Prepare for NaNoWriMo, or any other writing project, with over 100 tools and resources for planning plotlines, creating characters, developing worlds, and more!
Know of a resource not listed here? Make sure you let me know so I can add it!
Last Updated: Oct. 29, 2015
Topics
- General Writing & Writing Habits
- Book References
- Story Bibles
- Generators
- Beat Sheets
- Character Development
- Dialogue
- Outlining and Planning
- Plot, Conflict & Scene Building
- World Building
- Word Counting and Characters
- Other
- Tools for DURING NaNoWriMO
- Revising
- Finishing the Novel & Beating Writer’s Block
- Credits
- Recommend Another Resource
- Report a Broken Link
General Writing and Writing Habits
- An infographic about the habits of highly motivated writers to help you stay driven.
- 7 “fear nots” of writing, with an infographic.
- 6 pieces of advice from successful authors about writing the first draft, plus this infographic with 10 rules for the first draft.
- Make your own NaNo survival kit.
- Writing Tips
- A stellar infographic of the Shapes of Stories that Kurt Vonnegut came up with, made by Maya Eilam.
- Plus Kurt Vonnegut’s 16 rules for writing fiction. Kurt Vonnegut is so cool, guys.
- 5 tips to write a good plot twist.
- A blog all about the writing process from beginning to end
Book References
- NaNo for the New and Insane (Free ebook!)
- No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty
- Writer’s Workbook: Ready, Set, Novel
Story Bibles
- This guide on how to make a successful Story Bible by RJ Blain is a dream come true.
- More in depth Character Bible outline/questions. Another good one here with 100 questions.
Generators
- A million name generators for every genre/species/gender/occassion.
- Easy and fast family tree/lineage chart maker.
- Quick story idea generator.
- Random line generator.
- Random title generator.
- Generators
- Donjon Generator (Several Types)
- Chaotic Shiny (Several Types)
Beat Sheets
- this beat sheet designed especially for a NaNo-length novel! It is glorious. GO FORTH.
- Beat Sheets and Worksheets for Planning
Character Development
- The 15 Questions Authors Should ask Characters
- The Editing Hart Personality Profile.
- From PoeWar: Basic character bio sheet, exploring your character through his/her possessions, and 12 questions that will help create your character.
- Will Greenway’s advice about handling a large cast of characters.
- The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test. I’d advise you to take it with a grain of salt though, and trust your characters.
- Cool article by Alicia Rasley about making audiences sympathetic to your character without turning them into a saint.
- The one I listened to yesterday was especially good, it’s all about creating realistic characters that your audience will believe and love (or love to hate) using a 3-prong “slider” system. Hope it helps!
- tips on making more 3D characters
- 25 ways to f*** with your characters and 9 ways to undermine their plans
- 80 ways to keep romantic tension high
- on
- reference sheets for character motivations, hobbies, fears, habits and careers
- diagram of the hero’s inner journey
- http://thechugsboson.deviantart.com/art/Blank-Character-Sheet-Over-370-Questions-460031650
- this FABULOUS character bible with 200 questions
- list of character traits that has helped me focus a few of my characters today.
- Character Development
- “Reflections of the Shadow” by Jeffrey Hirschberg. This book is about creating memorable heroes and villains.
- 10 signs of underdeveloped characters to be aware of.
- TV Tropes – a giant list of various character and plot tropes
- Character & Worldbuilding Worksheets by BookCat9
- The Big List of Character Questions for taking your character to the next level (some NSFW items)
- Fleshy Character Questions
- What Really Motivates Your Characters?
Dialogue
- 8 Tips for Writing Dialogue. (Fairly generic, but good reminders!)
- An article to help you avoid all your characters sounding the same. Helpful.
Outlining & Planning
- HiveWord – Online Plot Outliner & Organizer
- Instructions for how to create a story grid to outline your plot (which I haven’t tried using yet): one here and another here.
- The Snowflake Method. Duh. Everyone better know about this.
- Free online mind-mapper.
- How to outline your novel in 30 minutes, another article by Alicia Rasley.
- Another no-nonsense plot outline structure. And this one about one-page plotting.
- Need some time management and outlining tips? This blog post has all that and more, including an infographic and video! – http://goo.gl/RmVVqm
- Structuring Your Novel and Outlining Your Novel, both by K. M. Weiland
- http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/how-to-write-a-novel.html This is a step-by-step page that gets you through the pre-planning and started on the outline. It helped me get my premise down as well as a few great ideas to keep the story moving. I ended up switching for a more structural outline.
- http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-structure-a-story-the-eight-point-arc/ This is what I used for my basis of the outline. After coming up with all 8 points, I then started on chapter outlines that included: main story arc, main character arc, impact character arc (in my case romantic interest), and the relationship arc.
- I want to contribute this really good novel plot outline worksheet.
- 4 steps to putting your novel in order.
- October Preparation Calendar
- Beat Sheets and Worksheets for Planning
- How to Plot During National Plot Your Novel Month (Uses Profanity)
- Cheaters Scene Cards for Plotting a Novel
- StoryPlanner
- 8 Ways to Outline a Novel
- NaNo Jar
Plot, Conflict, and Scene Building
- Article about creating conflict/sustaining suspense.
- Article by Rekha Ambardar with advice for starting your story.
- The basic 3 Act Structure of a plot outline.
- The 37 basic dramatic situations. This is great.
- A conflict test for your scene. Not perfect, but I still think it’s useful.
- Writing the Perfect Scene, by Randy Ingermanson (the Snowflake Method dude). Super helpful.
- Jim Butcher on how to get through the icky middle of your novel.
- This article is about creating the perfect setting, not world-building. Here’sanother. And here’s a cool one about setting-character interactions.
