Writing narrative essays, short stories and other creative texts is a meandering path. Creative writing skills do not appear out of nowhere, they require determination and effort. To master them, you need to work not only hard, but also smart.
Creativity is a tricky business. Your notebook is a great place to apply your inspiration, test your skills and boost your energy – or to fail. And this is how you evolve. Failures and mistakes provide valuable lessons. However, to progress faster and to make your creative juices flow better, we have collected some practical and useful resources that will improve your skills. Let’s get started.
ProWritingAid's The Writing Process Blog
I would, of course, be remiss if I didn't mention the ProWritingAid blog: The Writing Process. A wealth of information has been accumulated here that will keep writers inspired and build their skills. Their new e-book The Novel-Writing Training Plan: 17 steps to get your ideas in shape for the marathon of writing is full of excellent tips and techniques to boost your creativity and make the writing process run smoothly.
Poets and Writers
Poets and Writers is an amazing source of guidance, useful information, and support for poets, fiction writers, and non-fiction writers. Being a pretty old resource (founded in 1970), this website is the largest non-profit organization established to assist creative writers of all kinds. There you will find hundreds of literary journals, writing prompts, exercises, topic suggestions, MFA programs, contests, information, and databases of literary agents. In a word, if you are looking for some accurate information and want to become closer to a creative writing community – start with Poets and Writers.
Language is a Virus
Language is a Virus is a website to help you overcome your writer’s block. They offer a number of amazing tools for creative inspiration, such as:
Text generators. There you will find Haiku-tron, Shakespeare’s sonnets generator, funny names generator, etc.;
Text manipulation. Includes text mixer, poem collage, word mosaic, etc.;
- Writing techniques from famous authors.
Also, you will find a number of articles, writing games, exercises, experiments, and more.
Reddit’s Writing Prompts
Reddit offers a stream of wild, super-creative, and interesting writing prompts submitted by users. You can browse through them and read the comments of others. When you have a lack of ideas, just visit this page, choose the best prompt, take a sheet of paper and a pen, and start writing. Random ideas generated by real people are sometimes the best and the most natural source of creativity.
Damn Interesting
Damn Interesting is a resource where you will find amazing true stories from science, history, and technology to fill your mind with interesting stuff. This is a good place to get ideas as well as to motivate yourself to work harder and achieve desired results. We bet you'll love the tale of the man who invented Big Foot, the story about the furious race of two scientists who tried to achieve absolute zero, mysterious facts about roach milk and other unbelievable but true stories. Read the free articles or listen to the podcast versions to pick up some creativity.
Moody Writing
These are blog posts for creative writers mostly composed in the “how to” style. Among them you will find tips on how to write dialogues and integrate tone into them, how to develop your characters, how to avoid clichés, meet readers’ needs, express stronger emotions, and more. You can also check out book ratings and reviews written by Mooderino, the author of the blog.
The Write Practice
When you sit down to write and your mind is empty, this site can help you get through your writer’s block. There are two reasons for a writer’s block – a lack of writing skills or a lack of good ideas. This blog assists with both problems. There you will find a great number of exciting creative prompts that will improve your knowledge and push you forward to your best ideas. Also, The Write Practice features tips on creative writing such as characterization, story building, productivity techniques, short story formats, and more.
Submishmash
Submishmash is an online catalog of contemporary literature (both fiction and non-fiction), poetry and visual art. It is a pretty popular resource where publishers can share their works worldwide and express themselves. If you have some creative writing that you are ready to show to the world – get yourself a Submishmash account. This will help you connect with other writers and keep up with the latest literary trends. Some positive feedback will boost your creative energy. And who knows - negative feedback might be even more effective!
Hopefully, these websites will help you get inspired and move forward! If you have your own special recipe on how to boost creativity – please share your ideas with us below!
If you enjoyed this post, check out The Writing Process Blog or these articles from our archive:
- How to Construct a 3D Main Character
- Are You Ready to Draft Your Story Arc?
- How to Create Your Story’s World
- How to Create a Compelling Character Arc
- Are You Ready to Draft Your Plot?
- 4 Plot Pitfalls You Need to Avoid
- Map Out Your Character’s Transformation Using the 9 Enneagram “Levels of Development”
- The Four Drafts Your Novel Needs (and Why You Probably Won't Use a Single Word of Your First Draft!)
Be confident about grammar
Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.