My Helpful Pages
Exercises I Find Helpful
Advice On Plotting
Interviewing Your Character
To the character charts!

Delve into the world of psychology to make your characters really come alive...
The Enneagram (9 types)
The Myers-Briggs Theory


Actual Books That are Helpful
Creative Novel Writing - Roselle Angwin
Creating Character Emotions - Ann Hood
Get That Novel Written! - Donna Levin


My Writing Role Models
Laurell K. Hamilton - Is my main writing role model, not just because I love both her Merry Gentry and her Anita Blake series, but because she is also a super-cool person. Most writers, once they are successful seem to be quite distant from their readers, but Laurell makes herself, her writing, and her life very accessible through her blog, and I really like that.
Nora Roberts - What strikes me about Nora Roberts is her writing speed! She gets tons of books out a year, and I like most of them. What makes her stand out is her sparkling dialogue. And the fact she writes eight hours a day - every day!


My Favourite Helpful Sites For Writers
Alica Rasley
Holly Lisle
Laurell K. Hamilton's Blog
Charlotte Dillon's Site particuarly her section on Characters.


Writing Advice
Inspired 2 Write - Shitloads of information!
Writing Advice - Caro Clark - A series of no-nonsense articles on writing craft, including a small quiz on whether *you* are a real writer. Very clearly set out.
The Novice Writer's RestStop - Novel-writing advice, some creative exercises, and more. Worth looking at.
DOING IT WRITE - Huge bunch of articles on various aspects of writing.


Show, Don't Tell
Shirley Jump - Show Not Tell: What the Heck is That Anyway?
Article by Robert J. Sawyer
Barbara Dawson Smith: T is for the "Telling" Truth


Various Articles
Writers & Depression
Article on Characterisation - Easy to read and quite informative.
Article on Point Of View and the mistakes authors can make with it. - Easy to read and quite illuminating.
Sara Douglass: Creating The Modern Romance Epic - Talks about why the market for fantasy is expanding, and the highs and lows of being a fantasy author. Both fascinating and informative.
50 strategies for making yourself work and Part Two
Body Language
This is a list of articles on writing including my favourite three: A day in the life of a street cop, Police Jargon: How to Talk Like a Cop and Police Body Language and Behavior: You Gotta Walk the Walk
Author Elizabeth Rose: Creating Characters with Phobias, Part 1 and Part 2
Stupid Plot Tricks


General Writing Sites
The A to Z of Writing
Your Creative Voice - An online book about expressing your creativity
Fiction Factor
Writers4Writers
Writing World
Writing Fix - Interactive Writing Games & More.



Places To Go For Helpful Exercises
Cacoethes Scribendi - Writing Practice, Prompts, & Techniques.
Instant Muse Story Starter
Exercises from The Writers List - Shitloads of Exercises!
FictionAddiction.Net Exercises Also On-Site are more exercises and lots of prompts. A bit too simplistic for me sometimes, but I can see them being the start of some great ideas.
The Story-A-Day Writers Kit - A months worth of suggestions for stories. Some of them might suit you, and practice is always good.
A suggestion for creating a simple song or poem. - Looks fun.


Worldbuilding
Sara Douglass: How To Create The Fantasy World
FictionFactor - World Building - A series of articles which ask some thought provoking questions, and provide a basis to work upon when beginning a story set on a different plane/planet etc.
Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions - By Patricia C. Wrede **Must See Page** Here are pages and pages of questions for you to answer when you are building your world. Covers just about everything, from custom, to religion, to biology and geology.
The MythoPoets Manual - Guide to setting up religion and creating cultures on your world.
Magical World Builder's Guide - While I found it a bit too basic, it has some good points.
Guidelines to creating magic-systems
The Language Construction Kit - For those who wish to constuct their own language(s) for the peoples of their world.
World Builder's - Course on building your own world. Quite technical.
On Creating an Earthlike Planet
Building a world from scratch - Excellent guild to individual city-building
Bard's Ink - Fantasy Fiction Writing - Big list of useful resources on writing fantasy & worldbuilding.
The Domesday Book enables you to put in certain values, whereapon it will figure out how many villages, towns etc you have, and how many people from each trade is in them. Or, if you prefer to do it all yourself, or just to increase your understanding of what it is doing and what it all means, Medieval Demographics made easy is an article explaining the process. The Domesday Book is based on this article. Additionally, here is a list of earth countries and their landmass, which, by comparison, should help figure out how big your land is, which you need to know before you begin the demographics.
Measuring Time is a comprehensive list of links to the different ways of measuring time, and keeping calenders that have been used over the centuries.
Religious Tolerance.org has information on a huge number of religions, which may come in handy if you are inventing one for you world, or have one in mind that you need to know more about.
The Household Encyclopedia - Information on Agriculture, Horticulture, Rural Economy, Cookery, Farriery, Medicine, Distillation etc etc etc! Perfect if your character lives in the medieval times, or on a farm, or is just a proud home owner. ** Must-see Site **
Enchanted Learning.com - I found this site when looking for pictures of big cats, and found they had information and pictures of a lot of animals. I figure this could be useful as a starting point when you are inventing things to put on your world. Technically, this is a kids page, but it has information on biomes, astonomy, animals and heaps more, all explained in a simple way. ** Recommended **


Miscellaneous
deviantART.com - A place to display your songs/poems/stories etc, and receive comments on them if you wish to.
Bowl of Writers' Cereal Writing Tutorial - A set of questions designed to allow you to fully flesh out an idea for character + scene.
Character Building Workshop - A series of indepth online questionaires for you to fill out with your character in mind. The answers allow you to delve into the personality of your characters, and assign them more traits that fit whichever psychological group they turn out to be in. Surprisingly useful.
Turkey City Lexicon - An easy to read list of SF writing terms.
Black on White - Encouragement site for writers; you sign a contract with yourself that you will write a certain novel in a certain time, and members will email you with encouragement/support etc if you request it. Interesting Concept.


Names
Article: Is your character's name right for him/her?
babynames.com - search by name or meaning.
Behind the Name - the etymology and history of first names - HUGE site, with names (and the meaning and derivation of those names) from many cultures including spanish, german, french, arabic, indian... also biblical names and names from mythology. Also has it's own Random Name Generator which is quite impressive looking.
Celtic Names - Male and female celtic names and meanings from Brittany, Cornwall, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the Isle of Man.
Article and Historic Name Generator - This site generates names for sixteenth century Irish or Scottish Gaels only.
Article: Problems with names and how to avoid them - Her title example is 'Margaret, Maggie, Marge and Meg', worth reading, and something to think about.
Flexible Fantasy Name Generator - Looks good.
Random Name Generator - Uses data from the US Census to randomly generate names.
Seventh Sanctum - All kinds of name generators, and lots of them!
Elf and Hobbit Name Generator
Silly Pagan Name Generator - Take it with a grain of salt, and it's a bit of fun.
Fairy Name Generator - I don't know if it's helpful, but it's certainly cute.
Book: The New Age Baby Name Book - Sue Browder (What makes this book special is that it explains how to create your own names)


Writing Humour
You've been reading too many mysteries when . . .
Parody: How to write a best selling novel
Exerpts from the diary of a henchminion"
How to write Fantasy that will absolutely slay the editors