Teneice Durrant, creator of Tarot with Ten, will use various tarot and oracle decks to provide monthly readings for writers, with exercises on using imagery and intuition as prompts. August’s prompt concerns a story’s finale.
The grand finale of your story
Can you believe we’ve made it through an entire narrative arc’s worth of monthly tarot readings and writing exercises? We’ve covered protagonists, antagonists, and love interests, and plotted the inciting incident, rising action, climax, and falling action of a narrative. This month, we are rounding out our hero’s story with the finale/epilogue.
The big question at the end of every story is: Has the hero learned their lesson? You may have to check back with previous prompts and your own drafts to see how you set up your main character, because the final scene of the story should also be a reflection of the life the protagonist was living before the inciting incident. Does the hero return to a home that looks familiar, but is fundamentally changed? Or are they in a new place that is the opposite of where they started?
Let’s ask a few important questions to help us finish the story.
Has the protagonist learned their lesson?
As always, these images are from the Rider Waite tarot deck, via Pixabay (Creative Commons license), and you can flip through all cards from this reading here:
Queen of Wands
The queen of wands is a dynamic, magnetic personality who knows how to bring out the best in people. She is full of self-confidence but can often be so “on” that she doesn’t know how to “turn it off,” and can lose herself in her own performance.
The queen of wands makes others feel as if they can do anything but often feels inadequate internally.
What does the protagonist's future home look like?
Eight of Pentacles
The future setting for our main character is one of industrious manufacturing. The eight of pentacles represents the apprentice mastering their craft and reliably producing the same quality of work. It is the phase of production where the apprentice feels proud of their skills.
The eight of pentacles is a card of rebuilding and flourishing.
Is the ending happy or tragic?
The World
The World represents ascension to a higher plane. One has learned all the necessary lessons and moves on to the next cycle. It is both happy due to personal developments, but tragic in that they will have to leave those who have not ascended behind.
The World also indicates far-away travel and releasing fixed ideas of what home means.
A writing exercise
As always, take some time to describe each card with as much literal and sensory detail as you can, then flesh out short scenes or plot ideas for those details that resonate most with you and your story to bring it to a sense of closure.
Next month, we will begin using tarot cards as prompts for short pieces.
Until then, here’s how to find me outside of the Center:
Podcast anchor.fm/tarotwithten
YouTube Tarot with Ten
What did you think of this tarot reading and the cards as visual prompts for story development? Share with us in the comments, and contact us if you’re interested in working one-on-one with Teneice in part 3 of Writing Toward Balance and Wholeness: Tarot and the Narrative Arc.
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