I’ve been collecting writing resources for years, first as an English teacher, then as an author, publisher, and chronic collector of useful links. This page gathers some of my favorite tools for writing, researching, editing, publishing, and building believable fictional worlds.
Open the sections that interest you, ignore the ones that don’t, and come back whenever you need another rabbit hole.
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King
A Few Things I’ve Learned About Writing
- Read widely. Read inside your genre and outside it. Pay attention to what works, what doesn’t, and what makes you forget you’re studying craft.
- Protect time for writing. Ten focused minutes count.
- Be consistent when you can. When life knocks you off course, return instead of turning the missed days into evidence against yourself.
- Keep track of your ideas. Characters, symbols, scenes, research, snippets of dialogue, and strange things overheard in grocery stores all have a way of disappearing.
- Learn to revise. Writing gives you something to work with. Revision is where much of the real craft happens.
- Use professional editors when you are preparing to publish. Developmental editing, copyediting, and proofreading serve different purposes.
- Build community rather than simply promoting yourself. Writers need other writers.
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L’Amour
Organize Your Story
Novels get complicated quickly. Characters multiply, timelines shift, locations change, subplots wander off on their own, and tiny details you were certain you would remember somehow disappear.
Whether you use a notebook, a digital document, a spreadsheet, or a full book bible, keeping your story information in one place can save enormous amounts of time during drafting and revision.
I like to track things such as character details, relationships, settings, timelines, symbols, research, plot threads, scene ideas, and continuity notes. The system matters less than having somewhere reliable to put the information.
I created Prompt Me Novel from the organizational tools I used for my own fiction projects. It includes guided pages for characters, plot, conflict, setting, dialogue, emotions, revision, and other details that tend to multiply as a novel grows.
Explore Prompt Me Novel →
Writing Craft
There is no single correct way to write a book, which is probably both reassuring and mildly inconvenient. These resources cover story development, revision, dialogue, grammar, description, and some of the practical questions that tend to appear somewhere between I have an idea! and Why did I give this character three different eye colors?
Story Development & Writing Advice
21 Pieces of Writing Advice from Stephen King Oldie, still useful
Read a lot. Write a lot. Stop trying to impress everyone. Stephen King’s advice from On Writing has been circulating for years because much of it remains wonderfully practical. A good place to visit when you need both a craft reminder and a small kick toward the keyboard.
Six Reasons to Create a Book Bible for Your Novel
Keep characters, timelines, settings, plot threads, worldbuilding, and all those tiny details in one place. Your future self will thank you when you cannot remember whether Aunt Mabel lives in Boston or Baltimore, or whether you quietly killed her six chapters ago.
Word Count 101: Novel? Novella? Novelette? Oldie, still useful
A quick guide to the language of book length, from flash fiction through novels and epics, plus examples from familiar books. Useful for getting a general sense of scale without turning your first draft into a daily word-count hostage situation.
Publishing expectations change over time and vary by genre, so use the ranges as a starting point rather than an unbreakable law.
Writing Abbreviations & Publishing Terms Oldie, still useful
ARC? WIP? POV? MS? The publishing world has enough abbreviations to make alphabet soup nervous. This reference helps decode common writing and publishing shorthand.
How to Collaborate on Writing Without Killing Each Other Oldie, still useful
Josh Bernoff tackles the less glamorous side of coauthoring: who writes what, who gets final say, how files are handled, and how two creative humans can share a project without staging a duel over Chapter Seven.
Busting Writer’s Block
Guest author Brooke E. Wayne shares ways to get moving again when the words have apparently packed a suitcase and left town. Try changing locations, reading, speaking the story aloud, handwriting, researching, or simply writing something different for a while.
The article also includes the author’s personal experience with sound and frequency practices. Treat those portions as personal experience rather than settled science.
Insecure Writer’s Support Group
Because apparently writers sometimes doubt themselves. Who knew? IWSG is an active community built around encouragement, connection, shared experience, and the comforting discovery that almost every writer has stared at a manuscript and wondered what on earth they are doing.
