You might have heard of National Novel Writing Month — a web-based event in which writers all around the world challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.
Registration for this year’s NaNoWriMo is open now, and it’s free. Just visit nanowrimo.org to sign up.
While you can’t start writing yet, it’s perfectly okay to start compiling character notes and plot outlines to speed you through the process next month.
I have a soft spot in my heart for NaNoWriMo, because it prompted me to write the Tarot for Writers guidebook. In fact, the whole project started with this simple Q&A feature for the NaNoWriMo website a couple of years ago.
Q: Corrine, as a mystic, you are writing your novel using only tarot cards to guide you. Could you tell us more about the psychic method for novel writing?
A: Most people think of tarot cards as a fortune-telling device, but they’re also an excellent tool for writing and creative thinking.
There are 78 cards in a tarot deck, and each one is packed with images and symbols. The names alone will trigger your imagination: the first three cards, for example, are the Fool, the Magician, and the High Priestess.
In theory, every card in the tarot deck represents a separate stage in the journey of life. In fact, tarot readers often refer to the “Fool’s Journey” in the cards—which is a lot like the Hero’s Journey that writers use to frame their stories.
At its most basic, however, the tarot is simply a practical way to build a novel from the ground up.
If you need a setting for your story, pull a card: most tarot decks include images of deserts, gardens, mountains, cities, farms, and village squares.
If you need a hero or a heroine, you can take your pick of protagonists, antagonists, and a full cast of supporting characters.
If you need help describing your characters, you’ll have no trouble visualizing them once they’re laid out on the table in front of you. You’ll find men, women, and children — old and young, rich and poor, from every walk of life—and it’s easy to invent dialogue when you imagine all of those figures talking to each other.
If you’d like an easy way to develop a storyline, throw a few cards to represent the past, present, and future, or the beginning, middle, and end of your tale. If you need an unexpected plot twist, just shuffle, and you’ll find conflict and surprises in every turn of the cards.
It’s also fun to “read” the cards for your characters. You can lay out a simple spread to determine what happened to a character in the past—or to decipher what’s going on in their fictional subconscious minds.
And if you want to kill off any of your characters, you can always deal them the Death card.
