Writing with the Minor Arcana: Growth & Expansion with the Threes

The threes are about expansion and growth. We’re moving out of balance and choice into something bigger. Our love and our families grow. We grow through friendships. From the group projects we were assigned during our school days. And through pain and heartbreak.

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This is the Tarot of Mystical Moments by Catrin Welz-Stein. This deck is gorgeous! I was a fan of Catrin’s art for many long years before her oracle and tarot decks were published. Her art is stunning, truly sparks the imagination, and hits me right in the feels. Breathtaking!

Now, it’s time for a confession. I love looking at these cards, but I don’t read with them well. I want to, but the images as lovely as they are, don’t always speak the language of tarot to me. What do I mean by that? In my eyes, the Three of Swords and the Three of Cups pictured above are speaking tarot. They have a friendly blend of traditional tarot symbolism with unique and beautiful artistic interpretation. The Three of Wands and the Three of Pentacles not so much. If the latter two cards weren’t labeled, I wouldn’t be able to decipher their intentions. I’m able to understand the interpretation of the images after reading the labels, but without them, the images might as well be speaking French. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French. I wish I did, but I’m stuck with English. Confession over.

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Onwards to growth and expansion!

Three of Cups for Characters and Plots

With the Three of Cups we get to explore expansion through friendship, joy, and celebration. The three of cups often features three women dancing and playing together in a beautiful environment. This is about your character’s community and the friendships that help them mark moments of delight.

• Who is on you main character’s side?

• Who celebrates them? or celebrates with them?

This circle of friends is worth the effort it takes to create three dimensional characters with their own issues and growth arcs. I know I often get caught up with making my characters as miserable and lonely as possible. Or focusing solely on the drama and conflict they have with their antagonists. The Three of Cups reminds me that drama needs contrast like horror needs humor.

Three of Cups for Writers
(I’m gonna go on a heart-full rant here.)

As a writers, y’all, we need our friends and cheerleaders. It gets lonely. Motivation and inspiration can be unreliable. This week was hard! I barely made it to the page. We need those people in our corner to help us laugh at ourselves when we whine about only writing 300 words when we set a goal to write 1000. These are the people who say things like, ‘You wrote 300 words! That’s frickin’ amazing! Go you! Let’s party!”

This list of people cannot be too long as long as they don’t take it personally when you say, “I can’t. I’m writing today.”

I hope you have a long list of names for your acknowledgements page! Here’s to you, Family, Food Coven, and Writer Friends. Thank you for being on my side. I always thought it was corny when people said things like, ‘I couldn’t have done this without you.’ But, I get it now. I could not be writing this thing that I’m writing now, without you.

There’s more! Because humans often have competitive comparison-itis, celebrating each other is vitally important. It creates abundance for all of us. Personal success is not a pie. Celebrating another writer who wrote 1000 words over our 300, who got a fabulous publishing deal that we don’t have yet, who reached 100 subscribers to their newsletter while we have only 10 is just as important and being celebrated. Holding joy for one-another is a great blessing for all of us. She celebrates my 10 subscribers while I celebrate her 100 subscribers and we’re both living in the joy of the moment. That’s the Three of Cups. That’s love, baby.

Don’t worry, we’ll get to holding each others’ hands during the dark times as well. We have seven more minor arcana numbers to play with. Yay!

Three of Swords for Characters and Plots

Have you read Lisa Cron’s Story Genius? It’s all about the Three of Swords moment that shaped the main character and their beliefs about the world long before the story began. (I’m into it. Highly recommend.) Understanding that the story begins long before the story begins has helped me out of the stuck places that I consistently dig myself into when I focus for too long on external story events. It makes sense if you read the book. Also, every character in the book needs this moment. We don’t have to see it on the page, but as writers we need to know what that Three of Swords moment was and the impact of it. Our characters grow themselves through heartbreak. What I mean is, it isn’t so much about the heartbreak, as it is what they do with the heartbreak. How does this moment force the character to grow? How do they move forward? How does it change them forevermore?

• What/who broke your character’s heart?

• What happened that shook their world?

• What did that heartbreak teach them about the world?

• How is that lesson, that they took to heart in a big way, causing chaos for them now?

Fun stuff! Fun stuff!

Three of Swords for Writers

I don’t think I have to say a lot about this other than this is where all the best sad songs come from. This is your power ballad moment. Maybe this is even why you write. Writing has always been a cathartic process for me. I know for some it’s all AI and paychecks. But that’s not why I write. I write to process the world. To process being human. I write because I have felt broken and I don’t want to feel broken anymore. I want to tell a story that will help people feel seen and whole. It’s why I read. Because there are brilliant writers out there who can put into words the things I have always felt but have never been able to explain.

