Writing Resources
Sun, Jan. 2nd, 2022 00:08![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebiballerinaHere's a list of resources I use when I am writing. I will do my best to keep this list updated.
Word Hippo - word finding tool
Word Hippo is a flexible thesaurus tool which has search tools for similar words, opposite words, rhyming words, example sentences, definitions, word forms, translations, word game helpers, pronunciations, conjugations, and words containing certain letters/sequences.
OneLook Thesaurus and Reverse Dictionary
A great tool for finding words you can't quite recall! This service lets you find a word not just with its synonyms, but with descriptions of the word, as well as letter patterns. There is a Spanish beta version as well.
Resource added to this post on April 27th, 2023.
Word Reference - translation, dictionaries, thesaurus, and language forums
In addition to translation and dictionary tools, WordReference has comprehensive forums for many languages.
The search tools include:
- English monolingual: definitions, synonyms, usage, collocations, conjugations
- Spanish: definitions, synonyms, conjugations, English-Spanish, Spanish-English, Spanish-French, Spanish-Portuguese, Spanish-Italian, Spanish-German, Spanish-Catalan
- French: conjugations, English-French, French-English, French-Spanish
- Italian: definitions, conjugations, English-Italian, Italian-English, Italian-Spanish
- German: English-German, German-English, German-Spanish
- Portuguese: English-Portuguese, Portuguese-English, Portuguese-Spanish
- Additional English translation dictionaries for: Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic
Fantasy Name Generators
This is a fantastic resource for writing and character creation. There are over 1400 name generators on the site. There are generators for fantasy and folklore names, real names from many cultures, place and location names, names for various popular media franchises, a variety of other names (like artifact names, curse names, dance names, potion names, secret order names, song names, and my personal favorite, heist names). There are even description generators, for anything from clothing, to quests, to constellations.
Roll for Fantasy - tabletop gaming and writing tools
Roll for Fantasy is a newer site run by Emily, the same person who runs Fantasy Name Generators (and yes, it is one person behind all of that). Roll for Fantasy is a "a site dedicated to a wide range of aspects of tabletop gaming, as well as writing in general. There's GM guides, free music, DIY guides, puzzle guides, all sorts of tools ranging from a dungeon creator to a map creator, from a spell card creator to a family tree creator, and so much more."
Facial Expressions Descriptions Blog
A project on Tumblr aiming to build a library of descriptions of facial expressions. According to the blog, "[t]he point is now to find/take and post a gif or picture of an expression that needs words. (If you make your own post, use the tag #facial expression description library, and/or #fedl, so it’s searchable.) Then everyone responds to/reblogs that post with how they would describe that expression. It takes a moment to build it up, but in the end we all have a neat little library of gifs and descriptions and we just have to find the one we need when we need it." (Source)
Original Post
Writing Excuses Podcast
According to their website, "Writing Excuses is a fast-paced, educational podcast for writers, by writers. It airs weekly, with new episodes appearing each Sunday evening at around 6pm Eastern Time. Episodes vary in length from fifteen to twenty-five minutes, but are usually less than twenty minutes long."
Also available on Apple Podcasts.
"Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott
"Shitty First Drafts" is an excerpt from Anne Lamott's book about writing, Bird by Bird. It is a great essay on the need to relax one's expectations when writing a first draft, and an eye-opening perspective on the writing process.
