Tarot Cards for Writing Inspo - Basic Story Arc

Recently, I have been experimenting with a new way to generate inspiration for my creative writing - which is a permanent battle for me! I love expressing myself through words but often it feels like the ideas I have to express are too jumbled and undeveloped to begin putting on paper. Writers have used methods to randomly generate inspiration and ideas to boost their creativity and, as a tarot reader, the natural method for me to try were tarot cards!

Due to their rich imagery and symbolism, tarot cards make a perfect medium for generating or developing ideas for story plots, characters, events, crises, and pretty much every other aspect of a short story or novel.

For this post I'm going to talk about a really basic spread I did to help me generate ideas for a plot line. I didn't use any specific spread with designated card positions - this was more a freelance exercise in creativity!

The method is really simple to follow for anyone, tarot practitioner or not. It's also entirely possible to use tarot deck apps to randomly generate cards if you don't own any physical decks, or feel they just aren't inspiring you quite right!

Whether you choose to use electronic or hardcopy decks, keep a pen and notebook handy to record the cards you draw and your initial impressions and interpretations. (I use a notebook app which allows me to upload photos and images to written entries, a feature I LOVE for anything tarot-related. The card images are a huge part of the creative inspiration held in tarot cards.)

For this exercise I simply shuffled my cards (3 times; witch's habit) cut to the left and began drawing. After each card I cut to the left and drew again. Now here's where people choose to use different methods. Those with familiarity with the tarot may be able to draw cards and take notes relatively easily without needing to do much research on the cards they've drawn. Others may choose to focus purely on the imagery to create an interpretation of the card. Some may want to glean as much inspiration from each card as possible and use book or web explanations of each card meaning to help them create a story out of their spread. Any of these is totally acceptable - whatever gets your creative juices flowing best!

The goal is obviously to create a basic story plot from the cards you pull. Court cards and major arcana figures are perfect representations for characters (also useful for basic characterisations of characters as each figure in the tarot possesses different qualities which you can incorporate into your characters). Other suit cards serve well as inspiration for everyday events, situations, and conflicts, while the remaining major arcana cards herald major plot points, catalysts, defining relationships and important events.

Continue drawing cards until the first part of your storyline seems to come to a natural break. Whether you note down, read up on and jot some interpretations as you go or once you've drawn the cards you feel you should draw is entirely up to you! I find interpreting as I go allows me to modify and change cards around easily and create a coherent plot line fast, but some may prefer to see the final "storyboard" if you will before interpreting and modifying.

Above is an example spread I pulled and interpreted for this post to illustrate how it works. I pulled a total of 12 cards and, being a tarot reader and very familiar with this deck (which, by the way, is the Beginners Guide to Tarot deck by Juliette Sharman-Burke, accompanied by a very in depth guide book and in the typical Ryder-Waite system) I was able to loosely interpret the cards as I drew them in relation to some sort of story plot, and rearranged and shuffled them as I saw necessary through the process of the spread.

Here I'll explain the cards I've drawn and how I've interpreted them to help create a storyline:

1) The Lovers:

Well, it appears we are starting with a love storyline! (Yaaaayyyyyy.... 🙄) Our story starts with a relationship of some sort; could be a friendship, or a romantic relationship, but it comes at the cost of having to make a choice.

2) Four of Cups:

This card represents boredom and discontent. Well! Our two lovers are already having problems; someone's bored and unsatisfied with the situation, and probably having regrets about that earlier choice they made.

3) Five of Pentacles:

The relationship, and the dissatisfaction it's causing, is resulting in a loss of self esteem and self worth in one or both of our lovers. This card typically represents a danger of losing faith in the goodness of life and a lack of positive outlook in general. The relationship is having serious negative emotional effects on at least one of our lovers.

4) King of wands:

5) Two of Swords:

I've combined these two cards as I felt like they came together - the King of Wands appears, bringing with him a two of Swords situation - one where our embattled lover is in some way blinded by the kind of wands character to the negative effects and overall pointlessness in continuing the relationship, allowing the damage to continue. Our lovers allows this blinding to a degree, perhaps because of a desire for the relationship to be a success, or pressure. Somewhere in my interpretation I decided our embattled lover is a female, and the King of wands perhaps the father of our male lover, hence his interest in blinding our woman lover to the hopelessness of the relationship. Perhaps he has a vested interest in the relationship such as power, prestige or money.

6) Queen of Pentacles:

7) justice:

Like the king and the swords cards, I've grouped the Queen of Pentacles with Justice as these two cards spoke to me of a powerful, confident mature woman intervening in the situation between our lovers and his father in the name of justice. I decided this is probably a powerful female relative or friend of our female lover who sees through the king and our lovers blindness and wishes to help our embattled lover free herself.

8) Six of wands:

The victory card! Our queen of Pentacles must have got through to our embattled lover. This card usually represents some sort of success that is seen in the public domain and the praise that comes with that .Perhaps our embattled lover realises her situation in a public way and is praised for how she deals with it.

9) Knight of wands:

10) Judgement:

11) Knight of Pentacles:

I've grouped all three of these together as they just fell too perfectly to ignore. Our Knight of wands, opposite the Knight of Pentacles (king wands v queen pents, anyone?) with judgement hovering smack bang in between. Judgement is the karma card, and here I decided that our Knight of wands is our male lover (if you remember I chose the king of wands earlier as our male lovers possible father), and the Knight of Pentacles is a young man under the court of the Queen of Pentacles. Here we have some kind of showdown! Perhaps it's an actual fight which could be really exciting, or perhaps our Knight of pents somehow triumphs over the Knight of wands in love or power, serving karmic judgement to the king of wands and his court.

12) Nine of Pentacles:

Hence why I chose the Knight of pents as our karmic judgement winner! The nine of pents is a card of success and security and, being a positive Pentacles card, seals the fate of our Knight of wands lover.

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I hope this provides you with some inspiration and guidance to using tarot for creative writing! Please drop a comment or flick me a private message with any feedback or extra ideas and Inspo! Thanks for reading 💚✍️🔮