Intro
Last
year, a group of of fellow Wattpad authors and I wrote some helpful
articles for a magazine called Heroes Insider Weekly by WPAvengers.
There
is some great information in the magazine for writers. You can check
it out here. I think most of us became to busy to keep posting. But
there is still a fair few chapters to take a squiz at.
I've
decided to post my contribution here for other aspiring authors to
find.
I
spend my writing time thinking about what else I should be doing,
checking links to see if anything has sold, liked or commented and
voted on. And yes. I Google myself.
Some
of the time I surf the web looking for great sites to improve my
writing or just plain old research which has given me an extensive
list of great websites that have helped me become a better writer, or
I hope so.
I'll
be posting them up week by week. If you find the information useful
you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or this blog for updates. I've also created a board for these links on Pinterest for fast links.
Searching
for Ideas
I've
come across a few sites that are good for producing ideas like plot,
characters and setting. There is so many so I'm just going to list my
favourites here and tell you a bit about them.
First,
the plot.
Where
do you start? I start with any idea pulled out of my strange
existence and start writing. But what happens if you can't think of
something to get started on or you become stuck halfway through and
need a little bit more inspiration.
Both
use a formula to create a plot idea. Springhole has more
generators which lead on to character descriptions and their
backgrounds, world building, names, other creature characters, items,
outfits, location, settings and many more explorable categories.
Even
if you have you're own ideas. These sites are still fun to look
through and play with. After a few tries you can see the pattern the
generator uses. If you can't find one suitable to your writing. Why
not try to make your own with their formula.
Another
way gain access to ideas or where to look for them is the Writers
Digest site. There is currently a promotion going for their
newsletter. If you sign up, you receive a free copy of Writers Prompt
Boot Camp. I don't recommend signing up with an email you don't want
to be spammed. Writers Digest send sometimes 3 e-mails a day! But,
some of those newsletters are interesting to read and the site can
help with other writing related help. There are many free and paid
books available for download or if you prefer paperback, them too!
Characters
Generators
can be used with characters as I mentioned above. But I like to write
down a little bit more about my creations, not just hair colour, age
and height.
Character
sheets are good for these. I've filled out a few and here are the
links some good ones out there.
Like
to print out sheets and write down who your character is? I know I
do! I print these out and place them all into books or up on the wall
for later reference. Yes, I find myself saying, crap. What was her
name again? Simple, I should know them! But I don't.
This
site I found is great for building characters. Design your characters
through a huge list of questions and also find links to a massive
amount of information on how to build your characters and make them
realistic to your story line. There is even links to help name them
through baby naming sites and others. I could go on! There is so many
great links within this site.
Setting
and descriptions.
I
love creation software. I'm not going to give you the names of my
favourite software for drawing up things because it cost way too
much. There are great sites and free software out there that will do
the same job.
To
get a visual on things I design my own maps, buildings and worlds.
Here are a few great sites for doing these.
This
site is another random generator and worth a look. Not only for
setting ideas. But plot too. It attracted me to the site while
writing my own science fiction story. This site helped me design a
planet. It can be much more than that. There is even a dungeon and
inn generator for those fantasy stories and also full star systems.
It not high tech, some are just descriptions, but we writers can deal
with that =D
Best
free program I found for drawing maps is AutoRealm
Its
pretty simple to use. If you can use paint, you can use this program.
It had a great range of pens and objects to insert into the drawing.
All
most anything you want in a story can be found within the program and
it draws all kind of maps from bedrooms to countries. The maps can be
basic drawings to the real map drawings with the contour lines and
everything. Hours of fun to be had!
Using
this program, you'll have your own Game of Thrones map in no time!
Prefer
to draw up you one with a pencil? Gimp is another program that
can take your artwork and create a digital image. Its not so user
friendly as paint, and the first time I used it I couldn't even work
out how to draw a line. There are many tutorials online to help out
with anything you might have in mind.
If
you use Photoshop, it's a great free alternative, and once mastered
it can create some spectacular images.
Another
favourite site to use is Google Earth. It provides real maps
that you can print off and draw over if you have the ink and paper.
The downloadable program even allows you to draw and make notes on
the satellite images. So if you have a story in this world during
this time. Look into that one!
That
is for this week. Next time I'm moving on to some awesome sites to
write with!