Editing & Revision
Notes from an Editor: 5 Do’s, 5 Don’ts & Resources
Editor Beth Braithwaite offers practical reminders for polishing a manuscript before it reaches an editor. Consider it a friendly look at some of the things editors wish writers would catch before clicking send.
Why Are Book Editors So Expensive? Oldie, still useful
Belinda Pollard explains what actually goes into professional book editing and why your editor is probably not financing a yacht with your manuscript. Helpful reading before sticker shock sends you quietly under the desk.
Word Frequency Counter
Paste in your text and discover the words you apparently adore more than your own family. Excellent for catching repeated words that your eyes have learned to glide right past during revision.
Phrase Frequency Counter
Sometimes the problem is not one repeated word. It is that oddly specific phrase you have somehow used nineteen times. This tool helps uncover those repeated combinations before your readers begin counting them for sport.
Adverb Detector Old tool, still handy
This simple tool highlights likely adverbs so you can take a closer look. It is not the Adverb Police. Sometimes an adverb is exactly the right word. The point is to notice the choice and decide whether it is earning its keep.
8 Tips to Improve Dialogue Oldie, still useful
Move the story forward, let characters sound like themselves, use silence, read conversations aloud, and please stop making characters say each other’s names every other sentence. Unless they are hosting a game show.
The Art of Writing Witty Dialogue: 10 Tips
Clever dialogue works best when the wit belongs to the character rather than the author leaning into the scene and shouting, “Look how clever I am!” Explore timing, voice, subtext, conflict, rhythm, and character-specific humor.
Grammar, Style & Word Choice
Capitalization Rules & Examples
Is it President, president, Mom, mom, West, west, or Why Does English Do This to Us? The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation offers a useful reference for capitalization questions, including titles, regions, quotations, and proper nouns.
Eight or 8? Rules for Using Numerals in Text Oldie, still useful
Should your character be twenty-three or 23? This quick reference walks through common number-writing questions and examples.
Style guides differ, so always follow the conventions required by your publisher, publication, or chosen style guide.
Words to Describe Voice Oldie, still useful
Breathy, clipped, gravelly, lilting, booming, brittle, hushed. When everyone’s voice is simply “soft” or “angry,” this list can help you find language for tone, pitch, rhythm, volume, and vocal quality.
Words for Tastes & Aromas Oldie, still useful
Sight gets all the attention. Give taste and smell a turn. This sensory word list is useful when your coffee cannot possibly smell “good” for the fourth scene in a row.
188 Words for Sounds Oldie, still useful
Clatter, thud, hiss, rustle, scrape, crackle, clang. Give the fictional world something to do besides sit there looking picturesque.
Other Words for Look Oldie, still useful
Characters spend an astonishing amount of fictional time looking at things. Let them glance, peer, scrutinize, scan, study, squint, or glare occasionally.
Words for Light & Dark Oldie, still useful
Helpful when every room has become “dark,” every sunrise is “bright,” and your descriptive vocabulary has apparently gone home for the evening.
Other Words for Said & Walk Oldie, still useful
No, you do not need to murder the word said. And no, every character does not need to “stride purposefully” across the room. This is a reference list for moments when a more precise word genuinely helps.
Other Words for Asked, Laughed, Replied, Sat & Was Oldie, still useful
Another grab-and-go vocabulary list for revision. Use it for inspiration, not as a challenge to replace every invisible dialogue tag with something wearing a feathered hat.
Other Words for Whisper & Went Oldie, still useful
Born from one of my own revision passes after I realized I had developed a serious relationship with the word whisper. If one word starts appearing everywhere, sometimes a list is exactly what you need.
Research & Worldbuilding
Research is one of those wonderful writing activities that can save your story, strengthen your world, and somehow also lead to forty-seven open browser tabs about eighteenth-century soup spoons. The goal is not to put everything you learn on the page. It is to know enough that the reader trusts the world you built.
