It doesn’t take many visits to see that providing writers with what they need to succeed is pretty serious business around here.
And because the ‘ol pocketbook can be a bit flat this time of year, we wanted to shine a light on some of the great FREE knowledge-building resources we know about.
Story Structure Database
Chances are, you’re familiar with Helping Writers Become Authors, run by the brilliant K.M. Weiland. But you may not be aware that she has this amazing database that breaks down the story structure of hundreds of popular movies and books. If you find yourself struggling with 3-act structure and the turning points of a successful story, visit this resource because it will help you grow your knowledge exponentially.
A Year of Creative Writing Worksheets
Eva Deverell challenged herself to creating a crazy-huge amount of worksheets on all different sorts of writing topics, and she’s kindly linked to many of them so writers can access them.
Stop by and find what you need, and then give her a big thank you for her generosity!
Jami Gold’s Worksheets for Writers
If you like worksheets AND struggle with story structure, you will especially love Jami’s Beat Sheets. She helps you through the turning points and stages that can often trip writers up, and there’s a ton of other terrific advice on this site, too. Definitely make her blog a regular pit stop in 2018.
LitCharts
After going on a writing retreat with Margie Lawson, I sort of fell hard-in-love with Rhetorical Devices. (It is amazing how they add sophistication and can deepen the meaning of your writing!) Litcharts is made by the creators of SparkNotes (another excellent site) and it’s filled with examples and descriptions of figures of speech and literary terms. Well worth prowling through.
Take one of your scenes and try inserting an Anaphora, Asyndeton, or play with Parallelism. I bet you’ll like the result!
The Writers’ Knowledge Base
This impressive search engine for writers is the brainchild of Mike Fleming and Elizabeth S. Craig and has curated over 40,000 writing articles to date. Searching by topic just got a whole lot easier, so give it a whirl!
Reedsy Learning Courses
Reedsy is dedicated to making writers successful, and they have a great collection of free courses to help you do just this. You can not only brush up on your writing craft through a series of free email-delivered mini-courses, you can also learn the ins and outs of design, marketing, publishing, and more!
One Stop for Writers Tip Sheets
Originally these tip sheets and checklists were hosted on Pinterest, but they became so insanely popular we moved them to a special page at One Stop for Writers (our other site).
Need help with showing emotion, character motivation, plotting & pacing, body language, or meaningful setting description? You’ll find it here. Or if you want ideas on choosing a character’s secret, need to know how to write Deep POV, or even the best ways to juice up a scene with conflict, we have a checklist for you. Download, print, export, share these sheets. We hope they help and while you are at One Stop, make sure to check out the Free Trial, too.
Writers Helping Writers Tools Page
If you are looking for truly unique finds like a Reverse Backstory Tool, a Character Arc Progression Tool, or a Backstory Wound Profile, visit our Tools for Writers page. We specialize in bringing you tools you can’t find anywhere else so we can help you in new ways. Everything is listed as a PDF so you can link-share, pin, or download and print as needed. (You’ll find many marketing handouts and other goodies there, too.)
We hope these links lead to some new favorite knowledge-building resources. And please, if you have a particular area of struggle, let us know. We might be able to guide you to a great article or resource!
Angela & Becca
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.
thx
Thank you for this. Free is good!
We live in a good time. There is no excuse aside from laziness. Thank you for this.
Hope it helps, Bryan!
You ladies continue to be aMAzing! 😀
Oh my, it’s 3 a.m. here in Las Vegas and I just discovered YOU! I have many stories to tell but don’t have the slightest idea how to put it all together. So many resources here, I wish I didn’t have to sleep. I see I have lots of homework to do. Thank you so much.
DJ
Thank you so much! These are great resources 🤗
Glad you like them! 🙂
Angela, these links are stupendous. I’ve barked each one of these. Thank you so much!
Happy to share. I find so many great resources out there. Learning writing craft is so accessible.
These are great resources. Thanks for sharing them with us!
Thanks Jarm–I hope you have a poke around and get some good info!
I once heard about a website where writers can go to get information from any number of professionals about specific jobs/professions. For example, if your character is a nurse, you’d go to this site and find information posted by a nurse(s), and so on. I know you have an exciting resource for these things in the works (and I can’t wait for it!!), but have you heard of a site like this before? I hope I’m not being too unclear in what I’m looking for.
Thanks for anything you have to offer. You guys are a blessing for writers!
I think what you might be looking for is Quora. It is a site where you can ask any sort of question and people interested in that topic will answer. I found some great help here when researching the Emotional Wound Thesaurus, for example. https://www.quora.com/
Thank you so much!
Angela, thank you so much! I just found Reedsy a few weeks ago, and I love them! I wish I would’ve found them years ago! I love their free lessons that I find in my box each day on topics I’ve struggled with. And, of course, One Stop for Writers is so awesome, too! Happy New Year! Thanks for the tips!
Good to hear you’ve been using Reedsy and getting good value from the lessons! Their blog is really good too–well worth subscribing to. 🙂 And thanks for the kind words about One Stop! More writerly goodness in coming over there, I promise! 🙂
These really are the best free writing resources! Thank you for sharing the knowledge and your continued efforts to help other writers.
Glad you like them. I have a sniffer for resources, and all of these are great sources of knowledge to help writers get themselves to the next level. Happy exploring!
Thank you! This is like Christmas all over again. 🙂
Right? The party must roll on! 🙂
I’m in bookmark heaven! Thank you so much and Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, Sheri!
You guys are the best. All my love.
Back atcha!!