In her blog, podcast, free email writing course, a workbook on writing, and a plethora of articles, Kristen Kieffer shares her own experience as an author and helps other aspiring novelists to avoid mistakes that she made while writing her first book.
There are also some secrets of the craft shared here, from where it is best to share your writing to why digression can sometimes be a boon for your story. Anyone with something to say can submit a post and the community is quite diverse and supportive.
Self-Publishing School is the leading educational self-publishing company (and it’s our sister site). It’s our second choice for the best writing websites to keep on your radar.
With writing games and exercises galore, Language is a Virus makes a perfect playground for words enthusiasts.
#15 – Helping Writers Become Authors
Authors are notorious for their typo blindness because by the third draft, they know the text as the back of their hand and familiarization handicaps your ability to pick out mistakes. That’s why we need editors – or at least editing services that will comb their text through for misspelled words and other pesky oopsies.
Apart from valuable advice, Friedlander shares free book cover templates, book launch toolkit, and media kit for authors to optimize the marketing of your book.
Janice Hardy, a teen-fantasy novelist and a founder of the site, with the help of fellow writers and guest contributors amassed more than 2,500 articles on fiction writing. They deal with every stage of penning a novel – from brainstorming ideas and developing a story to self-publishing your finished opus. There is also advice on motivation, productivity, together with inspiring success stories. Quite a curriculum!
Six-Word Memoirs is a charming little project with a big goal. It aims to inspire the participants to get to the essence of who they are and what matters most. To do that, they have to answer some pretty existential questions in six worlds – no more, no less.
Moreover, together with James Blatch, Mark co-hosts weekly free podcast interviewing million-selling indie authors, successful debutants from traditional publishing, and industry insiders to shed light on the process of publishing and promoting a book independently.
Paper Help is a service that specializes in writing and editing of all sorts of papers, mostly academic, but if you need a second pair of eyes to go through your manuscript before its debut, it can be a nice low costing compromise between literary editor and doing it yourself.
Six-Word Memoirs is a charming little project with a big goal. It aims to inspire the participants to get to the essence of who they are and what matters most. To do that, they have to answer some pretty existential questions in six worlds – no more, no less.
Less of a writing website, this is a word processor tool for manuscripts with editing features and guidance based on real-world publishing standards.
#19 – Scribophile
With gamification devices like badges and competitiveness (via anonymous statistics), 750 words encourages you to stick to a schedule and write those pages every day. It’s minimalistic and private – no one will see your texts but you.
If you’re interested in learning all about Amazon self-publishing to how to create an online course and build an author brand, Self-Publishing School produces informational articles, videos, and podcast content on a variety of topics.
For those of you who have long been creating content for a living but never dipped your toes into long-form prose, this is a perfect boot camp.
We’re proud of our educational blog, and are always creating new content to help writers turn their dream of publishing a book into reality.
I know I’ve given you a lot to take in here, but I encourage you to take action and start building your new freelance writer website (or improving your current site) as soon as possible.
Once you’ve picked your plan, you’ll see the screen above. This is where you get to pick the name of your freelance writer website – exciting!
I know I say this a lot, but I’m going to say it again here because it’s important:
You want your potential clients to know exactly how to get the info they need so they can navigate your site and reach out to you.
1. You need to have the right content/pages, a good design, and a clear navigation bar.
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Because a “portfolio” is what people use when they’re trying to land a full-time job or some kind of business relationship where they’re treated like an employee.
Your goal is to find the most delicious chocolates you can get your hands on.
It only took me a couple minutes to put the top of a home page together:
Worlds are interconnected, and the rigorous linking system in World Anvil helps you reflect that! You can
With wiki-like articles, interactive maps, historical timelines, an RPG Campaign Manager and a full novel-writing software, we have all the tools you’ll need to run your RPG Campaign or write your novel!
- Link in articles you've already written
- Create links for articles you've not yet created (these are added to the to do list!)
- Create an article on the fly whilst writing another article and then link it in
Maps are great, but you know what's really cool? Linking your worldbuilding directly to a map! Or even linking maps to other maps, going from your world map all the way down to a city or a dungeon!
Design Interactive Maps
Write articles to detail and keep track of everything in your world! Choose from over 25 templates designed to inspire you with prompts and deepen your worldbuilding! Embed your maps, and include images, music and sound effects, and even secrets and spoiler markers, for an immersive reading experience.
World Anvil is a set of worldbuilding tools that helps you create, organize and store your world setting.
The maps feature will inspire you during the worldbuilding process, allowing you to quickly create articles you can flesh out later. Then, your readers and players can explore your world in an interactive way like never before!
Features for every worldbuilder! This doesn't include the specialized Campaign Management or Author Features - there's so much more to discover!
There are a lot of groups out there in a variety of topics that range from genre-specific writing tips to traditional and self-publishing industry news. Here are just a few of them:
This is an international forum where writers can receive feedback on their writing and support on every other part of the creative process from drafting to publishing and marketing. The critiques are often thorough and many come from published authors. Keep in mind that there is a monthly cost associated with the membership, but it might be worth it to be able to bend the ear of published authors.
If your passion lies in screenwriting, then you’ll want to book a one-way ticket to Talentville. Here you can get feedback on your writing and learn the skills necessary to perfect your screencraft. Plus, you can work on and build your network of contacts: the site is also a frequent stop for industry professionals (like agents, managers, and producers) on the lookout for new talent.
As the world’s largest Science Fiction and Fantasy online community, Chronicles offers writers the opportunity to get together and discuss the latest books, news, and pop culture in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy world. This is an active community with thousands of threads that include genre-specific challenges, workshops, critiques, and even publishing and industry information.
5. Chronicles
Feedback should be a vital part of any writer’s process, and this is exactly what Critique Circle offers. This members-only site allows authors to post stories in exchange for feedback on other people’s writing. You can also find storyboarding tools, writing prompts, workshops, name generators, games like hangman, and much more.
So, if you are tired of listening only to the voices in your head, take a look at our list of top online writing communities. (And if you're hungry for more, check out our more exhaustive list of the very best writing websites!)
One of the largest communities in the world, Scribophile offers workshops, tutorials, and critiques for authors in just about any genre imaginable. While it is free to join, only users who pay for a membership get access to all their features.