Historical & Everyday-Life Research
Lost Kitchen Scrolls
This may be one of my favorite research rabbit holes. Lost Kitchen Scrolls is a searchable archive of historical recipes drawn from old cookbooks and manuscripts. Search by era, region, ingredient, course, cooking method, and more.
Do not let the Renaissance manuscripts intimidate you. Many entries include historical context and modern-kitchen adaptations, making this a wonderful resource for figuring out what your characters might realistically cook, eat, preserve, serve, or complain about at dinner.
The Inflation Calculator Old-school site, still useful
Was five dollars a lot of money in 1910? What would a hundred dollars from 1950 feel like today? This calculator lets you compare U.S. dollar values across historical years, which is extremely helpful when writing period fiction.
Use it as a general historical guide. The lived cost of specific goods, housing, wages, and regional differences may tell a more complicated story than inflation alone.
Realistic Travel Times Oldie, still useful
Geography matters. Your characters cannot leave San Francisco after lunch, drive to Los Angeles, have dinner, and act as if nothing unusual happened. This article is a reminder to research how long travel actually takes by car, foot, bicycle, sea, or whatever questionable transportation decision your characters have made.
Robin Woods Writing Resource Library
My larger writing-resource index includes word lists, character tools, descriptive vocabulary, plotting resources, and other references I have collected or created over the years. It is essentially the organized version of the pile of notes beside my desk.
Places, Travel & Logistics
Urban Barn Space Planner
If you have ever moved a character across a room and suddenly realized the door, sofa, fireplace, and dead body cannot possibly all be where you said they were, a floor planner can help.
Map the room before writing the scene. It keeps blocking and description consistent, and you may even end up with a fun visual extra to share with readers later.
Realistic Travel Times Oldie, still useful
Yes, I am including this one twice because it belongs here too. Travel time affects plot, pacing, alibis, deadlines, exhaustion, daylight, meals, and whether your character should have arrived twelve hours ago.
Even in fantasy, distance matters. Horses are not furry sports cars.
Google Maps
Sometimes the obvious tool is the best one. Check driving time, walking distance, terrain, street layouts, nearby landmarks, and the relationship between locations before committing your fictional geography to the page.
Paramount Business Jets
Writing a character with access to a private jet? This site can help you research aircraft, airports, charter routes, flight logistics, and realistic private-aviation details.
Aviation information changes, so double-check current flight times, airport restrictions, and aircraft specifications when those details matter to the plot.
Weapons, Crime & Technical Details
The Writer’s Guide to Weapons Older resource, still excellent
Benjamin Sobieck created this resource specifically for writers who need firearms and knife details without becoming weapons experts themselves. It covers terminology, common myths, how different weapons actually work, character-appropriate choices, and mistakes fiction makes again and again.
If a gun or knife matters to your plot, this is the sort of research that keeps a knowledgeable reader from being launched completely out of the story.
10 Golden Tips for Writing Weapons in Fiction Oldie, still useful
A shorter introduction from the same author. One of the best lessons: unless the technical detail matters, you probably do not need to write a weapons manual inside your novel. Get the important part right and keep the story moving.
U.S. Copyright Office
Not crime research exactly, but definitely one of those technical details writers should get from the source. For questions about U.S. copyright, registration, and current rules, go directly to the Copyright Office rather than trusting a random post someone wrote in 2011.
Characters, Names & People
Plot matters, but readers usually remember the people who lived through it. These resources can help you name characters, keep their details straight, understand what drives them, and create reactions that feel human rather than conveniently arranged for Chapter Twelve.
Naming Characters
What’s in a Name? Character Naming Resources Oldie, still useful
Sometimes a character arrives with a name attached. Other times you spend forty-five minutes scrolling through baby-name sites instead of writing. This older resource gathers some of my favorite places to research names, meanings, origins, surnames, and naming inspiration.
Name Generator Central
Need an elf, detective, pirate ship, fictional kingdom, tavern, alien, superhero, noble family, or suspiciously specific side character? Name Generator Central has thousands of free generators across fantasy, sci-fi, mythology, professions, places, creatures, organizations, and plenty of wonderfully strange categories.
