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In which attention is given to certain websites that writers may find useful Writing may be a fundamentally solitary act, but that doesn't mean you can't use a bit of help from time to time, right? Fortunately, there are a number of places on the Net which may prove useful. I'll list a few general categories first, and end with a selection of useful links. Dictionary: As a writer, words are your only tool. Shouldn't you make an effort to ensure that your words really do mean what you think they mean? Dictionaries are also good for making sure you haven't misspelled anything, albeit this aspect of dictionaries is made somewhat less valuable by your word processor's spell-checking function. If you don't already have a good dictionary, you should; if you've only got one, you should have more. Some people think there's no point in getting words right (in both meaning and spelling), that this sort of thing just isn't worth worrying about. These people are wrong. Communication -- i.e., transferring information from one mind to another -- is hard enough when everybody agrees on which definitions go with what letter-sequences; when someone makes their own private definitions, or puts letters together in sequences other than what are generally agreed upon, they're only damaging their own ability to communicate with other people. I repeat, because it bears repeating: As a writer, words are your only tool. Would it be silly for a carpenter to put on mittens before he nails two boards together? You're damn right it would. Similarly, it would be silly for a writer to use words he doesn't know the meaning of and/or can't spell. Thesaurus: The phrases "ancient mariner and "old sailor" are not the same, even if their constituent words are synonyms. Words accumulate shades of meaning when people use them, and they rarely (if ever) accumulate the same shades of meaning. This is particularly important for dialogue. As an example, if one of your characters describes the color of the sky as "azure" while another describes it as "blue", which of those characters will the reader think is the more formal/pretentious of the two? In addition, mastery of differing shades of meaning will help you establish a 'voice' appropriate to the story you're trying to tell. Would you employ H.P. Lovecraft-style verbiage, labyrinthine and polysyllabic, for a simple tale of a child and his grandfather on a fishing trip? Probably not, unless you were writing a parody or something. Likewise, Ernest Hemingway's short and direct sentences won't work for a narrative intended to be redolent of antediluvian, Cosmos-spanning evil from beyond the farthest stars. Reference: It's important to get the details right. If you read a story which is supposed to be set in the real world, but it puts the Statue of Liberty in Florida, what would that do to your willing suspension of disbelief? Yeah. Me, too. Granted, you might not lose readers over an error, depending on how obvious it is and how strongly it affects the story. So what? Let's put it this way: "doing X isn't guaranteed to repulse all of my potential audience" is a damned lousy reason for doing X. As an author, you should sweat the details so your readers don't have to. For your convenience, I've installed a site search engine so's you can find anything in the site, no matter which page it's on. And here are the promised links, in no particular order:
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