- Helpful article on description.
- Dan Wells’ video series on story structure. So helpful.
- on try-fail cycles
- how to write Act I, Act II part 1 & part 2, Act III
- on subplots and the midpoint
- on cliffhangers
- how to write a one-page synopsis
- on character arcs
- scenario generator for two characters
- developing a basic idea
- solutions for common plot problems
- How to Hook a Reader (it analyzes a few great opening lines).
- Rubiks Cube Plotting Method
- TV Tropes – a giant list of various character and plot tropes
World Building
- World Building in 30 Days
- A few for world-building: this guide is probably the best and most extensive (and you can download the whole thing as a PDF or EPUB on the site!), this one is shorter and poses some great questions to get you into your world, and this onehas even more questions to think about.
- How to world-build with mapping.
- Hellfrost History of the World. It has helped me figure out so much backstory that, even if it doesn’t feature in the novel itself, strengthens the whole.
- A chart of 16 government types and how they work (for worldbuilding).
- How to research setting/place for your novel.
- Character & Worldbuilding Worksheets by BookCat9
- Indent World Building
Word Counting & Calendars
- StoryToolz: Word Counters
- Looking for a pretty, printable word-count calendar with inspirational tidbits? We’ve got you covered! – http://goo.gl/2gQiJr
- IN LOVE with this word-counting calendar for NaNo 2014 by David Seah!
- Rewards System schedule for NaNo
- Rewards System Excel Calendar for 2014.
- HabitRPG – Keep yourself together and game your way through Nano with this daily tracker and challenge tool. I like to reduce cleaning and other tasks to tiny habits, like 1 minute cleaning each room challenges. If you want something a little more zen, Mindbloom is a good alternative.
- October Preparation Calendar
- November Calendar
- Reverse NaNo Word Count Calendars
Other
- some things that would make cool stories
- Free online novel-writing app (LitLift).
- Descriptions of the 12 most common archetypes.
- I wanted to add a link to this amazing podcast series about writing, hosted by the fabulous Brandon Sanderson, plus Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. Podcasts are each 15 minutes long, and they cover ALL writing topics, basically
- Lino – Private pinboards that work just like your home corkboard. I love this tool so much, and I think it works way better than Pinterest for storybuilding.
- Songza – My preference for free music tracks. Love the Post-Rock Bliss channel for writing.
- Firestorm – I live in Kitely grid and host a write in on Thursdays, but there’s virtual write-ins all over virtual worlds like Second Life. If you want something really low resource, Radagast is a text viewer.
Tools for DURING NaNoWriMo
- Write-o-Meter Word counter, timer, and more
- November Calendar
- Werdsmith
- Evernote
- Google Docs
- Scrivener
Revising
- Katastic’s Youtube Vlogs on writing and revising are great! I’ll be trying out her outlining method (2 videos) after nano is over and I’m ready to start a longer novel.
Finishing the Novel
- Killing Writer’s Block: rubber ducking, busting your writing rut, 27 wacky ways,10 creative ways (Writer’s Digest).
- Finishing your novel, plenty of tips by Timothy Hallinan.
- 27 Wacky Ways to Beat Writer’s Block
Credits:
Links found from NaNo users: averyink, Will_Watanabe, ushotmedown, debso, Leechy, scriobhnoir, Roswenthe, Allocin, girl-king, shand21, Chandeere, zvi, BookBaby, KristinaVH, Jillieji, purplegracenotes, Zette, ChaosFox, RiverSong906, and ToolUsingMonkey on NaNo
Have a resource you’d like to recommend?
Let me know by leaving a comment here or adding the link on the forums.
Found a Broken Link?
Let me know by leaving a comment here or contact me directly with the broken URL.
Thanks for the shout out to my beat sheets and worksheets! :)
Thanks for sharing your resources. :)
You may have this here and I just missed it, but I really appreciate Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook — it was mentioned in one of the NaNo webinars in October. You need to have the basic premise and a few characters for this workbook to help, and I found the exercises to be very thought provoking — helped me build in some much needed tension and complexity. (And thanks for compiling all these resources!)
Thanks for the suggestion. I will add it to the list. What section(s) do you think it fits in?
I wrote a word count tracking app for iOS (iPhone/iPod) called Chronical. If you want to try it out (and you have an iPhone) I can send you a copy or you can just add it to your list. I use it daily but I may be bit a bit biased. Here’s the iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chronical/id918895788?ls=1&mt=8
Email me ([email protected]) if you’d like try it out and I’ll email you a code to redeem for a copy.
I don’t have an iPhone, but I can add it to the list.
That’d be great. Thanks!
This is so great! Thank you for doing this! Great blog! :D
Glad to be helpful! Best of luck to you on NaNoWriMo!
Great list! I would add (in the Tools for DURING NaNoWriMo section), Write or Die http://oldandbusted.drwicked.com/. It’s an app available on several platforms as well as a free web app. I have used it during NaNo when I needed a boost to finish a chapter or a section. It’s like your own personal word war/sprint.
Ah yes. I had forgotten about write or die. Thank you for the suggestion.
This has me pretty armed with resources for finishing my nanowrimo this year. Great resources in one place.
I’m glad that you found it helpful. Best of luck!
I would suggest the “Track My Words” (http://bit.ly/1lcIFD1) Google Docs add on I created. It tracks your words per minute and word count for each day you type automatically, and then generates stats for you so you can see which days you type the most, how you compare to other writers on the site, and more.
If you are using Google Docs I think it is a great option!
A word count per day for Google Docs? I am intrigued! Thanks for sharing.
Glad to share. I’m still actively updating it, so if there are any changes you think would make it better, just let me know!