Category: Fiction

NaNoWriMo 2022: Five (Unexpected) Ways to Increase Your Word Count

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

How’s your word count looking as we round into the final week of NaNoWriMo? Is it a little lower than you’d like? Here are five unexpected (and fun) ways to increase your word count to help you reach your 50,000 word goal. 

 

Tarot Cards

Of course, this is my number 1 thing to grab when I need to up my word count. Choose your favorite deck, give it a shuffle and flip over 1-3 cards. Then just start describing the cards – starting with things like:

  • What is the figure doing?
  • What are they wearing?
  • What action are they taking? Or not taking?
  • What’s happening in the background?
  • What’s happening in the foreground?

Now, challenge yourself to use these aspects in the scene you are writing. For example, you pull a knight card and the figure is on a horse.  Can you add horseback riding to the chapter you are writing? Can you have your main character find a horse? To see more examples, make sure you watch the YouTube video below, I pulled two cards from the Modern Witch Tarot deck and had some fun figuring out what I could add to a story.

 

Describe all the things

If I sit down to write, and have no idea how to start, I spend anywhere between 200-500 words describing the room that my characters are in. I’ll start with things like curtains, couches or other furniture, how the room smells, the temperature, and then move on to how the characters themselves are dressed.  If I’m still stuck, I’ll finally move on to how the characters are feeling about the story so far, and how they’re feeling about each other.  Usually at this point, I’m off and running with new ideas for what to write. 

 

Use all 5 senses

In a similar vein, I will write down various ways to use the five senses on a piece of paper.  Say, losing one’s glasses for sight or having them find a new pair of sunglasses. For sound, they could be listening to the news or dealing with construction noise that makes it hard to concentrate.  Then once I have my list, I’ll randomly choose one from each category and challenge myself to include those in the scene or chapter that I’m writing.  You can also do this with feelings, body parts, actions, locations.  Come up with the category types, fill in the blanks, randomly choose, and get to writing.  It becomes a fun game that you play with yourself.

 

 

Element of surprise

Grab your favorite, or closest book, and flip open to a random page.  Read and find a piece of dialogue and challenge yourself to use that dialogue in your book and make it make sense.  You can do this with other elements on the page, random description or just any line – regardless of what type it is.  You can also do this with your playlist, the first song that comes on, look up the lyrics and choose one line to add to your own novel.  You can do this every time the songs change too…which is harder, but more fun!

 

Lean into your character’s obsessions

What is one thing that your main character is really into? Spend 10 minutes researching the thing, sport, activity, song, book, TV show, etc. – and Wikipedia totally works for this, it isn’t school – and then try to use all that information in the scene you are writing. For example, the main character of my NaNoWriMo novel is into swimming, so I could look up info about chlorine, types of strokes, who won various Olympic swim meets, and then have her info dump to someone else all the information.  Want even more words? Have your character talk to someone who’s on the opposite side and let them argue.  So say your main character is into video games and the other character hates video games – let them fight it out for a while. You get character development, some fun dialogue, and extra words.  It’s a win-win!

So those were five unexpected ways to increase your word count, while having some fun writing. Which one was your favorite? Which one are you going to try this week? Let me know in the comments below and I hope you’ve enjoyed NaNoWriMo this year, and that you can finish strong!

NaNoWriMo 2022: 10 Ways I Encourage Myself to Keep Going 

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

Has your NaNoWriMo novel lost its luster? Are you feeling a little frustrated by your word count or lack thereof? No you’re wondering if you should just quit?

 

Please don’t!!

 

Instead use these ten ways to encourage yourself, give yourself some much needed motivation, and incentive to keep going.

 

The word bribery usually gets a bad rap because it usually means you’re doing something illegal, right? You’re bribing someone you shouldn’t. But self bribery, I think, works really well, especially when you get to the point in your novel writing where it starts to feel a little drudgery, a little drudging through just to get through.

 

Music

 

I love writing with music. I create a playlist for almost every single manuscript I write, but if you don’t like writing to music or you don’t need that interference when you write, then you can do music after the fact and have a dance party. Getting to listen to your favorite jam – whether it be Lizzo or Taylor Swift – and dance around your living room can motivate you to finish writing. Of if you do create a playlist, listen to it before you start writing to hype yourself up, giving your brain a clue that you’re about to write something amazing.