This is the kind of site where you go looking for one surname and emerge twenty minutes later naming a fictional bakery on Mars.
Behind the Name: First Names
One of my longtime favorites. Search names by language, culture, gender, spelling, meaning, and other criteria. Particularly useful when you want the name to do more than simply sound pretty.
Behind the Name: Surnames
The companion surname database lets you search family names by language, usage, spelling pattern, and meaning. Helpful when your beautifully named protagonist still has the last name “Smith” because you gave up at 1:00 a.m.
Behind the Name: Random Name Generator
Choose language, gender, rarity, surnames, and other settings, then let the generator do the work. Excellent when you need a believable name but do not need another three-hour research project.
Character Development & Consistency
Prompt Me Novel: Character Development Tools
My Prompt Me Novel workbook includes tools for developing protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters, including names, archetypes, appearance, emotions, relationships, motivation, body language, dialogue, and comparison charts.
I created it because apparently remembering the eye color, childhood wound, sibling order, and favorite drink of thirty-seven fictional people entirely in my head was not a reliable organizational system.
Six Reasons to Create a Book Bible for Your Novel
A book bible gives you one place to track character details, relationships, setting, timelines, symbols, plot threads, and other information that becomes increasingly impossible to remember once the manuscript gets large.
Particularly useful for series, complicated family trees, fantasy worlds, and anyone who has ever accidentally changed a character’s birthday halfway through a novel.
Words to Describe Voice Oldie, still useful
Voice is part of characterization. This word list gives you options for describing pitch, tone, rhythm, volume, texture, and vocal quality so your cast does not all sound suspiciously identical.
The Art of Writing Witty Dialogue: 10 Tips
Humor, timing, subtext, rhythm, and word choice should grow from the person speaking. Witty dialogue becomes much more believable when every character is funny in a different way—or when only one of them thinks they are funny.
8 Tips to Improve Dialogue Oldie, still useful
Dialogue should reveal character as well as move the story. This older post covers individual voice, natural speech, silence, subtext, reading dialogue aloud, and avoiding conversations that sound as if everyone swallowed the same thesaurus.
Motivation, Conflict & Behavior
The Fight Response: How to Write It in Your Characters
Fight does not always mean throwing a punch. A character may become controlling, argumentative, sharp, defensive, louder, or intensely focused on making something stop. This article explores how protective responses can reveal fear, motivation, conflict, and what matters to a character.
The Flight Response: When Your Character Runs Without Going Anywhere
Flight can look like leaving, but it can also look like overworking, overpreparing, avoiding a conversation, changing the subject, staying relentlessly busy, or cleaning the entire kitchen instead of making one uncomfortable phone call.
The Freeze Response: Why Your Character Can’t “Just Do Something”
Silence, indecision, blankness, stillness, difficulty speaking, and feeling unable to act can reveal just as much as dramatic action. Freeze can be a powerful way to show what happens when a character’s system perceives that action may not be safe or possible.
The Fawn Response: When Keeping the Peace Feels Safer
A character who agrees too quickly, monitors everyone else’s mood, apologizes constantly, avoids disagreement, or loses track of their own wants may be trying to preserve connection or reduce conflict.
As the article notes, “fawn” is commonly used as a descriptive term for appeasement behavior rather than a universally recognized biological category like fight, flight, and freeze.
Writing Manipulative Characters
Want a character who deflects, minimizes, guilt-trips, changes the subject, plays the victim, moves the goalposts, or quietly makes everyone else feel as if they have entered the wrong conversation?
This article explores manipulative behaviors and dialogue patterns that can create believable conflict, deception, and unhealthy relationship dynamics.
Use behaviors as behaviors rather than assuming they automatically reveal a diagnosis or another character’s motives.
Character Profile Articles
My larger writing-resource library also includes character-focused articles on narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial, and manipulative behavior. These can offer ideas for conflict, motivation, dialogue, and relationship dynamics when creating complicated fictional people.
Several of these articles use clinical diagnostic terminology. They are best used as starting points for character research rather than as checklists for diagnosing real people. For a character with a specific mental-health condition, use current clinical sources and sensitivity readers where appropriate.
