How To Write Better Dialogue Using This Easy Tarot Prompt

Grab Your Favorite Tarot Deck

I find it most helpful to take out any cards that don’t have people, or have too many people, but you might also find that you’re just not in the mood to write as kids or the devil, and that’s okay. Once you take out all the cards that won’t work for you, shuffle the rest of the stack and pull two cards.

Note, once you get the hang of this exercise you can totally pull more than two cards.

 

Create Your Characters

For each card, take a few minutes and come up with your characters:

• • Who are these people?

• • What do they do for a living?

• • Where do they live?

• • What things do they like?

These don’t have to be too in depth – in fact, it might be helpful to set a timer so you can do this quickly.

Once you have your characters, think of a setting that might work for both of them. A bus stop, school or work, and a party are all good places to start, but think about your favorite genre and what might make the most sense for your cards and characters.

And finally, think about what each character wants in this scene. For my example in my video one character wanted to flirt with the other and the other character wanted to be left alone.  Instant conflict!! 

 

Write Your Scene

Now it’s time to grab your journal or open a document online and start writing.  You can write out the scene as if it were a chapter in a novel with scene setting and description or you can just concentrate on the dialogue and write like this was a play.

 

CHAD: So, what are you reading?

ELEANOR: Psych 101, doing some studying.

 

Ways You Can Use This Prompt

Yes, this prompt is super fun as a general writing exercise for when you’re in between projects or to even help brainstorm a new project, but it’s also really great when you’re stuck in your novel.

Grab the tarot cards you used to create your characters, or choose them now, and do this same exercise – but I would put them in some wacky setting not used in your book. So if you’re writing YA contemporary and most of your scenes are set in school, put them somewhere really wild. Maybe they all went on a scavenger hunt or they’re trapped in an escape room and see how they all react. It can give you some really amazing insights and will hopefully unlock some things for your book.

If you like these kinds of tarot writing prompts, join my newsletter for even more and receive my free training, Novel Narrator, all about creating characters using tarot cards immediately.