 

Movies and TV

 

I’m assuming you have at least one streaming service, or a stack of DVDs and Blu-rays somewhere so pick a few and use them to reward yourself after each writing session.  You could do one TV show after each session and a longer movie after several sessions in a row. Do what works best for you and your schedule, but having something to look forward to really helps when you don’t want to sit down at your computer. 

 

Video Games, Books, and Magazines

 

This tip also works for other things – not a TV or movie person, that’s fine. Use the same concept with making time to read or play your favorite video game. Say, I’m going to write for 30 minutes, then play for 30 minutes.  We don’t always make time during our day for the things we enjoy, so use those things as rewards for all your hard work. 

 

Food & Beverages

 

You can always have something to drink or eat when you write – your favorite tea in your favorite mug or something crunchy to snack on OR you can use food as a reward for after you write.  I like to have a little chocolate after each session. You can also go to your local coffee place and write there, getting a holiday drink to sip on. Whatever you think is yummy is going to work – want to have a fancy yogurt or fruit salad, go for it!

 

Milestone Rewards

 

The first few things on this list were smaller rewards, things you can gift yourself after each writing session, but I also want you to think about Milestone rewards. This year for NaNoWriMo I’m doing larger items for every 10,000 words written. I’ll be buying books, a new sweater, and some new nail polish from my favorite company as my rewards but you can also do fancy clickety keyboards, new video games, or anything that makes you happy. If your budget won’t allow that – trust me, I get that! – then combine some of the smaller items and have a longer reward where you watch a movie and spend time reading. 

Surprise!

 

If you’d like to add an element of fun to your rewards, grab a D20 or 12 sided die and create a list of all rewards you could give yourself. Then after each writing session, you roll the die and surprise, you get a fun reward.  If you don’t have any dice, you can also put each reward on a small piece of paper and pull one each day.  Seeing what you get each day can be some excellent motivation to keep writing.

 

Plan a day off

 

This might be a bit controversial, but plan for a whole day off from your writing. If you are in the US and celebrate Thanksgiving, you could use that day but seriously any day will work.  Grab your calendar and plan a day off right now.  This works especially well if you are starting to feel burnt out, as we don’t want you to just give up right before the end. 

 

Share online

 

If you are active on social media, you can share your journey online, find some new writer friends and connect with your community.  And sharing gives you some accountability. You can get online and say you’re sitting down to write, then come back afterwards to let people know how you’re doing. If you are not on social media, or don’t feel like sharing, find a friend who will let you text them for accountability.

 

Join my FREE accountability group

 

If you don’t have any writer friends who will understand what you’re doing, then join my FREE accountability group – it’s not too late – I can help keep you on the right path, offer advice and guidance, or just be there for you when you get stuck. 

 

Which item above was your favorite? What is something you’re going to try?

 

Week 3 of NaNoWriMo can really be frustrating – it’s the week where either things are going so well you’re flying high or they suck so bad you want to hide under your covers. If things are terrible right now, please don’t hesitate to reach out for help. And just know that things will be better next week!

NaNoWriMo 2022: 6 Questions to Ask When You Lose the Plot

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

Did you follow a plot bunny? And now you are completely off track? 

 

Plot bunnies can be fun, they can be exciting, they can lead us to amazing discoveries, but sometimes they can also leave us lost, confused, and frustrated. Let me share with you 6 Questions that you can ask yourself when this happens so you can get back on track.

 

My favorite way to do this is via a Tarot spread, but you can also just ask yourself the questions as well. To see me go through this spread with my own NaNoWriMo novel, watch the YouTube video below.

 

You might be asking yourself, what is a Plot Bunny?  It’s an idea that refuses to leave you alone until you’ve actually followed it. And even though it does predate NaNoWriMo, they can happen a lot during those November writing sessions.

 

Before you tackle the six questions, ask yourself first how far off your outline you got and if there’s anything from your detour you want to keep.  Do you think you need to start completely over with where you got off track, or can you merge some of your ideas and have a better story?

 

Once you have that all figured out, you are ready to pull some Tarot cards or grab your journal, and find out what your Plot Bunny and Main Character are trying to tell you.

