut, and drew 12 cards from the remaining full deck (major and minor arcana), one for each stage of the Hero’s Journey. I first selected a random card for my protagonist and my antagonist from the court cards of the minor arcana after shuffling and cutting these 16 cards. To keep things simple, I’ve elected to use a Hero’s Journey spread, as this will be a mythic structure that many of you will be familiar with. A Note on MethodologyĪs we covered last column, there are many different ways the tarot can be used to help build or discover a story and you could probably come up with even more ideas on your own, given time, practice, and your individual writing process. To recap, in Part 1, I offered a brief introduction to the tarot, in Part 2, I reviewed five books on the tarot for writers, and now, in part 3, I’m going to create an outline for a fantasy story using the tarot. I also hope you’ve enjoyed this miniseries on the tarot for writers so far. Greetings, my lovely Speculators! I hope you’re keeping safe and well in these remarkable times.
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