A Writer's Online BFFs - Writing Tips

Good morning, controversial readers!

My name is Jack Cuison and I’m one of the authors here at the Controversial Book Club! While you may know me for my Daily Controversies, today I’m taking a different route with a Writing Tips article, where I’ll be providing you all with websites I’ve been using for a while now and that I hope y’all will find helpful too. So, let’s do this!

I’ve been writing for all my life, as far back as I can remember. When we were little, my sister and I adored creating these miniature picture books and showing them to our parents. But I only started enjoying the actual art of writing around first grade, when I won a writing contest for my short story Magic of the Sea. Since then, writing has been my deepest passion, something I’m good at and actually enjoy.

Now that I’m in my teen years, most of my writing takes place online. This is both a great thing, since I have the opportunity to share my writing and gather research easily among numerous other things, but it also impacts the young mind quite negatively. Most teenagers are addicted to video games, watching TV, or being on social media. And all this time on electronics not only damages our eyes,  but it damages our ability to think correctly too. This means we’ve become less creative and less rational in our thinking abilities. 

So, with our creativity faltering, many writers, including myself, depend on the internet. Often, we Google character names, writing prompts, and stuff like that. And, I admit, I have begun doing this for almost every story I write. However, over the years, I’ve come across some exceptional websites that have immensely impacted and inspired me. Now, I’m going to share all these amazing online tools with you guys. So buckle up as we dive right into this.

Naming Sites

Ah, names. One of the most crucial aspects of a story. In the past, authors could simply create names of their own or something like that. But in our world today, it’s not that simple. Many times, I’ve thought of an amazing, outstanding character name. However, upon Googling it, I discovered that it was a popular wrestling organization and a famous YouTube channel. Sure, I can still use the name. Every writer knows the copyright clause:

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. 

But, for me, I usually like to use highly unique names that will have no comparison to real life (with some human names as exceptions). There are also cases where one cannot think of any good character names at all—their brain is simply burnt out of ideas. In either case, these four websites will be perfect helpers.

1. BabyNames

When I was about ten or eleven years old, I discovered babynames.com, a site for soon-to-be parents to find a fitting name for their child. Well, in a way, our characters are like our children; we created them, anyway. Whether your character is a man, old lady, goblin, or space robot, it is your creation, thus it’s your job to name it.

When using the BabyNames website, I would recommend using names found there solely for humans, as they are all really human names (though some are quite questionable). The website is easy to navigate and is perfect if you’re searching for a name with certain meanings, lengths, nationalities, etc.

2. Fantasy Name Generators

Oh, now this is a site I would recommend over any naming site. Fantasy Name Generators is a platform filled with name generators for every possible character, creature, place, and so much more! They have real names (from different countries), fantasy creature names, book names, plant names, location names, descriptions, and even primitive battle cries. I can’t even explain how amazing this website is. I’ve been using FNGs for ages and I completely adore it. Don’t stray away because of its name; Fantasy Name Generators has names for every genre you can imagine. I would advise you right now to visit this website and bookmark it, save it, whatever you have to do to keep it within reach for whenever you write.

3. Reedsy’s Character Name Generator

I will be discussing Reedsy a bunch in this article. To briefly describe it, Reedsy is a website designed to help writers of all ages with anything they could possibly need. One of their tools is a character name generator that can help you find names for humans, dragons, elves, and even gods! Not to mention the different types of names for each of these categories.

4. Hobby Lark’s A Cool Last Names List for Character Creation

I don’t visit Hobby Lark much and frankly, I don’t even know what they do or have. But for the last couple of years, I’ve found their list of really cool surnames mega helpful. I don’t have to explain anything. Just head over there to find last names guaranteed to pique your interest. Do note that these are human last names, nothing fantasy or that sort of thing.

Inspiration for Writing

I’m tricky when it comes to inspiration for my writing. Take my creative writing class from last semester for example. Throughout the year, we discussed the basics of creative writing and did a bunch of writing exercises and games. Towards the end of the semester, we began working on a short story, a project worth thirty percent of our grade. As a very prolific writer, I begged my teacher to remove the word limit for our stories, which she did! However, throughout that final month of the class, I had absolutely zero ideas for a short story—my brain was empty. 

So, it’s the second-to-last day of class. Our teacher pairs all of us up at random to share our story ideas and what we have written so far. I have nothing, but my partner has this excellent murder story all about parental struggles and manipulation. Later that day, I go home and start working on a murder mystery, inspired by my partner’s talk of murder. By the next day, I had written a 4,000-word rough draft for my short story (which you can find here if you’re interested.)

Now, what’s the point of all of that? The point is, many authors, especially us teens, have trouble generating ideas for stories (or you may have unlimited creativity, I don’t know). Now, I was lucky that day with the murder story, but sometimes it’s really hard to think of good plots, characters, or conflicts. Thankfully, in our digital age, there’s a plethora of websites out there to help us. Here are a few I’ve found useful.

1. ServiceScape’s Writing Prompt Generator

ServiceScape, like the previously mentioned Hobby Lark, is a website I only use for one of their tools, which in this case is ServiceScape’s writing prompt generator. This little generator can provide you with numerous plot ideas for many genres, mainly fantasy, science fiction, and romance. Now, if you use any of these prompts, I would recommend changing it up a bit or adding your own little twist, since many of these are rather generic and are also public, so anyone could be using the same prompt as you. 

2. Reedsy’s Plot Generator

Good ol’ Reedsy’s back, this time with a very helpful plot generator. I won’t spend too much time on this one—it’s very self-explanatory—but it’s important to note that these “plots” are very open-ended, meaning they do require a bit of creativity. (“Oh, no!”) You’ll be fine. 

3. Reedsy Prompts

Reedsy is literally one of the most helpful websites I’ve ever visited as an author; we could spend an entire Writing Tips article discussing the site’s features…but we won’t (maybe some other time!). Reedsy Prompts is basically a weekly short story contest where writers must follow the provided writing prompts. Entering the contest does cost a few bucks, but you can also just write your short story for free. And you can just use the writing prompts as inspiration too of course. They have every genre imaginable and I’ve written various stories based on prompts I found there. (Follow me on Reedsy Prompts!)

There’s so much more I could fit into this article, but I’ll save that for a separate one—perhaps a part two? But anyway, I hope you all find these sites helpful! I certainly have. If you enjoyed the writing tips post, feel free to hit the like button, leave us a comment, and follow this blog! For any further questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, head over to our contact page or email thecontroversialbookclub@gmail.com!

Have a Blessed Day!

— Jack Cuison ❧