Writing Websites and Resources for Writers of All Stripes

Writing websites and resources exist for just about any writing need. This article directs you to some of the best writing resources on the internet for creative, technical, and academic writers. Whether you’re looking to improve your grammar, find creativity, get published, or improve your research, this growing list of writing websites will help you advance in your writing journey. 

Writing Resources for Crafting Good Writing

How do you write well at the level of syntax, grammar, and basic writing craft? These writing resources help you with the mechanics of effective prose. 

Writing Resources for Grammar and Mechanics

These writing websites help you learn the basics:

• Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips—A blog and podcast dedicated to the quirks of the English language, plus advice for writers of all stripes.
• AutoCrit—A writing platform with both free and paid software options that helps writers write error-free, stylish prose.
• OWL at Purdue—A great resource that goes over every single mechanic of effective prose writing. 
• Grammar Monster—A site with lessons and games to help you lock down the mechanics of good writing. 
• Syntaxis—Grammar quizzes to ensure you’ve mastered the quirks of the English language.
• Common Errors in English Usage—A database of common errors, hosted at Washington State University. 

Writing Resources for Vocabulary

Want to expand or test your vocabulary? These writing websites help you find the right word or learn a new one.

• Tip of My Tongue—for when that word you’re trying to think of is, well, “on the tip of your tongue.”
• OneLook—Helps you find the word you’re looking for by first describing the concept. 
• Online Etymology Dictionary—teaches you the known histories of English-language words and how they evolved to become what they are today. 
• Free Rice lets you test your vocabulary on 5 different levels. It’s great for English-language learners as well as native speakers who want to test their knowledge of words like “passipied” and “pandiculate.” For every answer you get right, the site donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Programme. 

Writing Resources for Style

Think deeply about your writing style with these helpful resources:

• Word Frequency Counter—paste any text here, and it will tell you the frequency that every word is used in the text. Great for if you feel your writing is getting redundant or repetitive. 
• This summary of Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook “style scale” (great for speculative writers!). 
• Our article on Writing Styles. 
• “The Sentence is a Lonely Place” by Garielle Lutz—A craft essay that thinks deeply about words, sentences, and our relationships to them. 
• Our masterlist of 116 common literary devices.
•  Literarydevices.net, which offers more literary devices examples and tools for you to practice with. 

Websites for Classic and Contemporary Poetry and Literature

Great writers are great readers. Here’s where to read classical literature and find out what’s happening in the contemporary writing world. 

Classical Literature

• Project Gutenberg—A library of literature that all exists in the public domain. Completely free. 
• Cornell University’s Digital Library—Another great collection of historical literary ebooks. 
• This public Google Drive filled with PDFs of literary theory, criticism, and analysis from both past and contemporary thinkers. 
• American Verse Project—A digital library of American poetry books and verse collections pre-1920. 
• Luminarium—If you can get past the hard-to-read fonts, this website features a lot of English-language poetry from Medieval and Renaissance times.
• Poet’s Corner—Another digital repository, and possibly the oldest online. 

Contemporary Literature

• UPenn’s Electronic Poetry Center—A huge collection of texts and examinations on innovation in poetry. 
• Ubuweb—An audiovisual collection of experimental, concrete, and visual poetry. 
• LitHub—Essays and craft analyses about contemporary literature and events.
• Book Riot—A book blogging website all about contemporary events in literature. 
• The Marginalian—The brain child of Maria Popova and a vast intertextual repository of philosophy, literature, and science. 
• Poets House—Also a school, a library, and a community center in New York, Poets House is often at the forefront of contemporary poetry. 

Writing Resources to Help You Focus

If you find your attention is everywhere except your word document, these resources can help you get words on the page. 

Writing Softwares

• Write, Or Else—Admittedly, this is a stressful writing resource, but it might work for you. The idea is that you set a timer and keep the words flowing on the page, otherwise the page yells at you. You can also set it on hard mode, wherein the text editor starts deleting your writing… unless you keep typing. 
• Written? Kitten!—A kinder version of “Write, Or Else”, this site shows you a new photo of a kitten for every X amount of words you write. Positive reinforcement!