 

Plot Bunnies Tarot Spread

  1. What’s your bunny trying to tell you?
  2. What is your Main Character trying to tell you?
  3. How would the bunny solve this?
  4. How would the Main Character solve this?
  5. What’s one creative solution you can try?
  6. How can you move forward and get back on track?

 

 

Tips & Tricks

If you decide you need to start over and basically trash what you’ve written DO NOT DELETE those words, at least not yet. During NaNoWriMo, those words you wrote count toward your final 50,000 word count goal. I suggest moving them to the end of your document or writing at the head of each chapter that’s going to eventually get tossed: PLOT BUNNY, DON’T USE or something like that.  Then when you come back to edit, you can put those in a separate document just in case.

 

It’s okay to have some strong emotions around this process, getting off track and seeing that you’re going to need to rewrite 5,000 or more words can be devastating, but trust me, that wasn’t wasted effort.  Like I said above, the words still count toward your goal this month, and two it gave you some things to explore, to try out, to discover and that’s never bad – you learned what doesn’t work, sometimes writing them out needs to happen before you can see the right way to go. But be kind to yourself, remember that writing is a process, and sometimes it’s messy and painful.

 

Plot Bunnies can be really fun and take you to some cool places you might not have thought to explore, but if you do get off track, just ask yourself these six questions and get back to writing the story you want to write. 

NaNoWriMo Preptober: My 8 Step Process for Outlining My Novel

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

Plotters, Pantsers, and everyone in between…November 1st is just around the corner and that means we need to do a little outlining.  

Don’t freak out!!

Let me give you my 8 step super simple process for outlining. And when I say outlining I mean a totally flexible, workable, fun plan that will help you write your first draft, expanding on the Beginning, Middle, and End that we created a few weeks ago. 

The fun part about this is you can do it many different ways.  You can do it via index cards or post-it notes – very analog, very messy desk, wild and free and fun.  You can do it via Scrivener or another writing app – very organized, a little structured and fun.  OR you can do a mixture and use a digital app like Goodnotes on your iPad, digital sticky notes and your Apple pencil to do this process.  Try a few and discover what feels most like YOU!

8 Steps To Outlining Your Novel

  1. Grab your card, note, or doc and write down your Beginning
  2. Grab another one and write down your Middle
  3. Finally, grab one more and write down your Ending
  4. Now, map out the steps that need to happen between your Beginning and MIddle – I like to do anywhere between 3 and 5 cards/notes
  5. Read through everything. Make sure things make sense, make sure any short hand you are using is written down somewhere so future you knows what past you means and once you are happy, move on to the next step
  6. Now, map out the steps that need to happen between your Middle and Ending. You can either do this start with the ending and work backwards or from your middle forward.  Then, read through everything you’ve just written.
  7. TAKE A BREAK….seriously, before you do anything else, go take a break.  Watch your favorite TV show or movie, eat something yummy, hang with friends and family, or take a nap.  Leave it for at least 24 hours if you can.
  8. Read through the entire outline in one sitting and adjust as necessary.  Are you missing plot points? Do things make sense? Do things need to be moved around a little?

 

Tips & Tricks

I like to write about 3-5 scenes between my Beginning and Middle and then again between my Middle and End, but this is not a hard and fast rule.  If you have a ton of ideas and you want to get them all out of paper, great!  If you are comfortable with less, leaving yourself lots of room to explore, that’s also great!  This really is a flexible plan that makes you feel ready to write so whatever that looks like for you is going to be perfect!

Allow this process to be a little messy.  No one needs to see this outline, so let yourself scribble, write in shorthand, use multiple colors, use numbers, etc. You can always import the notes into a digital system and organize it later.

If you are writing multiple points of view, make sure you know which cards are for which character.  Either use different colors, different index cards, different types of fonts, etc. You can also just write the character name on top of the index card or post-it note if that’s easier.  If you’re not sure yet, that’s fine – you can figure that out once you have your basic outline figured out. 

 

Want to see my process with my own NaNo novel? Watch this week’s YouTube video above where I take you through the process using my digital notebook in GoodNotes. 

 

Are you ready for National Novel Writing Month? 

Would you like some accountability, support, and free Zoom writing sessions? 

Then join my FREE group where I’ll be sending out weekly emails both Monday and Friday with writing exercises, tarot spreads, things to try and then check-in emails where you can reply and ask me any and all questions by clicking here.

