HELPFUL LINKS FOR WRITERS
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NOTE: I try to list things here that are all free, but you can spend money at some of these sites. If you're on a budget, use up all the free stuff first.
I've given a few words of description to some of these, but not all.
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REFERENCES
(and reference-like things)
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A truly exhaustive free online style manual
http://stylemanual.natgeo.com/
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http://phrontistery.info/
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https://www.etymonline.com/
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http://www.dailywritingtips.com/
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Some of the best explanations I've found for tricky grammar questions
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl
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A reverse dictionary/thesaurus--type in the definition and it gives you a list of words to fit.
http://www.onelook.com/?w=entersearchhe ... vfp_legacy
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http://www.acronymfinder.com/
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http://www.affixes.org/
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This will show you how to draw family trees, so you can keep track of your characters' extended families. If you're writing a novel, you'll probably need this.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/ ... fund2.html
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https://www.timeanddate.com/
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My thanks to Bill Wolfe for this. He sent it to me as part of a merciless criticism of a scene I wrote about FTL travel.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/cship.html#shuttle
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Because it's good to know your way around the neighborhood.
http://galaxymap.org/
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Comparative sizes of a great many things.
http://htwins.net/scale2/?bordercolor=white
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A NASA app for exploring the Solar system
http://eyes.nasa.gov/index.html
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Song lookup
http://www.musipedia.org/
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Maps of some explored Solar system worlds--I've used the one for Mars, and it's stunning.
https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/maps/Plan ... and-Globes
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Fantasy worldbuilding, taken to the extreme:
http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-wor ... questions/
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Courtesy of none other than NASA, a brief glossary:
https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/SFTerms.html
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WRITING INSTRUCTION
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LOTS of stuff here; focus is on immersion. I recommend signing up for the "Immerse or Die" reports. You get to see just how annoying tiny details can be to picky readers.
http://creativityhacker.ca
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Heavy emphasis on story structure; other good stuff too
https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/
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Various; look over the front page.
http://www.livewritethrive.com/
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Loaded with excellent resources
http://writershelpingwriters.net/writing-tools/
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Write, edit, publish
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/
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Fairly solid basic advice
http://www.caroclarke.com/writing.html
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A delightful short course in F&SF
http://www.writesf.com/
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Please, no Mary Sues ...
http://www.springhole.net/writing/whatisamarysue.htm
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Turkey City Lexicon--some things editors don't like to see--again
http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city ... workshops/
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Orson Scott Card's website; specifically, his writing class:
http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/index.shtml
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EDUCATION
Online courses on all kinds of topics, many free.
The reason I'm including this is to point you to a rich resource for writers' research. I've taken a number of these courses (all free) as research for my own novel. Anthropology, astrobiology, evolution, solar-system formation--you get the idea. Much more depth than you can get from a Wiki search. Plus, it's just fun and gratifying to learn new things.
https://www.class-central.com/
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Academic media you can browse for free.
Research helps you to convey believability in your work.
https://archive.org/
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GET YOUR WORK CRITIQUED
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This is the site I use, and I've gotten the most useful crits here. You critique others' work for credit and have yours critiqued in return.
http://critique.org/
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SOFTWARE
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A bombproof text editor with some remarkable capabilities. If you *must* use the "nuclear option" to clean hidden junk code from text files, this does it, but it also strips formatting (italics, bold, etc.). Written for people who write code for a living.
Why would you need this? If you decide to self-publish an e-book, you can format it yourself for all the major e-reader file types, but your manuscript MUST be scrubbed completely free of word-processor artifacts, and not all text-editors will do this. I have reason to believe that Microsoft WordPad and NotePad both leave artifacts in what should be clean plain-text (.txt) files. This doesn't.
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
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WRITERS RESOURCE LIST
Tools, tips and tricks to improve your writing.
Moderator: Editors
- Lester Curtis
- Long Fiction Editor
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- Joined: January 11, 2010, 12:03:56 AM
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