Noise Cancellation

Useful websites for when there’s too much sound around you. 

• Rainy Mood—If rain gets you in the spirit of writing, this white noise generator is great for you. 
• Coffitivity—If the sound of a busy coffee shop helps you focus, but there’s no cafe nearby, this site might help you focus. 
• Rainy Cafe—And, if you like both the sound of rain and of coffee shops, why not both? 

Word Processors for Creative Writers

Looking for something other than Microsoft Word and Google Docs? These softwares and products will meet your unique writing needs.

Free Software

• Open Office—A great replacement for Microsoft Word, Open Office is a free suite of open source software that provides similar tools and functions.  
• LibreOffice—Another Microsoft Office Suite alternative. 

Paid Software

• Scrivener—Novelists and bookwriters will especially love this word processor that has all the bells and whistles you can think of. Keep track of ideas, plan characters, plot things granularly, organize your work, and, of course, write the bestseller waiting inside of you. 
• Final Draft—Screenwriters looking to write perfectly formatted scripts would do well to write them in Final Draft, which includes a number of easy-to-use features that formats while you write, so that you can just focus on the writing. 
• OmmWriter—A word processor focused on focus, OmmWriter offers distraction-free structure so that you can write and create in your best digital environment. 

Writing Websites for Research

The internet is often too big to trawl. While your local library often has the resources you need, these websites also help you find the information you’re looking for. 

Broad-based Search Engines

Google is the dominating search engine, and it’s so strong that other search engines often exist unnoticed. However, savvy writers would do well to know the different engines that exist, as many of them will yield results that otherwise remain hidden. 

• Searchmysite—a great search engine for the “indie web”, with results that privilege personal sites and “digital gardens” rather than sponsored content. Great for digging up websites oriented around personal experience—a must-have for fiction writers. 
  • Other similar sites include Indieweb, Blogarama, and this big list. 
• Marginalia Search—Another great search engine that focuses on non-commercial content. 
• World Cat—Kind of like a meta-library site, this search engine connects you to library resources around the world. Great for academic or literary research, as well as books, maps, articles, sound recordings, theses, and content that might otherwise be paywalled. 
• RefSeek—An search engine with over a billion academic resources, including encyclopedias, magazines, monographies, etc. 
• BASE—An index of academic journals and publications, about 60% of which is Open Access. 
• EBSCOHost—Another massive database. Your local library might have a free subscription for you. 
• JSTOR—Short for Journal Storage, JSTOR has research on any topic you can think of. Also may be free to access through your local library. 

Search Engines on Niche Topics

For queries on more granular topics, consider these site:

• Writer’s Search Engine—A database of articles on literature and writing craft. 
• SpringerLink—A search engine focused on scientific research and documentation.  
• Science.gov—a database of scientific research specifically from U.S. labs and scientific sites. 
• RePec—Publications on economics and related sciences. 

Wikipedia also has this fantastic list of specific search engines that can hopefully meet your niche research needs.

Other Research Resources

• Social Security Administration—A database of popular baby names from 1879-Present. Especially useful for writers of American historical fiction. 
• Finding Data on the Internet—An amalgam of useful tips for finding information online. Especially useful for journalists and digital researchers. 

Fiction Writing Resources

These writing resources are specific to writers of short stories, novels, screenplays, and other forms of fiction.

• E. A. Deverell’s free worksheets for every aspect of the fiction writing process. 
• The Storyteller’s Roadmap—Free guides through the process of planning, writing, and revising stories. 
• Story Structure Database—Especially useful for screenwriters, this website deconstructs the plot structures of books and movies so you can see how it’s done and construct new stories yourself. 
• Relatedly, TVTropes is a fantastic database of plot and character tropes throughout every genre of fiction. 
• MIT’s List of Primary Personality Traits—Useful if you’re working through the basics of character development. 
• This guide on writing realistic injuries, in case your characters ever get injured. 