NaNoWriMo Preptober: Use This Activity to Get into Your World (Without Cheating!)

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

How are we in week three of Preptober already? 


You have your cast of characters, you have your beginning, your middle, and your end (your little bit of story structure) and you are itching to start writing. BUT if you’re following the NaNoWriMo rules, writing actual words is cheating.


Today, I have a really fun activity that helps you get into the world of your story and gets you excited about your story before outlining, which is next week. 


So how do we keep that momentum going? How do we keep excited? How do we get into the world of our story a little bit without writing too much? 


Let’s draw a map!


Are you creating a fantasy novel? Draw the entire new land, with towns, castles, dragon’s lairs, and that river that gives your hero his magical powers.


Sci-Fi? Chart a course through the stars so you know where the alien races are that are hostile and the ones that will let you band of star voyagers respite.


Contemporary romance? A map of the city they live in and where they have their first date, first fight, and other “firsts” depending on how spicy your book is – wink


The beauty of this exercise is you can do it in a bunch of different ways. You can use a giant piece of paper and draw with markers, crayons, water colors, stickers, and doodles. OR you can do this digitally using an app like GoodNotes or Procreate. You can even use real life maps – print them out or buy them and mark all kinds of info.  


To see how I’m using my iPad, Apple pencil, and the app GoodNotes to create my NaNo project maps, watch the YouTube video below.

If you want to annotate on actual maps or your finished hand-drawn map, you can use colored post-it notes to distinguish different characters or points in your book.  You can make floor plans of houses, research how cities looked in different historical points in time and map out where things happen within your world, or you can just write bullet points of info and start writing some descriptions. 

 

Be careful with this though, try to keep the bullet points short and sweet so you don’t start actually writing – but you do YOU! I invite you to try this activity, I think it’s super fun, helps you get into your character’s world, and allows you some time to be creative before the hard work of NaNoWriMo comes around. 

 

So now that you have your characters, you have that beginning, that middle, that end, and you have some world building done – you are in an excellent position to do outlining, which is next week. Just a few short weeks and we’re gonna start writing. It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating. And if you are thinking of doing NaNoWriMo then I invite you to join my free accountability group. 

 

I am sending weekly emails and check-ins starting in November. We’re gonna have weekly Zoom writing sessions so that we can up our word count together. And don’t worry if you think you’ve missed anything because as soon as you get started, I will send you a link to the Dropbox folder that has all of the workbooks that I have sent so far. Let me know if you have any questions, leave them down in the comments below and let me know –  what kind of map did you draw this week?  I’d love to know!!

NaNoWriMo Preptober: Does Your First Draft Need Story Structure?

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

You have your cast of characters ready and you’re all excited about your story idea, right? But maybe you started doing research on Story Structure and now you’re super confused.  Save the Cat, Hero’s Journey, Three Act vs Four Act?!  It’s all so overwhelming and my not so popular opinion is I don’t think you need to worry about structure right now.

Listen, I think structure is fine, overall, but I feel like if you try to shoehorn your book into a specific structure now you’re going to box yourself in and not have room to grow or explore as you write.  Trying to put your story into beats or acts before you even know what your story is about is going to cause problems, and be a complete waste of time.

So…what do I think you need? I’m so glad you asked…just the basics!  Beginning, middle, and end. 

If you have a deck of Tarot cards, you can do the simple three card spread I show below in my YouTube video or you can just start asking yourself the following questions;

Beginning

  • How do you want your story to start? 
  • Who is the main character and what are they doing? 
  • How are they feeling? 
  • What’s happened right before we start our story?
  • What do you need to know to start writing your book?

 

Middle

  • What do I need to know about my main character right now?
  • What does the reader need to know?
  • What do I need to know about the antagonist or antagonistic force?
  • What kinds of conflict do I need to be aware of, or need to add to further the plot?
  • How can I continue to move the story forward?

 

End

  • How do you want your story to end?
  • How has your main character changed?
  • How have they stayed the same?
  • What lessons did they learn?
  • What’s different in your world?
  • How does the ending relate to the beginning?
  • What plotlines might need to be resolved?

 

 

Once you do this, if you’d like to pull more Tarot cards or think about how your characters go from Beginning to Middle or Middle to End, feel free, but you can also just stop right now and do more exploration when we get to Outlining during Week 4 of Preptober, where I’ll show you how I flesh this out into a workable, flexible plan. 

