“SHHH. Don’t tell a soul,” she says, and before you have a chance to stop her, you’ve become privy to facts about your neighbors or friends that you can’t unhear! What are you going to do? Wield your new-found knowledge like a sword? Or wad it into a tight little ball and shove it into the furthest depths of your unconscious?

Me? I go to one of my BFF’s. I trust her with even the most odious of secrets—because she is a vault! But if someone were to cut her open, my secrets would tumble out onto the street like looters, wilding and leaving havoc in their wake.

That might be for the best, though. Because the secrets we hold can protect, sure, but they can poison, too. And while the secrets we reveal can incriminate, they may emancipate, as well. Keep all that in mind, when moving on to the prompt!

Tarot writing prompt

Stick one of your characters into a situation in which she is told a secret—one that she’d rather not have heard. Perhaps your character is a therapist—or otherwise charged with the holding of secrets. (Is she a doctor? lawyer? priest? garbage person? spy?) Let someone unload a piece of information on her that makes her squirm!

To tell or not to tell? That will be the question. Make the stakes equally high for the telling and the not—and don’t give your  character an easy out by legally requiring her to spill the beans. (Unless, of course, you put her in jeopardy when she decides not to do her legal duty!)

This writing prompt was inspired by The High Priestess of the tarot deck. The High Priestess is associated with hidden knowledge, intuition, and secrets we hold close to our chests. She’s ruled by the moon—which itself has a secret, a dark side that we, from the earth, can never see. That’s where the The High Priestess keeps her own secrets. If she were to let these out of the bag, she could rule the world. But she’s content to let the world rule itself.