Poetry Writing Resources

These websites make the craft of successful poetry that much easier. 

• Poemancer—By poets, for poets, the website features prompts and guides through writing inspired poetry. 
• RhymeZone—Great for poets writing rhyming and formal poetry. 
• Poets.org—A huge repository of poetry, including daily poems in your inbox and ways to connect more deeply to poetry. 
• The Paris Review—In addition to being a literary journal, The Paris Review has an interview series that lets you hear from contemporary poets and writers about their approach to the craft. 
• Poetry Foundation—Also a literary journal and nonprofit advocacy group for poetry in American life, Poetry Foundation has a “Learning Prompts” section that prompts new poetry and learning all at once. 

Publishing Resources

Want to put your work out into the world? These sites help you do just that. 

Publishing in Literary Journals

• Our guides on the best literary journals for poetry and on how to submit to literary journals. 
• Chill Subs—A huge database of contemporary literary journals, with useful queries and search terms to help find the best homes for your work. 
• Duotrope—A site built on user-reported data that offers insights into a literary journal’s publishing opportunities, selectiveness, and guidelines.
• Submittable—A submission manager that also lets you search for upcoming deadlines and publishing opportunities.
• New Pages—A classifieds site for publishing opportunities. 
• Authors Publish—A magazine that routinely announces new submission opportunities and literary journals. 

Traditional Book Publishing and Finding Literary Agents

• QueryTracker—A directory and website for finding and tracking your submissions to literary agents. 
• The Directory of Literary Agents—An annual guide to the state of contemporary U.S. publishing. 
• Agent Query—Another database of agents, searchable by genre. 
• Our guide to how to publish a poetry book. 

Self-Publishing

• Our guides on self-publishing on Amazon and 5 tips for self-publishing your book. 
• This in-depth guide on the self-publishing process.
• PRESStinely—A boutique service that partners with writers to help them self-publish and self-promote their books. 

Creative Writing Websites for Prompts and Inspiration

If the blank page won’t stop staring at you, these websites for writers and poets will help you find and explore new ideas. 

• Creativity Portal—A library of creative writing prompts. 
• Language is a Virus—An automatic prompt generator, hosted at a site with a ton of great writing exercises and games. 
• Reedsy—Each week, Reedsy puts out a set of 5 prompts that writers can submit short stories (1,000-3,000 words) to. Winners receive $250!
• NYC Midnight—A platform that puts out different creative writing contests. Writers are tasked with writing stories or scripts of different lengths in an assigned genre. If you make it to the final round, you’re eligible for big cash prizes!
• Writing Exercises—A repository of prompts, exercises, and articles to help you write what you need to write. Check out their generators, including a first line generator and character generator to get you writing randomly and creatively. 
• Seventh Sanctum—A website that hosts 150 different random generators. 
• Poets & Writers—A magazine and collection of writing resources, including this prompts section for writers of all genres. 

Creative Writing Websites for Classes and Further Education

We break down the best (non-degree-conferring) creative writing schools at our article here on creative writing programs. Of course, we’re biased in thinking that Writers.com is the best place to learn the craft. 

Additionally, we think these websites have great blogs, newsletters, and opportunities for learning more about writing:

• The UK-based National Centre for Writing’s Writing Hub. 
• DIY MFA. 
• Janice Hardy’s Fiction University blog. 
• Yale’s free self-directed course on Modern Poetry.

Miscellaneous Writing Resources

These writing websites are harder to categorize but are nonetheless helpful to know about.

• Copyscape—A great tool for checking if your work has been plagiarized online. 
• BetaBooks—A service that lets you keep track of how Beta Readers read, respond to, and interact with your work. 
• Pacemaker—A free service that helps you set a writing goal and keep track of it. 
• Our article on the best gifts for writers. 

Find More Writing Resources at Writers.com

Want more support for your writing? Take a look at our online creative writing courses, join our writing community, or read our writing tips section for more advice on the writer’s life.