Courts of Personality

Fictional Characters and Personality Type with the Tarot Court

It’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! Throughout the month of November, I will be sharing tips and techniques for how to use tarot cards to help you do just that: write your novel. And, if you’re participating in the NaNoWriMo challenge of penning a 50K-word first draft, my hope is that the information I have to share is a resource to you.

To kickoff the NaNoWriMo festivities, let’s start with character development.

Although widely regarded as the most difficult cards to learn in the tarot, I interpret the Court cards—the Pages, Knights, Queens, and Kings—as being rooted in service: to Self and to others. They are highly nuanced and full of personality, which from a writer’s lens supports their relatability, and they also make the perfect avatars for fictional character creation.

When considering the tarot Courts as archetypes and character muses, I’m reminded of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Inspired by Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types, writer and educator Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, developed this renowned self-assessment by charting and categorizing various personality indicators, such as Introversion vs Extroversion, Intuition vs Sensing, Thinking vs Feeling, and Judgment vs Perception. When combined, these indicators form 16 different personality types, including my own: INFJ.

If you’d like to take an MBTI^® assessment to determine your own personality type, I highly recommend 16Personalities. The questionnaire is fun, easy to use, and absolutely free. As an additional method for honing your fictional characters, I also recommend taking the assessment from their point of view. I’ve done this, and the outcome helped me learn aspects of my characters that influenced their interactions with others, directly affecting my storylines.

As a means of developing my own intuitive theory around the tarot Court cards and their personality types, I studied the 16Personalities categories and assigned one to each Page, Knight, Queen, and King. Across the following slides I’ll introduce you to the MBTI^® personality types as they resonate with me in the tarot’s Court cards. Using such correlations can help you decide on the personalities of your own fictional characters.

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Although this post is a high-level overview of the Courts-MBTI^® crossover, you can make a deeper dive with my Courts of Personality Character Development Resource.

Do you want to refine your new novel’s cast of characters into memorable personalities that stay with your readers long after they finish your book?

Would you like to dive deeper into the heart, body, mind, and spirit of your characters so they can carry your story to places even YOU haven’t yet imagined?

Would you like to uncover hidden aspects of your characters’ personalities that even you, the author, haven’t established yet?

Could you benefit from learning how the tarot’s Court cards can serve as muses and avatars for your characters?

The Courts of Personality Character Development Resource is an abundant exploration of the tarot’s Court cards from the fictional character lens.

This fillable and/or printable workbook includes:

• a comprehensive analysis of the Court cards’ personality traits and the qualities each can offer to the fictional character.

• an examination of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI^®) constructs from the lens of each Court card—Use what you learn to help define your characters’ unique traits so they translate as authentic personalities your readers can believe in and champion.

• a fun activity to help you envision your characters as the Court cards in your own story.

Find the Courts of Personality Character Development Resource and more writing assets on The Intuitive Storyteller Hub, where creative writers can access tools to help hone their craft.

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In her more than thirty years as a storyteller and visual designer, Amanda “Mandy” Hughes has written and designed over a dozen works of literary, Southern Gothic, and women’s fiction under pen names A. Lee Hughes and Mandy Lee.

Mandy is the founder of Haint Blue Creative^®, a space for readers and storytellers to explore, learn, and create. She holds a Bachelor and Master of Science in Psychology, and she has worked as an instructional designer for nearly twenty years.

When she’s not writing, Mandy enjoys the movies, theater, music, traveling, nature walks, birdwatching, and binging The Office. She is a tarot enthusiast who uses the cards to enhance creativity and foster wellness. She lives in Georgia with her husband and four sons, two of whom are furrier than the others (but not by much). Visit her website at haintbluecreative.com and follow her on Instagram @haintbluecreative.