The Tarot Deck, a mystical fortune telling device that looks into your future and knows all. Or, if you’re less interested in the mysticism, a great way to pull together a quick background for a secondary character. I wanted to explicitly state secondary characters in there, but I’ve met folks who use it for their hero and heroine as well – just not for me. As you’ll recall, I dislike surprises, so I tend to know my mains’ backgrounds pretty well.

That leaves a lot of room for everyone else though, and sometimes I just don’t know what a secondary character wants, or why they’ve decided to help. When that happens, I pull out a deck of tarot cards (I have a couple different decks, but mostly I use the standard Rider-Waite) and lay out three cards. One card indicates a motivating moment in the character’s past, one represents his or her current state, and one is used to indicate the character’s goal.

So for example, I draw the Tower, the Three of Pentacles and the Ten of Swords – It gives me a character who came from a broken home or otherwise never felt safe, but has now mastered a skill and exchanges it for money. At some point in the future, the character will betray someone, either the hero/heroine or the antagonist. It’s not much to go on, still, but it gives me a sense of direction and gets my gears grinding towards a more compelling secondary character.

I can’t really bring up tarot and writing and not talk about the Fool’s Journey. There is a school of thought that views the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana as a metaphor for the path we each take through life. I’ve been to seminars on writing and the tarot where this was discussed explicitly as a means of evaluating characters, or even plotting the novel. I’ve never done it, partly because it has similarities to Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, which I think has been done to death. If you’re interested in learning more, there are plenty of resources on the fool’s journey to get yourself started.

So how about you? Have you use the tarot, or some other randomization technique, to explore the background of a character? I’m always looking for a new method – feel free to leave yours in the comments.