The Page of Pens Challenge
Using tarot to help write your story
Tarot is a novelist’s dream tool. It helps you understand people, uncover root causes, resolve conflicts, envision how scenarios will unfold, and imagine whole new realities.
Is there a better tool for tapping into the creation of fiction?
UPDATE: You can now purchase the interactive Page of Pens Writing Workbook, which translates the exercises below into a convenient PDF and expands the exercises with more guidance and explanation so that you can get the most out of your month-long whirl through divined writing.
It’s on sale for Gemini season!
![The Page of Pens Writing Workbook [PDF]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b4df902e2ccd14b9be6ccf5/1685225047038-W3QIIBPR7PWB8RAAPKM5/PageOfPensWorkbook_Ad_.png)
With that in mind, it’s time for a tarot challenge dedicated to writing.
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and while that may seem like a good reason to offer a writing challenge, that’s not actually the main reason. The real reason, inspired by a chat with Colin Bedell of Queer Cosmos, is that Mars goes retrograde in Gemini on October 30, and it stays there into January. Mars gets things done, but when retrograde, it can be turned inward. And in chatty Gemini, that can make for difficulty with expression, especially with the written word. (In Gemini, I see Mars’s sword as a pen.)
So what better way to blend internalized expressions with an active outlet during Mars’s transit through Gemini than intentional writing exercises guided by intuitive practice?
And if you’re feeling that Mars retrograde energy turn inward, you might find yourself writing some extra spicy material 😉 That’s my plan at least!
What story do you want to write?
And if you want to go deeper with tarot for writing after this challenge (or after NaNoWriMo), join Tarot for Writers.
We start the challenge by uncovering the character waiting within your heart. Then we put them through the wringer and see what they’re made of and how they engage with others. This opens up the bigger journey you have planned for them and what obstacles they’ll have to overcome. Finally, we explore the details of the world and supporting characters, as well as other details that probably won’t change the story you want to tell but help you focus how you write it.
Know that if you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, you may find yourself needing to write more words than the prompts in this challenge require. So just keep writing! Or use the last day of each week as a catch-up. I’m providing another nine-card spread you can use for help cranking out ideas and words, regardless of where they fit within your story. You’ll find that after the Day 7 prompt.
Week 1: Please Welcome to the Page, Your Hero
Day 1: Let’s meet your main character. This is someone with whom you’re going to be spending a lot of time, so make sure you treat this reading seriously. To uncover this character, you’ll be doing the Main Character spread (Part A) from my Telling Your Story two-part spread.
In this, you define key aspects of your main character using nine cards. There are not specific questions because this is a sketch of a person, not a specific unique individual. But if you need help presenting these ideas to your cards for response, you could say, “Please tell me the … [card position] … of/for/in your story” (or similar).
1. Description / Theme
2. Major Past Struggle
3. Pivotal Future Event
4. Overriding Concern
5. Emotional Undercurrent
6. Unspoken Fear
7. Irrational Passion
8. Driving Ambition
9. Primary Obstacle
Once you have laid the cards, you can then use your intuition or visually analyze the cards as they appear in the grid to find connections that help add nuance. There will be some connection between the cards in the same column or between the cards in the same row. But you may find interactions or resonances between cards that don’t obviously flow into each other, and that’s part of the beauty of tarot (and tableau) readings, so use it.
Plan to take 30 minutes getting to know your new character through this spread. If you can’t spend that much time with them, you’ll never write a story about them. You don’t have to like them, but you do have to work with them. So commit or just quit. There’s no point sugar-coating it.
There’s a lot to this spread, and you’ll come back to parts of it throughout the challenge, so take good notes. (It’s a writing challenge, for gods’ sakes.) Make it count on Day 1, and you’ll be much more likely to get through to your ending. With the main character fleshed out, you should have a good sense of their backstory and where they are headed (for now), but that could change as you discover new details and as events unfold in your writing. This is a starting place. It’s an anchor to allow you some movement without letting you drift too far from what’s in your heart.
The cards in this nine-card spread come from the Multi Marseille Tarot by Tom Benjamin.
Day 2: What is your character’s current trajectory? Look at the central row of cards from Day 1, from major past struggle through the current character theme or description to a pivotal future event. Write one sentence using those cards to describe the main character and how they would appear to your reader at the start of your story, even though that’s probably not how the real story will unfold. Flesh it out into a paragraph *if you want*.
Day 3: What is your character’s equilibrium? Look at the central column of cards from Day 1, from overriding concern (what’s “top of mind”) through the character theme and into the emotional undercurrent lurking beneath the surface. This is where they’re mentally and emotionally focused when they’re able to come back to center. Write a short scene showing your main character in their happy place when things are going as they want.
Days 4 & 5: What is the source of your character’s dreams and fears? On Day 4, bring out Cards 6, 7, and 8 from Day 1, and then draw a fourth card to see what joins them together. Write a short scene showing the one source that is the reason for your character’s unspoken fears and for their irrational passions. On Day 5, write another short scene that shows how the main character’s ability to achieve their driving ambition would resolve that core issue (the new card from Day 4), at least in their mind.
