The Book of Stones is a guide to the world of crystals, minerals, and gemstones, and their metaphysical energies. Many people believe that stones are useful for spiritual awakening and self-healing. Each entry in the book includes the mineral’s scientific properties, history, lore, elemental energies, chakra correspondences, and which stones work best together.
So why am I bringing this to writers’ attention? For one thing, you could have a character who believes in the spiritual awakening and/or self-healing powers of stones.
For example, I relied heavily on this book when I wrote a magical realism story, published in 2015 in Clare Magazine, about a woman who turned to many non-traditional methods to heal herself after treatment for breast cancer left her with radiation poisoning. In this story, the character turned especially to stones reputed to ameliorate cancer, pain, nausea, and low energy. Among others, these stones include jasper, unakite, snowflake obsidian, green tourmaline, diamond, serpentine, and aragonite star clusters.
You might create a character who needs to be informed about stones and their properties for business/work purposes—a store proprietor, museum curator, or geologist.
One of my favorite stores is The Mystic Jewel in Corolla and Duck, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Every piece of jewelry one buys comes with a small card with a brief description of the stone’s properties.
Maybe you just want your character to have an unusual worry stone or favorite piece of jewelry. For example, green onyx.
Everyone is familiar with black onyx, some know about white onyx, but green onyx is more of a statement stone.
Last but not least, consider that your character might have an attachment to a particular stone or stones for personal reasons: each month has a birthstone, many anniversaries have stones attached to them, etc. Unakite is the state gem stone of Virginia. I have a special fondness to vivianite for obvious reasons! Not so obvious, vivianite’s key words are compassion, love, inner peace, gentleness, refreshment, inspiration, and mystic awakening; the elements of earth and water; and the heart (4th) chakra. What’s not to love?
Bottom line: You can add a little pizzazz to your writing in many ways by bringing in stones.