Publishing & Self-Publishing
Finishing the manuscript is a major accomplishment. Then publishing arrives with copyrights, trim sizes, metadata, cover dimensions, ISBNs, file formats, descriptions, author pages, and approximately nine hundred tiny decisions you did not realize were part of writing a book. These resources can help make the process a little less mysterious.
Before You Publish
New Author Checklist: 10 Things to Do Oldie, still useful
You finished the manuscript. Congratulations. Now what? This checklist covers some of the practical author tasks that can get buried under the excitement of publishing: professional presentation, author pages, branding, copyright, social profiles, and the other pieces that help make your book look like it belongs in the world.
Some platform details have changed since this article was published, so use it as a planning checklist and follow the current links in this section for platform-specific instructions.
U.S. Copyright Office
For U.S. copyright registration, skip the third-hand summaries and go straight to the source. The Copyright Office provides current information about registration, fees, forms, records, and copyright basics.
Copyright law is one of those areas where a ten-year-old blog post can become a very expensive source of confidence.
Creative Commons Licenses
Creative Commons licenses let creators specify how others may share, adapt, or reuse their work. This is particularly useful when you are looking for images, educational material, music, or other content that may be legally reusable under specific conditions.
Always check the exact license. “Creative Commons” does not automatically mean “use it however you want.” Some licenses require attribution, prohibit commercial use, restrict adaptations, or require modified work to use the same license.
KDP Tools & Resources
Amazon’s current KDP resource hub gathers manuscript templates, Kindle Create, formatting guides, print calculators, preview tools, and other publishing resources in one place.
Bookmark this instead of relying on a screenshot from 2017 showing a button Amazon moved four redesigns ago.
Formatting & Book Production
KDP Paperback & Hardcover Manuscript Templates
If you are formatting your own print book, start with the correct trim size and margins instead of trying to wrestle a finished document into shape afterward. KDP offers downloadable Word templates in multiple trim sizes, including blank versions and versions with sample front matter and chapter formatting.
Future-you would strongly prefer that you make this decision before page 347.
KDP Print Cover Calculator & Templates
Enter your trim size, page count, binding, paper, and interior type, and KDP calculates the exact dimensions for the front, back, spine, bleed, and margins of your cover.
You can also download a PDF or PNG template to use as a guide in your design software. This is much better than guessing at the spine width and hoping optimism is a unit of measurement.
KDP Cover Creator
If you do not want to build a cover file from scratch, KDP also offers a free Cover Creator for ebooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers. You can choose a layout, customize fonts and text, and upload your own images.
If you need more design control or want to use the cover across multiple retailers and formats, creating your own print-ready cover file may still be the better option.
My Fave 7 Free Design Resources Oldie, still useful
This older post collects some of the free tools I have used for covers, graphics, fonts, templates, and author materials. Some individual tools have evolved considerably since I wrote it, but the underlying goal remains the same: you do not have to pay someone every time you need a simple graphic.
Font Squirrel
One of my favorite places to begin when I need a font for commercial work. Font Squirrel focuses on fonts licensed for commercial use and makes license information easier to find than many free-font sites.
Still read the license for the specific font you download. Font licensing can vary, particularly for embedding, redistribution, apps, ebooks, and modified font files.
DaFont
DaFont is terrific when you need something distinctive, decorative, odd, dramatic, spooky, whimsical, or otherwise difficult to describe to a normal font menu.
Important: fonts on DaFont do not all have the same license. Some are free for personal use only. Check the individual license before using a font on a book cover, website, product, or other commercial project.
Book Marketing & Distribution
Amazon Author Central
If you publish on Amazon, claim and maintain your Author Page. Author Central lets you connect your books, update your bio, check reviews and rankings, and manage the information readers see about you.
Amazon does not know that the headshot from fifteen years ago is no longer the photo you would choose. Help it out.
