#while writing I used music from ZenWriter

[unma]

o/

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

🛠What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

🎶Yes, I do! I've been listening to a bunch of songs on loop over the last few days, mainly Children of the City. I've been revisiting some older songs too, like Charles (Jubyphonic's cover) and Oppression Confusion Girl, and some covers from Will Stetson and some of Mili's other songs. I tend to put songs I listen to often in my playlist, which you can check out here!

🛠 I mainly use Zenwriter (the old web version) that's surprisingly still up. Certain it was supposed to be taken down by now, but it's still up and I like its simple interface. I used to use Word, but there's the fact that I never want to pay for it and that I have a bad habit of never shutting down my laptop, which ended in Word lagging really badly after every hibernation. I now only use it to apply fonts (so I can use a program I wrote to convert the fonts into AO3's html span form). I'd use Google Docs, but it just doesn't do it for me. I do use it to back up my work just in case though.

Thank you for the ask!

[avoid-avoidance]

NaNoWriMo references

As a present on this journey of ours: the contents of my bookmark folder with references, random generators, and other handy resources. Ones I’ve been using most frequently this year are marked with *.

Overall plot

*Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet

The two methods for creating suspense (Tumblr post)

Terry Pratchett’s thought process while writing Small Gods (from Discworld series)

Characters

‘No-effort’ character checklist set (downloadable .pdf)

‘No-effort’ character sheet (downloadable .pdf)

Writing tips, references, & inspiration fodder, general & specific

What to do when you’re ‘stuck’ (Tumblr post - a reblog, as original post had quite tiny font)

*The Wiki page on different ways people have tried to categorize emotion

Tone analyzer - type in some text, and it spits out which bits sound fearful, joyful, etc.

Tone-related vocabulary list (Tumblr post with text in image)

More words to describe someone’s tone/voice (Tumblr post - warning, post content is sfw but original post is from a nsfw 18+ blog)

Avoiding ‘informed traits’ - i.e., how to “show, don’t tell” (Tumblr post)

Creating fictional cultures

Distorted thinking styles (Tumblr post with text in image)

Culturally-diverse list of mythical creatures (Tumblr post)

A really cool crazy-complicated Venn diagram thing of different animals and the mythical creatures formed when they overlap (e.g. horse & human = centaur, snake & human = medusa or naga).

Handy tools and random generators

*MapCrunch - get random Google Street Views

*Seventh Sanctum - huge site with a ton of writing-helpful random generators. This link will take you to a random random generator

*Name-generator.org - Basically generates a string of random characters based on your criteria (e.g. starts with X43 and six characters long, or ends with ‘ana’ and is at least five letters long, or has ‘bat’ somewhere in it). By default it’s set to produce words/names that are ‘pronounceable’, although you can turn that off if need be.

Background music & ambient noise:

Star Wars-y ambient noise videos (Tumblr post w/ YouTube links)

mynoise.net - customizable noise machine combinations, e.g. thunder, forest, autumn walk, railroad, nature channel, café

Various fandom or misc. atmosphere ambient noise (Tumblr post w/ links) Warning for g-slur.

Misc. downloadable content:

Zenwriter (free version) - A nice little program to do your writing in, for when Word just isn’t giving you that inspirational Aesthetic™. I found it via an enthusiastic and much more descriptive Tumblr post - OP has since deleted, but here’s a reblog

Word-count related resources

A little subfolder of 1,667-word (or whatever your word goal is!) fanfiction - for breaks, or reminders of exactly how long/short that writing goal of yours really is. Probably most effective if you pick your own favorites, but here’s a 1,667-’er for Marvel (Avengers, ft. Steve, Coulson), and another for Star Wars (post-Episode VII TFA, ft. the Finn & Rey & Poe trifecta. 

Average/approximate document lengths for different types of writing (Tumblr post with image of table/chart)

And of course:

*nanowrimo.org

Any links to web-collaboration or organization for local write-ins, etc. in your region