Day 6: How does your character present themself to the world and how does their problem force them to encounter the “wrong” version of themself? Consider all that you’ve learned about them so far and pull out Card 9. Write a short scene showing your character encountering their primary obstacle (card 9) during an important interaction with people they wanted to know better but who will now always associate them with their primary obstacle.
Day 7: Edit and revise if needed, but write something—anything—new to keep moving forward. If you can’t interpret a card for one of the positions, you can pull a new card and place it on top of the old one for reference. The “real” card should remain in its place, underneath, ready to sneak up on the character when they least expect it, ready to add drama or humor.
Catch-Up Exercise: The Words, Words, Words Spread
If you need to just crank out more words at the end of a day or week, and you aren’t inspired to write anything in particular, pull out nine cards and place them in a 3x3 square. Write a sentence inspired by the sequence of the top row (Cards 1–3). Next, write another sentence based on the middle row of cards (Cards 4–6). Then write a third sentence based on the bottom row of cards (Cards 7–9). Now connect them in whatever order makes sense and fill in the gaps with more sentences. Do the same thing with your three columns (Cards 1, 4, and 7 and then Cards 2, 5, and 8 and finally Cards 3, 6, and 9). If you’re still hungry for more, throw in the two diagonals (Cards 1, 5, and 9 and then Cards 3, 5, and 7) and add in the four cards around the central card (Cards 2, 4, 6, and 8) to get three more sentences and use those to inspire a new section. Not all of the sentences will make sense for your story, but you can edit when the challenge is done. Just write.
Week 2: Hero, This Is Your Life
Day 8: Now that you have your main character, let’s get them started on their journey. That starts with some event that shakes them out of their complacency. Pull three cards and write a single sentence summarizing the events depicted or described in the cards. Once you have your single sentence, build it out to disrupt their current equilibrium (Day 3) and knock their current trajectory (Day 2) off-course. If you need inspiration or clarification, let it reflect or foreshadow or serve as a metaphor for the nature of the character’s primary obstacle (Card 9).
Day 9: Who in the story is responsible for the inciting incident (Day 8) and how does your character react to them? Pull one or more cards to answer this question. Whether there is a single external person or some unreachable entity or your character’s inner saboteur does not matter. Write a short scene showing how your character responds to the responsible party, not just the scenario itself. (If your main character discovers the responsible party much later on in the story, that’s still valuable to explore now.)
Day 10: How does your main character’s reaction to the inciting incident (Day 8) show to the world some of their hidden baggage (Day 4)? Pull a card to represent a person or scenario that forces the character to confront this. Then write that interaction or scenario as a short scene.
Day 11: Imagine that your main character achieves their driving ambition (Card 8 from Day 1), despite the changes brought about by the inciting incident, but they don’t resolve their primary obstacle (Card 9 from Day 1). What does that look like? Pull one or more cards to provide you a setting or situation in which to position this not-quite-happy ending, and then write that as a short scene.
Day 12: Now let’s flip that around. Imagine that your main character resolves their primary obstacle (Card 9 from Day 1) but does not achieve their driving ambition (Card 8 from Day 1). What does that look like? Pull a card to represent a lesson that your character has learned from this surprisingly “good” ending. Write a short scene in which they try to explain this to their past self or someone else who would be interested but skeptical.
Day 13: What does your character love? Pull one or more cards to represent a person, animal, object, ideal, concept, or whatever that your main character truly deeply loves and would die to protect. Write a short scene in which your main character recognizes this intense love and feeling toward this [noun] for the first time.
Day 14: Edit and revise again if needed, but write something new related to your character and their fears, dreams, enemies, or attachments in life.
Week 3: The Bigger Picture
Day 15: Now that you have a sense of who your character is and how they react to the stressors in their life that have knocked them off-course, ask yourself where they’re really going now. Pull three cards and write a single sentence to summarize the ending of the story. Write a short scene in which your character experiences this ending.
Day 16: Take out the three cards from the inciting incident (Day 8) and the three cards from the ending (Day 15) and layout them out with space in between. Pull three more cards that inspire you to create a new scene in the middle. Start with a summarizing sentence and build from there.
Day 17: Take out the the nine cards used in Day 16 and pull six more cards to represent two bridges between beginning and middle and between middle and end. Arrange them as two trios however you like and create sentences summarizing each of those two in-between bridge periods. Now switch the order of the bridging scenes around and write two new summary sentences that make sense of this new order. Write two very short scenes based around the summaries you most like.
Day 18: What are the primary conflicts associated with each of these core events? Pull ten cards, two for each of your five anchoring scenes. One card per scene will represent the external conflict, what’s visible and obvious in the scene. The other card will represent something underneath that is driving the conflict, either for your main character or the others in the scene. Some should relate to what you’ve already explored so far, but others will offer new insights. Choose one scene to explore further and write the lead-up to it or the wind-down from it with these factors in mind.
