Resource Useful Tools and Resources for Writers | Come in and add your own! | Index updated 27 Dec 2017

This is a thread to share with your fellow fanficcers the dictionaries, encyclopaedias, Star Wars-related websites, articles about writing, word count tools, etc. that you find useful in writing.

This thread is about tools and resources. Your nitty-gritty questions about writing and the GFFA belong in the Writer's Desk and your elements of fanon and world-building belong in the Fanon Thread.

Just post here when you run into something interesting, and I'll add it to the list.

Alternatively, if you are looking for a resource on a particular topic, ask your question here and hopefully another user will have an answer.

The original list was compiled from the threads below (yes, there's a lot of useful stuff when you go digging in the depths of the forums!) I didn't keep track of who recommended what, unless it was a resource created by the user him/herself.

Invaluable sites​

Writing resources for 2014​

Writing resources for 2012​

Writing resources for 2011​

Online Writer's Resources​

The fanfic writer's resource thread​

Non-fiction and Research Resources​

A firefox add-on for writers​

A Grammar Nazi's Playground​

Re: Hyperspace travel times​

Write About Dragons​

 

GFFA RESOURCES

General reference websites
Star Wars Databank (official)
The Completely Unofficial SW Encyclopaedia (TFN)
Star Wars Technical Commentaries (TFN)
Timetales Chronology (TFN)
Ultimate timeline (TFN)
Wookieepedia (fan-made)
Star Wars Timeline Gold (fan-made)
Flags of the Galaxy (fan-made)
Characters' ages at the time of each SW film (fan-made)

Technical issues
SW Combine’s Nav Computer – to calculate hyperspace travel times (fan-made)
Table of hyperspace travel times (fan-made)
Star Wars Atlas (fan-made)
SW date converter
New Canon map of the Galaxy
Legends map of the Galaxy and list of planet and sectors (official)
Interactive map of the Galaxy (fan-made)

Star Wars language(s)
The Complete Wermo’s Guide to Huttese and other Star Wars languages (fan-made)
Star Wars Swear Words (fan-made)
"Don't you call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease!" - Namecalling in the GFFA (2006 thread in resource)
Swear Words in Star Wars (2002-2006 thread in resource)
The Coruscant Translator (fan-made, translates to and from 13 GFFA languages)

Writing the GFFA
The Parthenon I (backup on the Wayback Machine) and The Parthenon II (backup on the Wayback Machine) -- two archived threads (2005-2010) to discuss writing the Star Wars universe.

 

WRITING RESOURCES

General issues

The Elements of Style
How to Write Almost Readable fan fiction
Critters Workshop
NaNoWriMo Preparation Tools -- a list of 100+ writing tools for just anything you can think about.
Writers' Forum (available as a print magazine in the UK)
Writing Magazine (available as a print magazine in the UK)
How to read a book in a week
Brain Pickings -- "An inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness, spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more."
The Turkey City Lexicon -- a list of shorthand terms for criticism of writing
Fantasy name generator -- can generate names for characters, places, descriptors, etc etc.
Write Invisible – Type up to 500 words without seeing what you typed to overcome the obsessive editor in you.

Characters

Sources for names: Behind The Name -- Baby Name Wizard -- The Fantasy Name Generator -- Star Wars Random Name Generator -- 20,000 Names -- Fantasy name generator
Family Echo - an easy way to build a family tree.
Tips for writing characters of colour: Describing skin tone part 1 -- Describing skin tone part 2 -- Tropes & stereotypes

Titles

Random Title Generator (can also be used for prompts)
Title Generator
Title Capitalization

Plots

The Seventh Sanctum
Plot Outline in 8 Steps
yWriter – a free software which lets you organise scenes, chapters, characters, etc.
Plot Complications worksheet


World-building

The Atomic Rocket -- mainly intended for science fiction authors who wanted a little scientific accuracy so they can write SF "the way God and Heinlein intended"
RPG creatures
Speculative evolution -- A wiki collecting published speculations about future animals and such.
Empire generator -- specific to a particular game, but can be adapted for any empire.
City Generator -- from Warhammer community
Gravitational Zoology: How Animals Use and Cope with Gravity

Dictionaries

Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com
YourDictionary
Power Thesaurus

Vocabulary, word lists

Writing Vocabulary Builder-upper (2006-2007 thread in Fanfic Resource)
A Substitute for Brandy - Breaking the colour cliché (2003-2006 thread in resource, includes discussion and external links)
Glossary of architectural terms
Animal collective nouns
Aviator slang

Grammar & syntax

Common Errors in English
Grammar/Spelling test
The JCF Grammar Hotline (2001-2007 thread in Fanfic Resource)
Grammarly

Formatting tools

calibre - free e-book management software that allows you to convert your fics into e-books

Word count tools

Word Counter & Text Analyzer -- a tool that will not only give you a word count for your text, but also track repetitions of words, sentence structure, etc.
WordCounter.Net
The Word Count Tool offers an add-on for Firefox users.
Iverna’s word count trackers (downloadable monthly or yearly spreadsheets)
Iverna’s word count meter

Plagiarism & Legal issues pertaining to fan fiction

Copyright 101: A Brief Introduction To Copyright For Fan Fiction Authors
Unplag -- a useful tool to detect instances of plagiarism

Writing advice from professional authors

Stop Reading and Start Writing
On Thud and Blunder
Brandon Sanderson Lectures on Creative Writing

Miscellaneous

Bartlett’s book of quotations
Poetry.Com
Conversion Tables
Fan Audio Made Easy
Airtable -- a general organisation spreadsheet tool that can be used for organising your own fics or fics you're reading
How to Invest in Yourself -- self-motivation tips by Jon Westenberg, including issues pertaining to writing
Noisli -- a website to create the background noise that helps you focus

 

The Wermo guide still exists!!! I thought it had long gone. Used to use that, years ago.

