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The Writer's Tarot
A fun and unique tool for brainstorming stories, plots, characters and for smashing writer's block.
“Writing is easy,” wrote screenwriter Gene Fowler, “All you do is sit staring at a blank piece of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”
I think every writer can appreciate how hard it can be to begin, to violate that virgin expanse of white, to take mere whims and notions and crystallize them into words on a page. Even the best of us occasionally hit a dry patch where the ideas just don’t flow with the same ease we are accustomed to. Your characters may misbehave and won’t continue down the path you want them to. Sometimes you are just so damned tired that it feels like there is nothing new or exciting in what you are writing.
The Writer’s Tarot is a tool for getting you through such times, like a big hammer for knocking ideas loose.
Using tarot cards to tell stories is hardly a new idea. It’s basically all they do. Those who use them for cartomancy use them to tell the story of the unseen future. Those who use them for meditation look for the stories of their unseen inner life. In his tarot themed book “The Castle of Crossed Destinies,” novelist Italo Calvino calls them “a machine for constructing stories.” Contemplating a pattern of open symbols will always set a creative mind in motion, finding meanings for each card, and looking for the connections between them.
What makes this deck different from any of the myriad decks that precede it is that it has been fine tuned for creating works of fiction. Don’t look for your future destiny or unconscious motivations here, this deck is stacked. While it started with the basic archetypes of the traditional tarot, I have re-interpreted them with an emphasis on conflict and drama. Each card represents a turning point in a story; reversals of fortune, the duplicity of cunning strangers, or even divine intervention. With each card placed, a story is revealed, characters introduced, treasures discovered or lost.
So does using these cards make it possible to generate story after story with no effort from the writer? Hardly. As with the traditional tarot, the real “magic” comes from the person reading the cards. The symbols they represent are broadly defined suggestions, open to endless interpretation. The intent is only to get the ideas flowing freely, whether you are brainstorming a fresh story, looking for insight into a character’s backstory, or just trying to power your way through a creative block.
This deck of 83 cards are packed with story elements, character archetypes, twists of fate, reversals of fortune and stacked for maximum drama and conflict! No matter what your story needs, it's in the cards. No experience with traditional tarot cards required.
A very limited number of decks from the first edition are still available while they last!
$30 plus $5.00 shipping by USPS Prority Mail.
I also have a handful of "irregular" decks. They are complete decks including the booklet, but a random number of cards will have blank backs, perhaps as many as 50% of the deck. This in no way affects the useage of the deck.
$20 plus $5.00 shipping by USPS Prority Mail.
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Read our Production Blog to learn more about the cards!