I had a brilliant acting teacher, who was just as broken and sometimes as cruel as he was brilliant, who said, “Dip the words the playwright gave you into water as if the words were tea and you are the water. Steep in the words into your being until they are so rich they can’t not be spoken. That’s when you speak the words.” That’s not a verbatim quote, but it’s the essence. Three of Swords. The end.

Three of Wands for Characters and Plots

The Three of Wands enters the scene after the choice posed in the Two of Wands has been decided. Our character grows through pursuit of a goal. They are focused. They are passionate. They are going for it. They are so determined and so close! Then, what happens? The plot comes along, hits them over the head, and forces them to question the entirety of their existence.

This is the in medias res.

• What is your character pursuing with passion and purpose before they get mugged by the plot?

• How does the inciting incident interrupt or disrupt the trajectory of your character’s pursuit of the life they want to live?

This is the goal, way of life, the character wants
- based on what they decided about the world
- based on the Three of Swords moment that shaped their perception of the world.

Three of Wands for Writers

Oh, my God. Can I say again that writing is hard. In spite of being passionate about the subject or the story. Maybe it’s hard because of being passionate about the story or subject. I have wanted this for a long time. Did I mention I’m turning 60 this year? A. Long. Time. I have a goal. I’m putting words on the page. I want to master story. I’m doing all the things to help me master story. Including writing this here thing that I’m writing.

I also have to say, I think the time management and productivity industry is just as insidious as the diet industry. And by ‘industry’ I mean the people who benefit and profit from the messaging that we are never enough and always too much. There’s some insidious messaging in the goal-setting process that we need to protect ourselves from. Yet, we need something to aim for. We need to do the doing. The process of pursuing the goal is just as important, possibly more important, than the goal itself. Also the growth may be entirely unrelated to the actual goal when all is said and done. We learn that we can begin and complete something and, more importantly, we learn that we can trust ourselves with our dreams.

The Three of Wands is the effort and energy expenditure required to get the desired result fueled by the passion needed to keep at it until you get it. Learning through doing. Trial and error. Keeping on keeping on. Grit. We grow through doing. Through the pursuit of the goal.

• As a writer, what target are you aiming for?

• How often do you think you’ll have to throw that axe before you hit the bullseye?
  You can’t know. All you can do is keep throwing.

• Is there a there there?

• What’s there? What do you want?

• How will you recognize it when you get it?

• What is the energy exchange necessary?

• How will you take care of and protect yourself so the required energy exchange doesn’t deplete you?

Sometimes, I know the answers to these questions and sometimes I don’t. I’m in the middle of it. I want to finish the first draft of the damn book that I am so excited about writing. I want to finally successfully revise that full-length play that has been haunting me for way too long. I want these words to have meaning and value for their audience.

Here’s to you for showing up for yourself and your dreams. This is your card. Also, take a nap when you need one.

Three of Pentacles for Characters and Plots

The Three of Pentacles is about growth through collaboration. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

• How does your character learn to play nice with others?

• What is your character’s unique contribution and expertise?

• Where does your character lack expertise?

• Who do they need? And who needs them?

• How does your character grow by working with others?

• Who are they when a group project is assigned?

I mean there’s a reason it’s Ocean’s Eleven and not Ocean’s One. The juice is in the relationships, the timing, and how our character contributes their individual expertise in spite of maybe not liking everyone they have to work with. Are they graceful in accepting help? Are they graceful in contributing help?

Enemies to lovers, anyone? I hate you, but I can’t do it without you.

Three of Pentacles for Writers

How many writers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Our collaborators are editors, publishers, cover design artists, agents, and our beloved pets who listen to us read every word we write no matter how terrible it may be. Our writing groups. Beta readers. It takes a village to raise a book.

Also, nothing comes from nothing. Writers don’t spring whole cloth out of clamshells. Our collaborators are also the writers we read and love. The teachers who taught us to diagram sentences. (IYKYK) And that hysterically odd conversation we overheard in the grocery story check out line about the woman who strutted around the beach in her bikini with a piece of seaweed dangling from her crotch. You’re welcome.

• What support do you need?

• How are you building your team?

• What support can you offer to someone else?

• Who inspires and pushes you to grow?

Also, I hope you have someone on your team who would tell you if there was a piece seaweed dangling out of your swimsuit.