 

The page on almost readable fan fiction is completely unreadable. I enlarged it to 175%, but the painful colour combination remained. Great job, whoever made it.

 

MY EYES!

 

I don't know how you would put it in the list since it's a bunch of things, but over on the NaNo forums someone posted a link to a huge writer's resource page that has over 100 links to helpful things for writers. (Sections on outlining, plot, character and world building, etc. Some of the links there are already on this list.)

It's called NaNoWriMo Prep Tools, but the vast majority of them are writing based and really have nothing to do with NaNo specifically.

 

About ten years ago we had a pretty awesome thread in FanFic called The Parthenon that was specifically for deep discussion on writing in the Star Wars universe (sort of like what goes on in the Lit forum, but for writers instead of readers). Most of it's probably unreadable due to truncation, but there might still be some interesting stuff in there:

The Parthenon
The Parthenon II

 

You clearly meant "lovers and enthusiasts" instead of "haters and people who are entitled".

 

I tracked down the (partial) backup of the two Parthenon threads on the Wayback Machine and included them in the index too.

Oh, and I need to meet the hosts of the second thread. People who chose Pericles_and_Phidias as a sock name are definitely worth meeting

 

Awesome! Now I can take my own advice and reread the entire threads.

You'd like them. TKeira_Lea was very involved in Fanfic's day-to-day for years and eventually became one of our success stories here by getting published and moving on up in the world. Art_Of_War was a chip off the ol' Cormac McCarthy block (my irritation at his lack of capitalization and punctuation was only matched by my envy of his descriptive skills ) and a pure pro when it came to desert-dry sarcasm.

Maybe we'll see them again after TFA hits!

 

Been meaning to post this for a few days, but

Family Echo is a super fast, easy, simple way to make a family tree, either for yourself, or for your readers.

 

I added a couple of links about SW swear words, hyperspace travel times and creative writing lectures by Brandon Sanderson.

 

This is something for people like me, who can't wrap their mind around English capitalization rules for titles: http://titlecapitalization.com/#

 

A link to a great little piece of free software that jcgoble3 mentioned in the social thread: calibre. It's an e-book management thingy and allows you to convert your fics into e-books with minimum effort.

 

There used to be a whole thread in Resource about colours (here). It includes a list of synonyms, a discussion and two very useful external links. I listed it under 'Grammar, syntax and vocabulary' above. Findswoman you may find an equivalent of nut brown somewhere in there

 

Love the link with the colours. May permalink to it. Visiting for third time in one piece alone.

 

This glossary of architectural terms was really helpful for me this evening.

 

From the Department of Things That Are Useless Until You Need Them: a list of animal collective nouns.

 

Found this a while ago and it looks like it might be a great tool to combat that nagging feeling -- you know, the one that always says "I think I use certain words or phrases too much but can't pinpoint which ones." It basically goes through any text that you paste into it and analyzes for frequent words and phrases. Seems pretty useful!

http://sporkforge.com/text/word_count.php

 

I've noticed that wordcounter.net also adds up how many times I have used the more "popular" words in my text.

Admiral Volshe , thank you , thank you, thank you, for the architectural terms thing. I really missed that vocabulary subset when I was doing my Lara Croft story!

 

I don't think this is already on this list, it's a free program calledGrammarly that claims it's the most accurate grammar checker. There is a paid version that does more, that looks really cool, I'm just not up for paying for it at the moment.

I've only used it a very small amount, so I don't know how great it is, but so far it's at least been helpful in spotting silly mistakes that other processers haven't caught. I found it on a university website as a useful tool for writing papers, but I thought it could be helpful for writing fiction too.

 

There are two writing magazines here in the UK. I subscribe to both and have found them useful. They also run monthly writing competitions - some subscriber-only, some for everyone. Writers Forum is one and Writing Magazine is the other. I know WH Smiths (bookstore/newstand) sells copies of both magazines.

 

This is essentially an article about long-term goals, but the author explains how he turned time-wasting into writing his novel and his organisation of long-term goals and proposed steps on how to improve oneself can be super-useful to us writers, too.
https://medium.com/life-learning/how-to-invest-in-yourself-417fab1bc665#.fsge16np1

Airtable is a spreadsheet tool which can be useful in tracking own fic, as well as others' (e.g. when running contents or bookmarking stuff to read and review later) and multiple people can edit the same spreadsheet.
https://airtable.com/