If you’re doing National Novel Writing Month this year and would like some extra accountability, writing exercises, tarot spreads, and more – then join my FREE group and receive a workbook of fun ideas right away!! And in November I’ll be hosting weekly Zoom writing sessions so we can up our word count together. 

>> Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3U48yGw

NaNoWriMo Preptober: My Favorite Technique for Character Design

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

Have you ever downloaded a character worksheet from Pinterest (or other online resource) and you were just overwhelmed with how many choices you had to make?

From eye color to hair color to favorite food, there are so many decisions and, especially if you’re doing Preptober for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), you have to make them quickly. Let me share one of my favorite techniques to make character creation simple and fun!!

To see how I do this technique in real time with examples, make sure you watch the YouTube video!! 

Character creation takes time, but when you’re prepping for NaNoWriMo, time isn’t necessarily something you have an abundance of, so you grab one of those worksheets online and get to work…but soon you start to get overwhelmed.  Enter my favorite tool ever, Tarot cards!!

Tarot cards lets you quickly answer those online character worksheets – seriously, I did one whole example in my video in 20 minutes!! – and create a real human that you can then use for November (or anytime you are creating characters).  

Start off by thinking about which character you want to create – protagonist, antagonist, side kick, hero, etc.  And if you have a general sense of your genre, it helps.  Grab your favorite tarot deck – I suggest one that has people on it, but you do you – give it a good shuffle and start pulling cards.

I do one card per section.  So my worksheet had sections for Physical Characters, Story Information, and Likes/Dislikes so I started at the top and pulled my first card.

My physical characteristics started with things like Hair Color, Eye Color, Age, Body type, etc.  I used my King of Wands card to determine that my Main Character has red hair, green eyes, will be 18 years old – a senior in HIgh School, and a slender/athletic body type.  

I do this by looking at the figure or main focus of the card first, then looking at background details, colors, and anything in the foreground. For the red hair in my example above I actually used the main figure’s red pants and not her actual hair color on the card.  The green eyes I picked up from the leaves growing on her wand staff.   

Things to think about…

  • There is no wrong answer, there’s only YOUR answer, the trick with using Tarot is picking up on small details and going with your first gut response.  Remember you can always change things as needed when you start writing or when you figure out other characters. 
  • I tend to pull one card per section, but there’s nothing stopping you from pulling one card for each question – so one card for eye color, one for hair color, etc. You can use one deck or multiple decks – this is YOUR project, your novel, you get to decide. That’s the fun part!
  • Make sure you’re keeping notes, writing things down as you go or recording yourself in some way as alot of info can come up while doing this process.  You might be filling out the characteristics but then get a really great idea for story or plot, write it all down!
  • I got a name during my live example, but most times I have to look up meanings or think of names later – and that’s fine if you don’t get 100% filled out in one session, but I bet you’ll be super close. Naming characters is extremely hard for me, so it’s sometimes easier to do that later with a baby book in hand.  

Have fun, don’t do too many characters at once – I can usually comfortably work up 3 in one writing session before I need a longer break. Make sure you have some rewards/snacks so you can celebrate your accomplishment and get ready for next week when we will talk about Story Structure.

And if you’re doing NaNoWriMo this year and would love some accountability I’m running a free group where I’ll be sending out tips and tricks, tarot spreads, writing exercises, things to try and during November I’ll run weekly co-writing Zoom calls so we can up our word counts together.  I would love it if you’d join me.

My Favorite Writer’s Block Cure

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

Have you ever experienced writer’s block? If you have, you know that it can cause frustration, depression, anger and some fear. Fear that you may never write again.

 

I understand….because I’ve been there!  

 

There were literal months when I could not sit down and write. And one of the biggest things that I’ve done to help me combat writer’s block was to befriend my inner editor. Today I’m going to share three ways you can work WITH your inner editor rather than let them work AGAINST you.

 

Personify your inner editor

 

To start, choose an image that personifies that inner negative voice that you have.  I use Tarot cards for this, but you can use an image out of a magazine or Pinterest. You can even draw a picture of what you think your inner editor looks like – just have something visual that you can use to talk to your inner editor. 

