Okay, I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now… What if we had a one stop shop for links that’ll help us with all the problems we encounter when writing— mostly in researching, but other stuff, too? What if we all shared our knowledge of the best web pages or sites for our particular areas of interest to help others and learn some stuff in return?

So here is where we post any weblinks to research-and-writing-related things, eg historical research, character creation and writing advice, dealing with grief, critique sites, economics, basic physics, etc. This should go into much more detail than the links on the main II site. You can add stuff for just about anything because someone somewhere is going to use it. Check out the categories if you’re still not sure what I mean.

Research links and writing software links are especially welcome as they are the main point of this collection, and we’re going to end up with a lot of writing-related stuff very quickly.

Also, if you have a request for a topic or category, please post it, and before submitting, please read the guidelines. PLEASE.

GUIDELINES:

1. You post the links and what you use them for, and I’ll check them out. If they’re not a rehash of everything else, I’ll add them to the main post under whatever category they need to go under.

2. Please be specific in your links when you’re linking to writing advice. The point of this is to organise EVERYTHING under categories, not collect a bunch of more links.

3. Links I won’t accept: No TV Tropes links. No II links at this stage. No news article links unless you can make a VERY good case for them. No Wikipedia links. Be imaginative. No podcasts at this time. No links to pages of links unless they’re all on the same topic and you want me to look at them and link them here.

4. If you’re linking to a ‘post-your-writing or critique’ site, please provide a quick summary of the pros and cons to that site.

5. If you’re linking to a software site, make sure it’s freeware, or shareware that doesn’t expire.

6. Take everything you read on these links with a grain of salt. Make sure to at least do a basic fact-check, both to check that the site is accurate, and to make sure you haven’t misconstrued something. Not trying to cast aspersions on the people who post the links, but especially when you’re reading authors’ sites, just be aware that every writer does things differently.

——————-

CATEGORIES:
Organised alphabetically.

AGENTS:

- I Am Your Editor
(Caro Clarke has been in publishing for ten years. She gives you some tips.)

- Miss Snark, the literary agent
(This blog is now dark, but it was running for two and a half years or something, with multiple posts per day, and it’s a veritable goldmine of information on writing and sending queries, agent-client ettiquette, and sometimes critiques. Plus she’s snarky enough to become an II saint.)

- The Rejecter
(A literary agent’s assistant and published author gives you tips on the business. She posts once or twice per week.)

- The Synopsis—What it is, and what it isn’t

BEGINNERS:

- Don’t Get it Right the First Time
(Just write.)

- Getting Feet Wet
(How to get off your butt and why you should just start writing without worrying about perfectionism.)

- The Art of Initiation
(Starting off.)

CHARACTERS & MOTIVATION:
see also ‘PACING & PLOTS’

- Everyone is Right
(On creating fundamental motivation.)

- Loving Your Characters Too Much
(How to round them out and make sure bad things happen to them. Believably.)

- Problems with Names

- You and Your Characters
(This link differentiates between the different types of characters: rounded, flat, static, dynamic, and more.)

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM:

DIALOGUE:

- Dialogue—the Best Action

EDITING/REWRITING:

- Objectivity
(Why you need to take a step back and a tip on how to do it.)

- Rewriting
(Things to look out for when rewriting.)

ENCOURAGEMENT:

- The Doldrums
(The wind’s gone out of your sails. What now?)

GRAMMAR & STYLE:

- Jack Lynch’s Guide to Grammar and Style
(Do I really need to spell this one out? American, but things shouldn’t be too different for the rest of us.)

- Mr. Rewrite
(Spelling, grammar and usage tips served with a dash of humour.)

- Style
(Right content, wrong style? Look no further.)

- Tutorial: Adverbs and Adjectives
(Tips on when and when not to use adjectives and adverbs. Duh.)

- Writerisms and other Sins—A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing
(C. J. Cherryh tells you the colourless and repetitive words you should cut out or stop using.)

IDEAS:

- Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
(Interviews with well-known authors including Lemony Snicket about… what else? I’m 80% sure this blog is dark.)

MISTAKES:

- Beginners’ Four Faults
(Not just for beginners.)

- Description—What’s It For?
(Over- and under-describing.)

- Evil Editor
(This guy takes submissions and then tells you what went wrong.)

- Explaining Too Much
(Infodumps.)

- The Cr*pometer
(Learn from others’ mistakes in query letters, first 5 pages of writing, synopses, and more. Run by the ‘late’ Miss Snark, it’s also a dark blog, but still very good.)

- The Ten Mistakes
(The ten mistakes writers don’t see—but can easily fix when they do.)

PACING & PLOTS:
see also ‘CHARACTERS & MOTIVATION’

- A, B, and C Characters
(On getting bogged down by giving too much importance to minor characters.)

- Microwave Writing
(Pacing and padding.)

- Pacing Anxiety, or, How to Stop Padding and Plot!
(Haven’t got enough to write about? Maybe all you’ve got is a premise. Here’s some help.)

- Where to start?
(Start where your story starts.)

- What is Conflict?
(Creating tension-filled, layered conflicts.)

PEN NAMES:

- Jamie Hall’s Guide To Choosing a Pen Name
(Exactly what it says on the tin.)

POINT OF VIEW:

- Plot and Narrative
(On creating tension.)

