WritingAdvice

If you can't write: Edit.

If you can't edit: Outline.

If you can't outline: Brainstorm.

If you can't brainstorm: Rest.

When cleaning out the HEY, Writers! Pinterest I moved some links here. The internet has changed a LOT since I started collecting these, so some links may include outdated info. All were still active when I made this, but it's been in my drafts for a hot minute.

Protip! In Firefox, check to toggle reader view when reading these (mobile: the page icon in the url bar; desktop: same icon or hit F9). This removes popups, ads, screen clutter, and often has an audio option.

Survivors of Internet Decay Award!

These active sites featured most often in my collections so they get the top of the list.

Helping Writers Become Authors

Mythcreants

Bryn Donovan

Getting Started (Ideas & Intros)

How to Start Writing a Book: Learn One Writer’s Process | Marian Schembari

How to Start a Story: 30 Opening Scene Examples | Bryn Donovan

Don’t Panic! What to Do When You Have Too Many Story Ideas | Faye Kirwin

How to Write a Killer First Chapter | Rae Elliot

How To Write A Captivating Opening Sentence

Outlining

How to Create a Flexible Outline for Your Novel | Faye Kirwin

Protagonists

How to Write Believable Characters | Bridget McNulty

4 Ways to Write a Likable Protag at the Start of the Character Arc | KM Weiland

5 Tips for Writing a Likable "Righteous" Character | KM Weiland

I Hate Your Protagonist! Want to Know Why? | KM Weiland

The Secret to Writing Dynamic Characters: It's Always Their Fault | KM Weiland

A Protagonist’s Moment of Realisation

Antagonists

Blurring the Lines: What Are Anti-Heroes and Anti-Villains?

Antagonists: Inner & Outer Demons | Kristen Lamb

How to Write Multiple Antagonists | KM Weiland

Character Building

The Epic Guide to Character Creation, Part 1 | Kylie Day

Pick Up A Bad Habit | Maggie Maxwell

How To Write Characters from the Opposite Gender | Rachel Poli

Top 4 Tips for Using Backstory in Your Novel | Diana Anderson-Tyler

Depicting Background Characters | Chris Winkle

Scene Building

The 5 Elements Of A Good Scene | Amanda Patterson

A New Way to Think About Scene Structure | KM Weiland

2 Ways to Make the Most of Your Story’s Climactic Setting | KM Weiland

8 Things Writers Forget When Writing Fight Scenes | Lisa Voisin

Descriptions

Master List of Facial Expressions | Bryn Donovan

Master List of Words to Describe Voices | Bryn Donovan

Master List of Physical Description for Writers | Bryn Donovan

Writer’s Guide to Serious Injuries and Calamities | Bryn Donovan

How to Ground Your Reader (in the setting) | Rachel Craft

The Forgotten Fifth Sense | Writer's Relief

Never Name an Emotion in Your Story | KM Weiland

Show, Don't Tell: How to Write the Stages of Grief | Ruthanne Reid

100 Words for Facial Expressions

Dialogue

How To Write Good Dialogue: Ten Tips | Irving Weinman

Seven Dialogue Don’ts | Jason Bougger

10 Keys to Writing Dialogue in Fiction | Katherine Cowley

Points-Of-View (POV)

What Every Writer Ought to Know About the Omniscient POV | KM Weiland

Motivation & Support

What New Writers Need To Know About Fear | Bryan Collins

How to Discover Your Writing Process with Gabriela Pereira | Kirsten Oliphant

Editing & Revising

18 Overused Words to Replace When Writing | Oxford Tutoring

An Easy Way to Immediately Improve Your Character’s Action Beats | KM Weiland

Want More Depth to Your Writing? | Sacha Black

How Much is Too Much Backstory? | Ellen Brock

Why Your Writing Sounds Weird (And What You Can Do About It) | Joe Brock

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers | Jenny Bravo

Favorite Revision and Editing Tricks

Short Stories & Flashfic

How to Write a Story a Week: A Day-by-Day Guide | Emily Wenstrom

How Flash Fiction / Microfiction Can Help With Your Writing | Rhianne Williams

Worksheets & Downloads

Writing Worksheet Archive

If anyone out there loves making lists and wants to transport this to another site, you have every right to do so! Just let me know in a reblog so I can share it here again :)

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AI also more often avoids subplots and fails to play with time jumps and flashbacks. The systems overwrite passages about the body and senses. “Where a human author might write that a character ‘felt afraid,’ AI renders fear as a tightening chest, cold sweat, and dimming lamplight,” the study said. Humans also spin more complicated narratives involving more characters and locations than AI can handle. Humans also reference other works of fiction, specific people and places in a way that AI struggles with.

Princess: an effeminate and relatively youthful male homosexual or lesbian (1931-4)

Daffodil: effeminate young man (1925)

To throw a fuck into: to have sex with (1919)

Top sergeant: a masculine lesbian (1939) [‘she takes command of the girls’ privates’]

Lily: penis (1919)

Wolf: sexually aggressive man (1847); a homosexual top (1918)

Soul kiss: a deep kiss, involving putting one’s tongue into one’s partner’s mouth (1907)

Tom: a lesbian (1909); [in 'old tom'] prostitute catering to lesbians (1966)

Church mouse: a male homosexual who frequents crowded churches in order to fondle any potential sex partners. (1941)

Discover one's gender: to accept or acknowledge one’s homosexuality (1941) / Lose one's gender: To return to living as a heterosexual

Minty: a masculine lesbian (1941)