 

Communicate with them

 

I personally start this step in a journal, but you can also type it out in a document, talk out loud to your image, or even film yourself so you can take notes later.   Get comfortable, look at your image and start asking questions

 

  • Why are you such a pain in my butt?
  • Why are you giving me such trouble?
  • Why do you cause me issues so I can’t even sit down to write?

Ask these questions and then wait for the answers. Yes, this seems silly, but we do this with our characters right? Personifying your inner editor, creating that character, allows you to talk to them and start befriending them, as if they were in one of your novels.

 

Hopefully these answers can help you understand your inner editor, your negative voice, a little better.  I have a theory that our inner critics are actually there to help us, but they don’t know how to do that, so they take the little bit of fear and self-doubt we already feel and amplify it to get our attentions like that’s magically going to make things better, but it doesn’t help! This process will help you talk to your voice and let them actually help you in a way that works for you.

 

My inner editor, who I call Dude, told me that he gets upset when I don’t write enough details in first draft – but that’s not important to me, so we had to talk awhile and I made him feel like I heard him and that I will come to him during 2nd and 3rd drafts to help me add in the missing detail. He’s really good at that stuff too.

 

So, ask some questions, get some answers and write down all that good information.  Ask some more questions, get some more answers and keep digging until you feel pretty good about what your inner voice is trying to tell you.

Ask them what they are good at

 

Now that you have that baseline communication done, you feel like you’re understanding each other a bit more, now you can ask them what they are good at, what they can help you with. 

 

You might already have come up with some ideas during your initial conversion, like I did with the details, but if not just ask them.  They might be great with settings and world building, names, or remembering things that are hard for you – like hair or eye color of characters.  Maybe your inner editor really wants to help when you are all finished and starting the marketing and publishing process. 

 

If you don’t get an answer right away, that’s fine – jot the question down on a post it note or index card and pay attention as you go about your normal writing sessions.  I bet you good money that voice will pop up at some point and tell you what you are doing wrong, or what they might be able to do better, and that’s the golden nugget – that’s the information that will help you decide what jobs you can give them. 

 

Process takes time

 

Just like any friendship, this process isn’t going to happen overnight.  It can take weeks, months, even years to get into the perfect rhythm with your inner editor, but just starting this process can help unlock some new things within your brain that will help keep writer’s block at bay.   And the card or image you chose might change as you and your inner voice keep working together.  I’ve been doing this work for almost a decade and I just recently changed the card I use for my Dude, one that’s more playful and colorful and feels more like the relationship we have now – so don’t feel like you have to get the perfect or right image, just find one that resonates with you now and start talking to them.

 

Let me know in the comments below if you’ve tried this how did the process work for you? And if this is something you might be interested in learning more about, stick around, because I will be teaching a class on this subject with an amazing writer friend of mine in January 2023!!

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Tarot for Writers…Helpful Tool or Waste of Time?

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

As you can probably tell, Tarot is one of my absolute favorite tools to use as an author. I use it to help me with everything from character creation to plot design to marketing strategies. You name it, I’ve probably used Tarot to help me in some fashion.  But when I mention Tarot to other writers I sometimes get the following phrases:

It’s too woo, I’m not a witchy person.

I have my own things, I doubt Tarot will actually help me. 

I’m not intuitive enough for Tarot, don’t you have to be a 4th generation psychic?

I’ve looked at it, but Tarot doesn’t make any sense – what’s a pentacle?


Let me break down some of those myths and help you decide if Tarot is a useful tool for your writerly toolbox. 

Tarot is too “woo”

Yes, it’s true that witches and other spiritual people use Tarot as a tool to connect to their divine energy, and personally I use it that way too, but as a writer you don’t need to consider yourself woo to use the cards.  The thing I always tell people is it’s just cardboard pieces of paper with pretty imagery on it.  Imagery that can help your brain come up with new ideas. It’s a visual tool that can help with brainstorming – that’s it!

I promise you, they will not open any portals to an evil world or let in evil spirits. I have been using Tarot in this way for at least ten years, and I’ve never opened an evil portal yet. 

I don’t “need” Tarot

If you have tools and systems that work for you – great! I’m not asking you to replace those, I’m asking you to be curious and see if there are any places within your writing journey where you get stuck, need help, or might benefit from a new tool. 

