The Index [Writing Resources & Reference]

art source: http://arsenixc.deviantart.com/art/Library-Inside-207532232​

In a similar vein to the Variety Bin, this will serve as a collection of resources, references, and anything else that will help your writing—and yes, this thread welcomes user submissions!

Spoiler: Resources

Zim Desktop Wiki (For organizing stuff like worldbuilding info)
First Name Database
Surname Database
CharaHub
Seventh Sanctum (Random everything generator)
Tip of My Tongue (Find a word you've been thinking about all day but just can't seem to remember)
Reverse Dictionary (Describe a concept and get a list of words & phrases related -- great for its purpose and for finding new, potentially inspiring things)
Fractal World Generator & other tools (esp. useful for fantasy worlds and D&D campaigns)
60 search engines for writers
Write Rhymes
Word Frequency Counter
Free Rice (Test your vocab, for charity!)
Syntaxis (Grammar quizzes)
Copyscape (Check for plagiarized copies of your writing)
Write Or Die (Set your own rewards/penalties for writing goals)
Written? Kitten! (Kittens for word count!)
Story Starters
Storybird (Writing tool for picture books)
SSA: Popular Baby Names
Finding Data On The Internet (References for all kinds of stuff)
Online Etymology Dictionary
The Alternative Dictionaries (Foreign slang)
The Phrase Finder (Find famous phrases and their origins)
Pacemaker (Writing scheduler)

Spoiler: References

Creating a Fictional Character
Cheat Sheets for Writing Body Language
Writing Advice by Chuck Palahniuk (Has to do with descriptive writing & show-don't-tell)
Dialogue Do's and Dont's
Writing Accents and Dialects
Dialogue: Writing Dialects and Accents

I'd also like to pose a question to everyone. As a writer I personally find a lot of art references helpful as well, because they often give names to shapes, objects, etc. and help me visualize better. Would anyone else find it helpful to have some art references added to the list? If so I have a wealth of such to draw upon, but I wanted to make it a group decision. I could also add not just art references but artworks in general, for inspiration.

 

A few weeks ago, @Midnight Star brought this neat little tool to the RPA and I think it would be just as nice here as well. It's called CharaHub. It allows you to compile your characters into a look booklet of sorts. You can include all sorts of information about them and it sets it up into unique profiles. With this, you'll never forget a detail or get someone mixed up! It would be a useful tool to add to the resources list.

@Ars Nova, the art references might be a good idea. I'm sure people draw inspiration from their own favorited selections, but having others to look at wouldn't hurt either.

 

Seventh Sanctum is something you'd want to use for rapid generating; be it of names, places, or powers. I don't know if it was included in one of those tumblr posts, because I didn't check the links. I have plenty of resources here, but most of them are generators of varying degrees of redundancy.

 

Tip of My Tongue (Find a word you've been thinking about all day but just can't seem to remember)
Reverse Dictionary (Describe a concept and get a list of words & phrases related -- great for its purpose and for finding new, potentially inspiring things)
Creating a Fictional Character (A guide to creating a realistic character when writing)
Cheat Sheets for Writing Body Language

Add whatever you'd like @Novashadow, these are just a few that I find personally helpful.

 

Added them all, muchas gracias for the contributions u 3u

 

Just found this which writers might find helpful, it's called Donjon and it is a world generator as well as several other generators. The rest of the seemed to be more D&D based but especially if you are using a fantasy setting, it could still help you to generate places and other things to use as inspiration.

LINK

(Totally didn't forget to link to it initially)

 

I don't know if this post will be deleted or whatever but...

This is a really nice idea! Thank you, Nova & those posting. ;u; Maybe these links will help me with my English creative and re-creative work pieces.

 

Ooh, very nice. Adding it now, thanks for the contribution c:

Naw, no deletion. By all means everyone, feel free to discuss the resources if you're so inclined. Only the OP is archival. And you're welcome gumdrop u 3u

 

The link is appreciated, but I'd prefer if you were to narrow down some resources or posts you like from that and submit those. That way anyone browsing the OP makes as few clicks as possible to get to something good. That said, I may do so myself later on.

 

I don't know how helpful this will be but I found a tumblr post called 60 Awesome Search Engines for Serious Writers. It includes a range of links that may be helpful. The links range from things to find other writers, publishers and ways to market your work, to writing tools, research tools, reference tools and stuff helpful to web writing.

 

Every contribution is appreciated u vu Added it to the OP

 

I've found a helpful tool for any aspiring poets here, Write Rhymes finds rhymes for your words as you write to make it easier and flow better.

 

Ooh, nifty. I may do a bit of songwriting with this. Added, thanks for the link!

 

Sorry about the delay, added almost all of the links to the spoilers. I think all I left out were a few prompt generators that either didn't seem appropriate or proved confusing to navigate... Anywho, thanks for the contributions u vu

 

I've been sitting here thinking about future characters and how I've always had issues with properly portraying foreign accents, which is a big deal because I have a character coming up who is Irish and I do not want to bastardize it. I decided to look up some tips for writing with accents / different dialects. Here's some pretty good ones that I found:
Dialogue Do's and Dont's
Writing Accents and Dialects
Dialogue: Writing Dialects and Accents
They say basically the same thing, 'moderation,' but I decided to include multiple sites just so that there was some varying information.

"It’s okay to toss in a few phonetic words here and there to highlight the accent or dialect, but use it sparingly. Moderation will save you from frustrating your readers." -- The Script Lab

 

I can vouch for that. In my experience accents/dialects are best conveyed the way anything else is: by leaving most of it to the imagination. As an example, a short line from Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald:

"The Queen is most upset," he said. He had an accent. He pronounced his Ss as Zs. Mozt. Upzet. "Franz was one of her favorites. She has so many nephews. But he made her laugh so. You will find the ones who did this to him."

Not as involved as a whole dialect, but perhaps proof of concept. In the span of a sentence (plus two fragments for good measure), you know just what the speaker should sound like and can fill in the accent as you read, without worry of stumbling over misspelled words. (All of this is quite the amusing coincidence since I just got done writing an absolutely absurd accent that's meant to be stumbled over :'D)

Anyway, added them to references. Thanks for the contribution!

 

Added, thanks for the contribution u <u