Thousands of people write about writing better. Most do it far better than me. Today I thought I’d use my delicious tags to share some free resources you can use to write better. I’ve used all these resources at one point or another…with varying degrees of success.
Writing about writing feels so meta, doesn’t it?
Resources to help you write better (in no particular order)
1. The Paris Review Interview Archive A huge collection of interviews from literary luminaries past and present. Learn from the best.
2. 10 Rules for Writing Fiction (from over 10 different authors) Some quite humorous.
3. 10 Simple Things You Can Do to Improve Your Writing Includes several ‘what not to do’ examples.
4. Active vs. Passive Voice Grammar Girl does a nice job of exampling this über-important concept.
5. How to Improve Your Writing Pay special attention to ‘who vs. whom.’
6. A Guide to Writing Well A distillation of the knowledge found in Strunk & White and Zinsser
7. Writing Your Way Lots of solid information from a seasoned pro…but you’ll have to dig for it.
8. 18 Types of Metaphors If the words synecdoche, metonym, and pataphor excite you, check this one out.
9.15 Ways to Generate Ideas and Write With Ease. Title is self-explanatory, eh?
10. Review of Online Writers’Groups A big Squidoo lens that lists most online writers’ groups.
11. Absolute Write Forums Like most forums, plenty of helpful people, as well as a few cranks.
12. Who is Your Audience? Shameless self-promotion but oh-so important.
13. Stephen King’s 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer. You’ve probably seen this before. They’re worth seeing again.
14. Storyfix This site a no-bs guide to creating an effective story structure. Highly recommended.
15. Conflict and Character Within Story Structure Story structure…with charts!
16. George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing In short, keep it simple and avoid clichés.
17. Random Name Generator You can choose gender, number, and (my favorite) obscurity factor.
18. 54 Tips for Writers, from Writers Includes tips from Hemingway, Vonnegut, and more.
19. TV Tropes A rather useful wiki featuring common narrative tricks. Not limited to television.
20. 178 Ways to Improve Your Internet Writing Lots of quick hits for internet writers.
21. Hypnotic Writing Master Course. This is 132-page ebook is mostly for people writing sales articles, but any writer can use it.
22. How to Write Magnetic Headlines Features 11 great posts on headline writing, even one for writing Twitter folk (follow me! @sethmbaker)
23. Getting Started as a Freelance Writer A roundup post featuring the basics of the business of writing.
24. Nanowrimo doesn’t start until November, but their forums are full of helpful people.
25. This Word Frequency Counter can help you find overused words in your work.
26. Write or Die. This great little program keeps you focused by deleting words when you stop writing. Awesome.
27. Finally, Duotrope’s Digest won’t necessarily improve your writing, but it will give you over over 2800 publications, searchable by genre, pay scale, submission type, and more.
28. Your recommendations in the comments below! If you’ve got any tips for better writing, speak up and share!
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