Now, I personally teach a lot of ways to use Tarot because I use the cards in different ways, and I want you to have options.  So if you don’t need help with character creation, that’s awesome, but let’s say you get stuck in the middle when outlining, or have trouble coming up with conflict while drafting – that’s where you might be able to utilize the magical tool of Tarot.

I’m not intuitive enough for Tarot

If you’ve used Tarot for personal reasons, you might have heard that the books are bad and you should rely on your intuition only and that might be true if you’re looking to be a professional Tarot reader for others, but as a writer I think using the books is perfectly fine!  The books, the guides, and the online information can be extremely useful when you are brainstorming.  Yes, I will always guide you to start by just looking at the card and seeing what comes up, but then grab those books, look the card up online and see what else might help you with ideas. 

Now, if you start using one or two decks all the time, I believe your intuition will get stronger and you might not need the books as much, but even after ten years of using the cards I still grab the books for insight, new keywords, and other information sometimes.  It’s fine, I promise!

Tarot is overwhelming, I don’t know where to start!

I get it, Tarot, as a system, looks very overwhelming but once you learn the basics, it’s not so bad.  First know that there are two main parts – The Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana, and the Minor Arcana is broken up into 4 suits, like a deck of playing cards. You can watch my Creative Tarot 101 videos here to learn more about the Minor Arcana.

A normal deck of Tarot cards has 78 cards and on one hand that’s amazing, there are 78 things for you to look at and get inspiration from.  On the other hand, that’s 78 cards that you might feel like you have to learn and get “right” – you don’t, you don’t have to have the right answer, you just have to have “your” answer.

To start, I suggest getting a deck you feel connected to – you like the art or the colors and just start by looking at one card.  It can be the very first card in your deck or you can shuffle and pull one at random – whatever feels right to you.  Look at the card and just see, what’s going on, what is the figure or human doing? What are they thinking? Then look for one tiny detail and ask the same kinds of questions.  What is that tiny snail doing? What is he thinking? Ask those great writerly questions and let your imagination go wild! Then, if you want, you can look the card up in your guidebook as well.  

So, I would love to know, have you ever used Tarot as a writer before? If so – what’s your favorite deck!!  And if you haven’t, what’s stopping you and did these tips help you?

Oh…and if you’re doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year and would like some accountability, I’m running a FREE group with pep talk emails, check in emails, weekly writing Zooms in November and Preptober help so you are all ready to write come November 1st.  You can join here today!!

Easy Character Creation Using Tarot Cards

Posted on by Jennifer Gregson

When starting a novel, it’s important to fill  your world with well-rounded characters – the kind that feel so real your readers love diving into your stories, getting lost in their lives. Today, I want to teach you how to do that with the magical tool of Tarot.

For some great examples using my Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, be sure to watch the video below!! 

I like to think about what kind of story or genre I’m writing before I grab my deck. Young Adult, Fantasy. Science Fiction, Cozy mystery? Then, grab your tarot deck and give it a shuffle. If I have any other ideas, like which character I’m creating or any story details I already have, I’ll think of that while shuffling, then I’ll choose 1 card.

As soon as you flip the card over, what immediately comes to mind? Any and all thoughts start writing them down. Then pay close attention to the main figure or focal point of the card. How are they dressed? What are they doing?  

Once I have established a few things, I’ll move on to the background of the card, paying close attention to color, other figures or animals, and what’s going on – is there any action that helps you with information about this character?

Now, let’s ask some questions:

  1. Are you getting main character energy? Protagonist or Antagonist? Or is this a side character? 
  2. What gender is this character? Male, female, non-binary?
  3. What age is this character? Young, old, timeless – like a wizard?
  4. Are you coming up with any name ideas? Sometimes I get great ideas from something really random on the card and sometimes I don’t.

Once I have these basics established and I’m starting to get a clear picture of who this person is, that’s when I personally bring in the character worksheets you find online. In fact, sometimes I turn those into a tarot spared by pulling cards for each section of the sheet – which can be a fun exercise. 

If you are in a writing group, this can be a fun group activity too. Each of you grab a card and go around the group talking about the character you’ve created – you might even get inspired by the other people’s cards – so bonus!

Have you tried something like this before? Did you find it fun or do you have questions about how to make the process easier?  Let me know by hitting reply to this email.

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