The Devil and Writer's Block

Through my many years of writing, I have come across a few good sites to help with the writing process. Let me share them. I will reblog this now and then with more links as I come across them.

Behind the Name - A good site for name research, for a name generator, for anything to do with naming a character.

Behind the Surname - Another affiliated site with BtN, this site helps with surnames and may aid your character development.

Zodiac Signs - Don’t laugh yet, hear me out. This site can help you by giving you some positive and negative traits to begin to build a character with. When I first started writing, I would figure out which sign of the zodiac I wanted to make my character, then use this site to build both positive and negative traits for them. It seems silly, but it can be a good beginning for a complex and full bodied character.

Random Appearance Generator - This site does just that. Randomly gives you the appearance of a character.

Go to a cafe, restaurant, fast food joint, anyplace there are people and just sit and listen to a conversation. Get the feel for how others may speak or how they use language to tell a story.

Now try to emulate this in a short story with little to no descriptive paragraphs, use only conversation.

Are there two farmers discussing the crops? Is it a mother talking to her children? Business people on an outing talking about work?

You don’t have to share your writing with anyone.

Or

You don’t have to worry about oversharing your writing with everyone.