Writing Resources

[oakstone730]

This post is being made just because I'm tired of trying to remember where I read/saved XYZ writing reference link that I saw posted. Hopefully if I create one post I can add all the bookmarks/notes that I find so I can look one place instead of twenty.

** This is a work in progress ** If you have a website/resource that you've found very helpful, let me know about it!

Writing 101 (aka What I should've read before I wrote my first fanfic, instead of afterwards and now I have 1000 epithets that need to be edited out)
A (Beginner's) Guide to Fanfiction by faithwood
Open Letter to Bad FanFic Writers by jeyhawk (Relatively quick list of 36 foibles that beginning writers have, I like that s/he uses a lot of examples.)

WTF Does A Sunset Look Like? (aka descriptive prose)
Emotions (descriptions of the physical reactions to emotions...)
Geography Descriptors
Descriptive Words

Writing Sex Scenes
Writing Smut by omi_ohmy
Gay Sex is All Wrong in FanFic by reverie_indigo and its follow-up (yes, he makes generalizations, but good info is included. Updated as of May 1)
Masterlist of sorts
Sex Tips for Slash Writers Classic sex guide for writers - it is static as the creator has passed away, but contains lots of good info.

Related Resources
Essentia Whips
Bull Whip Info (includes videos of techniques. Requires Quicktime)

Creating Three Dimensional Characters
So You Want to Write an OC
Occupational Outlook Handbook (Great for looking up vocational information. United States)
Masterlist of links for picking character names
Typical Characteristics of 'Bad Guys'
Charahub.com Site for keeping track of your characters and their characteristics. Haven't used it, but looks like it has a lot of potential.

Everything Ms Espeseth Tried to Teach Me But I Failed to Learn (Grammar Rules)
Lay Vs  Laid (don't get me started on layed)
Grammar 101

Harry Potter Resources
Timelines for all the books
Characters
Potterwords! (why haven't I not heard about this resource before! Thanks, digthewriter!)

Brit-Picking (which I should use but usually I just pester folks over on Twitter)
British/American Terms by Oxford Dictionaries
Google Streetview (I use this and Google Earth all the time to get 'a lay of the land' from across the pond)

Referencey Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else
Apps for Writers
Keyboard Shortcuts
Writing Resources/Software Masterlist
Blood Loss
Writer's Archive Collection of Resources
MasterList from Tumblr- Characters, Jobs, Locations, Gender, SmutWriting, Grammar, Art, etc.

Comments

[digthewriter]

Potterwords!

[oakstone730.livejournal.com]

!!!! I've never seen this before! How useful would this have been to know about for the last, say, THREE YEARS!!

[sophie-french.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! This is really helpful! :)

[oakstone730.livejournal.com]

:) I love having reference materials to peruse!

[notearchiver.livejournal.com]

All of these are HP related:

I adore The Akashic Record:Being a Compendium of Lore, Onomatology, Miscellanea, and Pareidolia Relating to the Universe of Harry Potter With Commentary Esoteric and Exoteric for Harry Potter things. It's all sorts of lovely. Granted, it doesn't have everything in detail, but there is a bit of everything, and some interesting things as well.

There's also tari_sue's big list of HP canon spellings. Not as complete as Potterwords, but it's easier to search via ctrl+f for specific things if you want to double-check something.

ravenna_c_tan has Verbing Spell Names and other Grammatical Transformations

manu86 has Dialects and Accents in HP that has notes on how JK writes people like Hagrid, Shunpike, Olympe, Fleur, Viktor, and Dobby, Kreature, and Winky.

Definitive Harry Potter Canon Characterisation Guide lists a lot of the characters and links to specific descriptions of the characters. Of course, other sites have these things, but I find this one great because there's lots of direct quotations.

[oakstone730.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! What a great listing, I'll take a closer look at it tonight - especially the Dialects/Accent one, I've avoided writing Hagrid because I'm not confident in my ability to get his speech correct.

[notearchiver.livejournal.com]

I'm scare of accents. Truly scared.

Oh, there's also On the Finer Points of British Swearing. Of course there are other guides, but this is simply and the comments section has a lot of interesting discussion going on.

[reverie-indigo.livejournal.com]

I'm honored to be in such company. I've revised the post you've linked extensively based on a large amount of input received from all over the place which was very useful to make me express myself more clearly and to the point, as well as examine some assumptions.

[oakstone730.livejournal.com]

I just re-read your post - and I think the update is very good - and makes it less likely to get folks backbone up

[reverie-indigo.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I appreciate your input.

Criticism without detail is hostility. Criticism requires specifically pointing out what the critic disagrees with or thinks is wrong in substance or tone - otherwise it's just an attack, and that's about the attacker, not the writer. It's best when attacked for the writer to just back away, because neither side is going to take anything positive from the encounter - although I'll take it as a challenge to be more clear in expression.

99% of people are nice and welcoming, and get something from and contribute to the conversation, even when they disagree, and that's what's important and rewarding.

[josephinestone.livejournal.com]

https://www.squidge.org/minotaur/classic/eroc.html

Probably the most famous fandom guide on writing gay sex (the author is now dead.) I thought you might be interested in this as well.

[oakstone730.livejournal.com]

Yes! That is one of the websites that I found so very, very useful (although I am still traumatized by the scat photo) -and then I lost the link to it! Thank you, I'll update my list.