My Old Author Central Guide Archive resource
I originally wrote this because finding all the international Author Central pages was unnecessarily annoying. The article is now a bit of an archaeological artifact because Amazon has changed its system over the years, but the basic lesson is still important: manage your author identity instead of assuming the retailer will do it for you.
Use Amazon’s current Author Central link above for setup and current features.
Kindlepreneur Author Tools
Kindlepreneur has assembled a very useful set of free tools for independent authors, including royalty calculators, sales-rank estimates, book description formatting, QR codes, and other publishing and marketing helpers.
Book Description Generator
Format your book description without manually wrestling with HTML. Enter your copy, style it, and generate code suitable for retailer descriptions such as Amazon and other book platforms.
Because writing the book was enough. You do not need to discover that one stray tag has turned the entire description bold at midnight on launch day.
QR Code Generator for Authors
Create a QR code that points readers to a book page, newsletter signup, bonus material, event information, or any other link you want to make easy to reach from print.
Kindlepreneur’s author-focused tool also lets you brand the code with a logo or book cover, which is particularly useful when you have several QR codes and would prefer not to play “guess where this one goes.”
100+ Free & Paid Book Promotion Services
Kindlepreneur maintains a current list of book-promotion services, with notes about pricing, genre restrictions, requirements, and whether a service is free or paid.
Promotion sites change constantly, so this is far more useful than a static list copied into a blog post and abandoned until half the links become digital tumbleweeds.
3 Reasons I Love Pinterest Oldie, still useful
I originally wrote this years ago, but the part I still love most about Pinterest is not simply promotion. It is a visual research and organization tool for authors: settings, clothing, architecture, historical eras, characters, inspiration, and all the strange little details that build a fictional world.
Writing Sites & Experts Worth Following
There is no shortage of writing advice online. The harder part is finding people who consistently offer thoughtful, practical information without making you feel as if you need to rebuild your entire writing life before lunch. These are some of the resources I return to for craft, publishing, marketing, grammar, and the business of being an author.
Publishing & Author Business
Jane Friedman
Jane Friedman is one of the best places to start when you want to understand the publishing industry rather than simply hear opinions about it. She writes about traditional publishing, self-publishing, author careers, contracts, platform, AI, marketing, and the changing business of books.
Her site is especially useful when publishing feels like a language everyone else learned while you were busy writing Chapter Twenty-Seven.
Kindlepreneur
Dave Chesson and the Kindlepreneur team focus on the practical side of independent publishing: book marketing, Amazon, keywords, categories, formatting, email lists, advertising, tools, and long-term visibility.
I especially like that the site includes both detailed guides and useful free tools, so you can learn what you are doing and then immediately go do it.
Kindlepreneur Book Marketing Library
If marketing is the part of authorship that makes you want to quietly close the laptop, start here. The site covers launch planning, ads, newsletters, promotions, pricing, metadata, author tools, and the broader question of how readers actually discover books.
Craft, Structure & Storytelling
Helping Writers Become Authors — K.M. Weiland
K.M. Weiland writes extensively about story structure, character arcs, scene structure, point of view, outlining, archetypes, common writing mistakes, and the deeper psychology behind storytelling.
This is one of those sites where you go looking for an answer to one question and emerge with six tabs open, a diagram, and an urgent desire to rethink your midpoint.
K.M. Weiland: How to Become a Writer
Beyond structure and craft, this section looks at the actual practice of becoming a stronger writer: identifying weaknesses, building sustainable habits, developing discipline without burnout, and understanding the emotional side of a creative life.
Jami Gold
Jami Gold’s writing site has long been known for practical craft posts, worksheets, beat sheets, character development tools, romance-writing resources, and thoughtful breakdowns of story structure.
It is especially useful if you like resources you can actually print, fill out, test, and use while building a story instead of simply nodding thoughtfully at an article and forgetting everything by dinner.
Grammar, Style & Writing Life
Grammar Girl
Grammar Girl is a friendly place to check punctuation, word usage, confusing expressions, style questions, grammar myths, and all the tiny language decisions that become strangely important the moment you start editing a paragraph for the seventh time.