- Point Of View
(How to drive a story from inside a character’s head. Better.)

PRODUCTIVTY:

- Finding Your Process
(Ben gives you some pointers for figuring out how you work best.)

- The Pomadoro Technique
(a method involving a kitchen timer which is scarily similar to how Diamonte finished her 2009 NaNoWriMo 11 days early. Go Dia!)

- To Whip It, and Whip It Good
(Goal-setting, how to keep going, finding a base to work from, and why you should aim high.)

RESEARCH:

ARMOUR & WEAPONS:

- My Armoury
(For research on weapons through the ages. You can guess who posted this one.)

FAIRIES & MYTHS:

- Magic and Mythology
(For all your Celtic Irish fairylore needs.)

SOFTWARE AND WIDGETS:

- Firefox Extension—Highlighter
(Lets you highlight bits on the net. Firefox only.)

- Write or Die
(Most people here know about this already. This is a way to help MAKE you write faster. Free online, but if you want the desktop version you have to pay.)

- yWriter5
(Free to download, is a planning and writing tool for your book. See the link for more detailed details.)

TEENAGERS & WRITING:

- John Scalzi’s Post on Teenage Writing

- Your Teenage Writing is Sh*tty
(The most common problems teenage writers face. Also painful in its accuracy.)

WORLDBUILDING:

- The Cartographers’ Guild
(For those who don’t want to make stupid mapping mistakes.)

WRITING SKILLS:

- Art of the Unspoken
(How to write less and get more across to the reader. This is one I struggle with.)

- Describing Your Characters Through Their Actions
(Describing your characters through actions, dialogue, or both.)

- Details
(Duh.)

- Historical Fiction
(DO YOUR RESEARCH!)

- Quick Comment On Poetry
(Ways that writing and reading poetry can help you become a better prose writer.)

- The Art of Imitation
(‘It seems like when we start writing, the easiest way to begin is to go with something you’re familiar with. I see a lot of writers have trouble departing from this though. So what is good imitation? Is there such a thing? Familiarity has to exist…right?’)

- The Sixteen First Rules of Fiction
(Whilst slamming Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Geoffrey K. Pullum finds and links to the rules most commonly called ‘the first rule of fiction’.)

- The Strenuous Marriage, 1—Careful Observation

- The Strenuous Marriage, 2—Careful Imagination

- The Strenuous Marriage, 3—Strict Toiling with Language

WRITING (MISCELLANEOUS):

- Paper—The Writer’s Friend
(Why paper is good: it helps you catch errors and more…)

- The Three Abouts
(On themes in a story.)

- Woulda-shoulda-coulda
(‘When it comes to the creation of a story, there’s nothing material-wise at least, that you “should” do. There is no, “in order to write a good story, I must have X”...’)

- ‘Write What You Know’
(What this means to writers of speculative fiction—or any fiction, for that matter.)

MISCELLANEOUS:

- The Phrontistery
(Obscure words and glossaries galore!)

Thanks. No, literally, thanks. It means the idea doesn’t suck.

Do you mean writing advice or research into specific stuff?

Both.

For critiquing others articles/stories/etc. I find this Firefox add-on incredibly helpful:

Highlighter

To highlight text, so you can read the whole piece before commenting on the bits you want to.

Aha! I knew you had to have a place to find all those words at!

EDIT: Although not directly writing-related, there’s two Firefox plug-ins (although you can technically use them in pretty much any browser) that I’ve used to find a lot of writing articles (as well as other webpages).

The first is StumbleUpon. Be forewarned; like TVTropes, this plug-in can take over your life. Basically, what it does is randomly show you sites/pages/pictures/articles/games/whatever from across the Internet based on what interests you plug in. If you were to choose “writing” as one of your interests, then, you’d end up getting writing articles, writing sites, etc.

Although you can save and organize pages with StumbleUpon, a much more effective way (at least for me, and this way you can quickly save sites on your computer that you didn’t find through StumbleUpon) is Read It Later. Read It Later is this handy-dandy bookmark-sort-of plug-in through which you can quickly save pages (or links) to a reading list to read later. If you download the beta 2.0 version, it comes with increased tagging abilities, allowing you to quickly organize your saved pages.

These two together are useful for finding and indexing a lot of information, but can be used to help find/organize writing information as well. Just thought I’d throw this out there…

Oh you’re going to make me give away all my secrets!

Dang right, I am.

Thanks, guys. I’m going through my own archives at the moment, but I’ll get to these soon. In the meantime, keep ‘em coming!

This
is a site for creativity and writing I think, I haven’t explored it that much *again sorry I don’t know how to link sites

• And thank you Steph for starting this!

(By the way, Creature, you can edit your post to include links, and thanks very much!)

you link to sites by switching to 'textile' mode in the spot beneath the comments box, and
doing this:

"This":http://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-rituals/ site is about creativity, productivity and success.... etc etc.

no spaces between the ‘:’ and the ‘this is…’ :)

Cool, but can you please check them out a bit more?

Okay, I’m not up to date with Creature_NIL’s links, who said she’s going to look into them tomorrow, but I’ve sorted through everyone else’s.

Thanks, I needed a link and I’d forgotten the name.

And thankyou for being honest :P

EDIT: Updated.

That is a really awesome link, and the sort of thing I’m looking for. Thanks, empress!