Day 19: Who are the primary figures most important to each of these core events? Pull five cards, one for each of your five anchoring scenes. At least one of these cards should relate to the person from Day 10, but the rest may relate to one or more antagonists or supporting cast members (or to some part of your main character). Identify them for yourself through these cards. Pull more cards to flesh them out if needed, but don’t worry about minor details yet.
Day 20: Take your five anchoring scenes from Day 17 and organize them into a final order. You can keep them how they were on Day 17, but before settling on that, re-arrange them on paper and in your mind and see what new ideas are sparked. Write them down, even if you don’t think they’ll work with the story you’re telling.
Day 21: Edit and revise your scene structure and driving characters if needed, but write something—anything—new to keep moving forward. Consider everything that you’ve created so far. What’s missing from your story? Pull one or more cards to help you fill in any gaps in terms of narrative coverage, characters, important scenes, or themes.
Week 4: Eyes on the World
Day 22: It’s time to think about the world in which your story takes place. The main events and characters of the story are often world-agnostic, but the world in which you set your story can shape it in surprising ways. You probably already have a sense of your story’s world if you’ve actually been writing, but now we see what the tarot cards have to say. Pull three cards to represent your world. Choose one to represent the physical attributes of that world, another to represent the general flavor of that world, and the third to represent something surprising and unexpected that you hadn’t originally considered. Write at least a paragraph about each of these aspects as they relate to the world of your story.
Day 23: Who is your ideal audience for this story? Pull a card in response. It may be just for you, your nearest and dearest, a niche audience that needs a new cult classic, or a massive and profitable demographic (hello, YA). You don’t need to build a market plan yet, but see your audience in the card. Then rewrite either your inciting incident (Day 8) or ending (Day 15) with that audience in mind.
Day 24: What part of your main character needs further refinement? Pull a card to identify an aspect of your main character that could use an edit. Then pull a second card to provide inspiration for how you make it. Write a short scene featuring your main character in this new light. Note that November 24 is Thanksgiving in the US, so reschedule as needed.
Day 25: What don’t you understand about your antagonist(s)? Pull a card for your primary antagonist (or one for each one). What surprising new information does it reveal that will help you make them more interesting. Write a short scene in which your main character or reader discovers this aspect of the character.
Day 26: Who else could play the leading role in your story? Pull a card to represent a character other than your main character who could take this journey and drive this story. They do not have to be in your story already (or ever). Imagine it as an alternate universe. What does that teach you about your main character and how to differentiate them (or not)? Write a very short scene in which these differences or similarities are made clear.
Day 27: Where does your story need greater depth? Pull one card to represent an aspect of your story that needs you to build it out further. Pull another card to give you an idea how to add depth to that part of your story. Write a very short scene in which you explore some of those depths.
Day 28: Revise and edit if needed, but let yourself replay one of these prompts. Perhaps you aren’t satisfied with how the scene turned out or what it’s doing to the rest of the story, and you’re not sure how to fix it. Allow yourself a redo if you want one.
Final Days: Cue the Music
Day 29: If you’ve gotten this far and kept up with even half of the prompts, congratulate yourself. You’re a writer. To write so much and so consistently, you have what it takes to do the actual work of being a writer. It’s not easy. There are plenty of good writers who can’t keep up, but that’s the first and most important hurdle. Do something today to celebrate what you’ve accomplished. If it inspires you to write more, write more. If not, don’t.
Day 30: What have you wanted to write that you weren’t able to fit into this challenge? Make sure that you still love writing and that you still honor your independent creativity. Tarot is an incredibly powerful tool for writers, but it’s only a tool. It’s not the writer. And it can’t keep you going on its own if you’ve become disenchanted. So write something—anything—that you’re excited to write and that you didn’t get to write during the challenge. Let it be a reminder that you are the writer, not the cards, and that there is a spark within you that you get to tend however you see fit.
Tarot for Writers
Learn to use the cards to ignite your inspiration
As a reminder, I’m offering an amazing new class that is super exciting to me since it’s geared toward techniques to help you with your writing. So if you found yourself stumped or uninspired when consulting your tarot cards during this experience, I’d love to invite you to the course, Tarot for Writers. We’ll look at the cards as a source of inspiration for creative writing and get so much deeper in interactive workshop settings.
You don’t need to have a background in tarot reading to be able to benefit from the sessions. But if you do have a background in tarot, you’ll gain new perspective on interpreting the cards for writing. Everybody wins! And if you want to have a stronger foundation for your tarot reading before getting into the specificity and clarity of tarot for writing, sign up for Read Tarot like a Nerd.
Note that all imagery (other than photos of cards) was created for me under a commercial license by the Midjourney AI art generator based on unique prompts I provided. It’s pretty impressive what the tool can do.