# The Writer's Toolbox



## Trollheart (Sep 4, 2019)

I don't see anything like this here, so...

Post any resources, handy links, help files, anything you think might help a writer in their research. Here's what I've come across so far.

*Random Name Generator:* for when you just can't decide what to name that character. It does common, uncommon and rare names. Pretty handy.
http://random-name-generator.info/random/?n=10&g=3&st=1

*Random Alien Name Generator*: Same idea, but for those of us who just can't go through breaking up another word with six apostrophes to make that cool alien name!
https://www.ngenerators.com/alien-names/

*Wikipedia*, though I'm sure we're all aware of it...
http://www.wikipedia.org

*Google Maps/Street View: *Very handy when you want to set a story in a real place (or a fictional one) and want to get a handle on how it looks. You can literally walk the streets. Then write about it.
https://www.google.com/maps

*Live Word Count for Open Office/Libre Office:* A godsend for those flash fiction 1000-or-less-word challenges!
https://bitbucket.org/yawaramin/oo.o-live-word-count/wiki/Home

That's all I have for now but I'll post more as I think of/come across them. Feel free to add your own; just make sure all links work. Could end up being a valuable resource (or could sink to the bottom of the fourth page, who knows?)


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## Ralph Rotten (Sep 4, 2019)

*Canstockphoto.com*   Great place to buy professional artwork

*NASA.gov*   Great site for inspiration & science.

*Encyclopedia Britannica*   Reading is essential for writing.

*Forums    *Often when I need to learn some new skillset for a book, I join a forum, eat their brains, and gain their knowledge.

*Google Maps*   I heavily research areas I plan on writing about.

*My personal library*    I am a non-fiction junkie. I write fiction...but I read non-fiction. Facts are stranger than fiction, and people are stranger than facts.


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## Ralph Rotten (Sep 4, 2019)

Oh, I forgot my fav: Google Translator.
You can have Google translate anything. Great for those scenes with Russian spies.


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## Irwin (Sep 4, 2019)

Gotta have a thesaurus.
https://www.thesaurus.com/

This site is useful:
https://writershelpingwriters.net/


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## Ralph Rotten (Sep 4, 2019)

I also have a number of software packages that help me publish.

*PhotoImpact *for editing graphics, building covers. Much cheaper than PSP or Photoshop, but just as functional (and a better web compression tool as well.)

*SmartDraw *is an awesome program that I use to create all sorts of technical images like bunker floorplans, maps, etc. It is expensive (got mine on sale at $200) but it has a massive clipart archive, and you can draw just about anything without any artistic skill whatsoever.

*MePub *This is my favorite eBook builder. I use it in conjunction with *MSFrontPage *to create very clean eBooks. But even all by itself, I have seen MePub digest 6mb WORD files and spit out functioning eBooks.

*MediaPlayer.* Sure, it's not really a writing program...but what's the point of life if you ain't got no jams? Right?




Here is an example of the kind of stuff you can make with SmartDraw:


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## tararubena (Sep 19, 2019)

Ralph Rotten said:


> I also have a number of software packages that help me publish.
> 
> *PhotoImpact *for editing graphics, building covers. Much cheaper than PSP or Photoshop, but just as functional (and a better web compression tool as well.)
> street view
> ...


I agree with you


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## bdcharles (Sep 19, 2019)

For the sorts of fantasy I write, I can always rely on the following to help me through a sticky patch:

https://www.wordnik.com/
https://www.haggardhawks.com/
http://www.inkalicious.com/elizabethan.html
http://www.soybomb.com/tricks/words/


I mean, a few clicks and ... _Feverchurch_. What is it ... where is it? I want to know - I want to go! I want to accompany Lord and Lady Shapping, their manservant Toggins, and their glabrate little dachshund named Wittlebrot and get utterly cationfleeked in the local tavern.


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## Rogue (Oct 17, 2019)

If you're interested in learning about Medieval facts centered around warfare and weapons, then I recommend *Shadiversity  *_(I can't post links yet) _on YouTube. There are a few other channels out there that focus on other, similar topics and you can find them pretty easily once you check out Shad. He also focuses heavily on the differences between what we see in the fantasy genre and real weapons. One of his more recent videos is an interview with Brandon Sanderson where it was revealed Shad will be doing some consulting work for him on future titles. He also does some movie reviews videos if you're into that.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Jan 10, 2020)

The Submission Grinder is a great way to find places to submit fiction and poetry. Like Duotrope, but free. 

Not exactly writing, but I use https://archive.org/ for making poetry videos; it's got free video clips/movies, audio, images, and books, either under public domain or Creative Commons license. I've found some amazing stuff (including the audio from all the Apollo missions!!). The Creative Commons website can be useful, too, but the search function is weird. 

YouTube for sharing audio versions of poetry. 

Twine is a software I've started using for creating web-based choose-your-own-adventures and interactive poetry. There's a teensy bit of coding involved if you want to get fancy with 'if-then' statements or font, but for basic branching storylines you don't need to use any at all.

Writing With Color is occasionally helpful for writing characters outside your ethnicity/culture, but it's Q&A-based so you can't always find what you're looking for. Some of the mods are better than others, and sometimes they get their ideologies mixed up with their writing advice, but it still can be useful. 

Submittable is what many literary magazines use for fielding submissions, and if you have an account with them they also send a monthly newsletter with a list of submission opportunities. 

Pretty obvious one, but I use Google Docs for sharing with my writing group so they can comment directly on the document. I think there's a way to do that with Word, too, but it's a bit more annoying to figure out.


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## KHK (Jan 11, 2020)

Ralph Rotten said:


> Oh, I forgot my fav: Google Translator.
> You can have Google translate anything. *Great for those scenes with Russian spies.*



I would seriously caution against blindly relying on the results.
Unless you're willing to settle for some Russian-sounding text that would at best look really odd to the native speakers, and at worst would end up being a pile of Slavic gibberish 
As you may guess, this is one of my pet peeves (especially in movies and TV shows, but sometimes in books too).

As good as Google Translate has become, it still occasionally produces results that are just hilarious.

An alternative tool that I may recommend (or at least to be used in conjunction with Google Translate) is https://context.reverso.net/translation/
Its major difference from many other machine translators is that it looks up (and shows) words and expressions in their phrasal context, making the accuracy of translation much easier to judge.
Of course, from time to time it also produces results that are completely "out there", but even then they may be easier to spot.

P.S. If you ever need to proofread your Russian spies, feel free to run that by me, that's one of the languages I speak. Can help with Mossad agents too ;-)


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## Jang715 (Mar 3, 2020)

I can't sing the praises of https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ enough, honestly. There's a tab for real names, place names, fantasy names, etc, and there are literal _hundreds_ of them. Add to that, RollforFantasy, the sister site, has so many worldbuilding generators that it's unreal. Seriously, give it a look if you've never seen it.


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