Particularly useful when you know something looks wrong but cannot remember the rule well enough to explain why.
Jane Friedman’s Writing & Creative-Life Resources
Jane’s work is not limited to publishing mechanics. She also writes about sustaining a creative career, making business decisions as a writer, using technology thoughtfully, and balancing art with the realities of earning a living from creative work.
Helping Writers Become Authors: The Writing Life
K.M. Weiland also writes about writing routines, burnout, creative seasons, self-awareness, and the long-term process of becoming a better storyteller. Those pieces are a good reminder that productivity and creativity are not always the same thing.
Free Resources from Me
I’ve been creating writing resources for years, first for my students and later for other writers. Some became blog posts. Some turned into printable lists. Some eventually became entire books. If you have made it this far down the page, you deserve the good stuff.
Free Writer’s Tool Kit
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You’ll also receive a free copy of The Strigoi, because apparently I am incapable of giving away only one thing.
Free printables, synonym lists, writing bingo, writing resources, and more. Plus a free book when you join the mailing list.
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Prompt Me Creative Writing Workbooks
Explore the Prompt Me Creative Writing Series
The Prompt Me workbooks grew out of the same kinds of writing exercises, reference lists, prompts, and classroom tools I used as a teacher and writer. They are designed to help you get past the blank page and actually put words on it.
Depending on the book, you’ll find photo prompts, story starters, dialogue, creative exercises, character-development tools, word lists, genre-specific prompts, novel-planning resources, and space to write.
You do not have to start at page one. You do not have to answer every prompt. And no one will know if you turn the romantic photograph into a murder scene.
Prompt Me: Creative Writing Journal & Workbook
The original all-purpose workbook combines photographs, first-person and third-person story starters, dialogue prompts, creative combinations, poetry, journaling, and practical writing-reference pages.
It is a good starting point if you want a little bit of everything and would prefer inspiration to arrive before you have reorganized your desk for the third time.
Prompt Me Novel
If you already have an idea and now need to turn it into an entire book, Prompt Me Novel helps organize plot, conflict, characters, setting, point of view, emotions, dialogue, and revision.
In other words: a place to keep all the information your brain confidently promises it will remember and absolutely will not.
The series page compares the books by genre, project, age, and writing goal so you can find the one that makes sense for what you’re working on.
Explore the Series
Popular Writing Resources & Articles
Creative Writing Resource Library
This is the big index. It brings together years of writing articles, printable-style reference lists, craft posts, guest articles, character resources, marketing information, and wonderfully specific things such as words for sounds, light, darkness, tastes, aromas, voices, and movement.
If you came to this page looking for one thing and would now like to lose another hour researching something else, this is the place.
Six Reasons to Create a Book Bible for Your Novel
Characters, timelines, places, relationships, symbols, research, and all those tiny continuity details add up quickly. A book bible keeps them from becoming an elaborate memory test.
The Art of Writing Witty Dialogue: 10 Tips
Strong dialogue is not just about clever lines. This article looks at character voice, rhythm, subtext, timing, conflict, humor, and how to make witty exchanges sound as though the characters thought of them instead of the author.
Words for Tastes & Aromas Oldie, still useful
One of my long-running sensory-writing resources. Perfect for those moments when everything in your manuscript inexplicably smells “good.”
188 Words for Sounds Oldie, still useful
Clatter, scrape, thump, crackle, hiss, rumble, rustle, clang, and many more. A quick-reference list for giving your fictional world something to do besides look interesting.
Words to Describe Voice Oldie, still useful
A descriptive word bank for pitch, volume, texture, tone, rhythm, and vocal quality. Useful when every character has somehow acquired a “soft voice.”
Other Words for Said & Walk Oldie, still useful
A reference list, not an invitation to destroy every occurrence of said. Sometimes the simplest word is best. Sometimes your character is not walking so much as stumbling, stalking, wandering, or fleeing.
You do not have to read every writing article, master every system, or fill out every worksheet before you begin. Sometimes the most useful writing tool is simply the one that gets you back to the page.
Browse All Writing Resources