Also a lot of early 20th century vulgarity is recorded in Letter from My Father, which is a collection of letters published by a man who's dad was, in short, a major slut and human disaster who wrote about his sex life for his son. It's insane. You can find copies of it online & it's a wild fucking read (literally!) and I think a really interesting look at the life of a person who goes against our stereotypes of what people in the past were "supposed" to be like.

note for writers: these are dated to the first time they were recorded, not necessarily to their first use. I imagine for many of these, they came about naturally through spoken language before they were written down anywhere. This is especially true of more underground slang because it's probably being recorded (in ways we still have) the least. So if you wanna use a term but it's a little off date-wise, give yourself some wiggle room.

also gonna take this moment to highlight two more i found recently:

Best boy: a sweetheart, a boyfriend, a husband. (1893) [w the obvious equivalent term 'best girl']

Honeydripper or honeydrips: a sexual partner (1917)

Tor, cream of the crop. 25 cents a word. Stories can be read for free (YES). Slowish response time at ~3 months. Prefer under 12k, absolute maximum is 17.5k. Don’t bother if it’s not highly professional quality. SFWA qualifying.

Crossed Genres. 6 cents a word. Different theme each month (this month’s is “failure”). Submissions must combine either sci-fi or fantasy with the theme. Response time 1 month. 1k-6k, no exceptions. SFWA qualifying.

Long Hidden, anthology from CG. 6 cents a word. 2k-8k, no exceptions. Must take place before 1935. Protagonist(s) must be under 18 and marginalized in their time and place. Must be sci-fi/fantasy/horror. Deadline 30 April. Response by 1 October.

Queers Destroy Science Fiction. Sci-fi only right now, author must identify as queer (gay, lesbian, bi, ace, pan, trans, genderfluid, etc, just not cishet). 7.5k max. Deadline 15 February. Responses by 1 March. You can submit one flash fiction and one short story at the same time. (My network blocks the Lightspeed site for some reason, so I can’t get all the submission details. >_>) Probably SFWA qualifying?

Women in Practical Armor. 6 cents a word. 2k-5k. Must be about 1) a female warrior who 2) is already empowered and 3) wears sensible armour. Deadline 1 April. Response within three months.

Fiction Vortex. $10 per story, with $20 and $30 for editor’s and readers’ choice stories (hoping to improve). Speculative fiction only. Imaginative but non-florid stories. 7.5k maximum, preference for 5k and under. (I kind of want to support them on general principle.)

Urban Fantasy Magazine. 6 cents a word. 8k max, under 4k preferred. Must be urban fantasy (aka, the modern world, doesn’t need to be a literal city). 

Nightmare. 6 cents a word. 1.5-7.5k, preference for under 5k. Horror and dark fantasy. Response time up to two weeks. SFWA and HWA qualifying.

Apex Magazine. 6 cents a word. 7.5k max, no exceptions. Dark sci-fi/fantasy/horror. SFWA qualifying.

Asimov’s Science Fiction. 8-10 cents a word. 20k max, 1k minimum. Sci-fi; borderline fantasy is ok, but not S&S. Prefer character focused. Response time 5 weeks; query at 3 months. SFWA qualifying, ofc.

Buzzy Mag. 10 cents a word. 10k max. Should be acceptable for anyone 15+. Response time 6-8 weeks. SFWA qualifying.

Strange Horizons. 8 cents a word. Speculative fiction. 10k max, prefers under 5k. Response time 40 days. Particularly interested in diverse perspectives, nuanced approahces to political issues, and hypertexts. SFWA qualifying. 

Fantasy and Science Fiction. 7-12 cents a word. Speculative fiction, preference for character focus, would like more science-fiction or humour. 25k maximum. Prefers Courier. Response time 15 days.

Scigentasy. 3 cents a word. .5-5k. Science-fiction and fantasy, progressive/feminist emphasis. Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. 15 cents a word. 3k maximum. Any sci-fi/fantasy, they like a literary bent. (psst, steinbecks!) They also like to see both traditional and experimental approaches. Response time two weeks. 

Beneath Ceaseless Skies. 6 cents a word. 10k maximum. Fantasy in secondary worlds only (it can be Earth, but drastically different—alternate history or whatever). Character focus, prefer styles that are lush yet clear, limited first or third person narration. Response time usually 2-4 weeks, can be 5-7 weeks. SFWA qualifying.

Clarkesworld. 10 cents a word up to 4000, 7 afterwards. 1-8k, preferred is 4k. Science-fiction and fantasy. Needs to be well-written and convenient to read on-screen. Appreciates rigour. No talking cats. Response time 2 days. SFWA qualifying.

Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. 6 cents a word. Any length. Science-fiction and fantasy (along with fantastic horror). Good world-building and characterization. Clear straightforward prose. Response time three months. Yes, OSC is editor-in-chief. SFWA qualifying.

Check the Grinder regularly! Markets open, markets close, all is chaos, hail the Submission Grinder.

SFWA pro rates have increased since this post; they keep track monthly of which markets are qualifying (i.e. pay pro rates): https://www.sfwa.org/?s=market+report

Read. Read a lot. This will not only keep you from submitting things to places that are just plain a bad fit (I don’t want to say Strange Horizons won’t take your story if it includes even one joke, I’m just saying everything I’ve read there has made me cry), but it will also make you a better writer. I’m not saying that if you don’t keep up with what’s contemporaneous at least a little bit you’ll never get published…I’m just saying that’s something that certain writing friends of mine who write a lot and have never been published have in common. There is so much out there it’s basically impossible not to find something new that you like. Go read.

Seriously though don’t submit to places you know nothing about. It’s a waste of everyone’s time including your own. If you don’t read their stuff because you don’t like it, then, reciprocally, they’re not going to like your stuff!