The Writing Process
No matter where you are in the writing process there is a something here to help you.
Inspiration
Feath’s Bookcase
A true plethora of writing prompts and story starters.
The Story Starter
Get the first line of your next story here.
Timeline Generator
Use one event, use a handful, use the whole timeline automatically generated for your Kingdom.
Dire Press Tools
A collection of great generators but specifically the SF World and Star System Generators.
Quick Plots
A quick plot, a word count and you’re away.
One Word
One Word gives you one word to write about for 60 seconds. It also links to poetc and onecaption.
Preparation
The Snowflake Method
The Snowflake Method for writing a novel is all about triangles and snow… or about starting small and building up to a story.
Outline Your Novel in 30 Minutes
Alicia Rasley takes the writer through a furious 30 minutes to create the road map for a novel.
Paperback Writer’s Novel Outline Templates
Paperback Writer provides writers with novel outlines for single novels, a trilogy and series. She also has a blog post about Outlining.
Create a Character
Holly Lisle’s Create a Character Clinic takes you through creating a character that will be motivated and real enough to support any story.
Fantasy World Building
Thank you Patricia C. Wrede! Here you will find the most comprehensive, well organised set of world building questions.
Create A Culture
Holly Lisle’s Create Culture Clinic is her second ebook in her Worldbuilding course, along with Create a Language Clinic. Both are great books and well worth the US$10.
Resources for Researching your Novel
Knowledgeable NaNoWriMo participants from around the world converge on the Character and Plot Realism Q&A forum every year. Here you will find a summary of resources covering many fields to begin researching your novel.
Writing
This is the butt on chair, fingers on keyboard part of the process. This is where the magic happens. There are no websites out there to help you with this bit. You can learn all about character, plot, point of view and tense but when it comes down to writing you work with what you’ve got, then and there, in your head.
Editing
One Pass Manuscript Revision
Once again the wisdom of Holly Lisle prevails as she tells us how to get through the editing process as quickly as possible. The wisdom of Kerryn Angell advises: “Don’t skip part one!” Ignore her at your peril.
The Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr’s, The Elements of Style is the grammatical bible for writers.
Sentence Sense
If The Elements of Style is a bit heavy for you try Sentence Sense, an interactive learning experience in grammar.
Confusing Words
The novice editors best friend. A quick and easy way to check word usage.
Critique
How to Critique
If you’re new to critiquing this article from Forward Motion’s Vision will give you a good overview.
The Useful Critique
Another article from Vision, in workshop form, that gives you questions to answer and areas to cover when doing a critique.
Critters Workshop
Critters is an online/workshop critique groups for fantasy, sci-fi and horror writers. It works on the simple basis of you give critiques, you get critiques.
NoteBored
NoteBored is an online critique group much like Critters but is open to all types of fiction.
Submission
Overcoming the Fear of a Synopsis
How do you attempt to condense your thousands of words into a couple hundred? With the help of The Lady and the Tramp Vicki M. Taylor shows us how.
Miss Snark
Miss Snark is an agent in New York, now retired from blogging her blog is now a great archive of information. She doesn’t mix words or pad her responses to thousands of questions by wannabe writers about agents, publishers and submitting work.
Manuscript Formatting
A nice, step by step introduction to manuscript formatting including pictures of what it should look like.
Proposition Ten
Paperback Writer put together ten things about novel proposals, queries and synopsis.
Predators and Editors
Predators and Editors provides great information to writers who are starting to look for agents. Know how the industry works and you won't get stung.
Publishing
Lulu
Lulu is a free self publishing service that allows print publication and promotion keeping true to the idiom that money flows towards the writer.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons gives writers the ability to licence their work the way that they want to allow them to promote and control the copyright.