My Top 5 Online Writing Tools
- fairyfrog04
- Feb 20, 2025
- 4 min read
Hey friends! As a follow-up to my post on writing research, I thought I’d do a roundup of my favorite tools I use for other aspects of the writing process. To go easy on both my budget and yours, I’m only adding free tools here. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Pinterest (Best for sparking initial ideas)
When it comes to raw inspiration, Pinterest kinda has it all. Writing prompts, reference photos for characters and props, and more concept art than you can shake a stick at. While it does have a lot of suburban mommy-vlogger type junk on there too, you can sift through and find the good stuff pretty easily as long as you use clear search terms. And if you’re a digital hoarder like me, it also has another bonus: You get handy places to store and organize all that visual information without having to download it. Just be careful not to spend the whole day looking at funny pet pics! (I have done that far too many times, I know whereof I speak.)
Writing Exercises UK (Best for beating writer’s block)
In today’s internet, it’s hard to find writing idea generators that don’t use AI. But this site has just that. It’s the solo project of a British lady named Jacky Girling, and every generator I’ve used (the site has over 20) has been the old-fashioned kind that spits out a set number of answers, all pre-written by her. Each generator has several options, categorized by different parts of the story: setting, characters, themes, etc. When you combine a few of the options, you can get more unique ideas pretty easily.
Of course, they’re not going to do all the work for you. What you’ll get are more like writing prompts with a few tips on each generator page for how to get the most out of them. But since the plot prompts tend to be very bare-bones, especially if you only use the “Event” or “Situation” buttons on the generator, you can use them to add a new plot point into an existing story if you’re feeling stuck with what you’ve already got.
Here are links to my two personal favorite generators on the site:
Behind The Name (Best for naming characters)
Behind The Name is, dare I say it, my best writing buddy. Need a name for an Ancient Egyptian princess, a Medieval Slavic peasant, or a modern person from pretty much any culture in the world? Behind The Name has you covered.
They have easy category buttons to search by gender, language, starting letter, and number of syllables too if you use their advanced search function. And they don't just list the names, they also provide information on where, when and sometimes even how each name originated. Link to the main page is here: https://www.behindthename.com/
They've even collaborated with the SSA and foreign equivalents to catalog the popularity of different names over time using census information. The American graphs for this go all the way back to 1880! The link to that page is right here, because the site itself is a little tricky to navigate if you haven't used it before.
But does the awesomeness stop there? No, no it does not. They also have a connected sister site that does most of the same things, but for last names. Just scroll down the homepage, click the shield icon at the bottom and you'll be there.
You won't regret this one, trust me.
World Anvil (Best for worldbuilding)
If you've already heard of or used World Anvil, you probably know what I'm talking about.
If you haven't, then here's the rundown: It's an online platform for making public, shareable, infinitely editable wikis for your settings. It's free up to two worlds, with most of the core features, but if you want all the cool bells and whistles a paid subscription system for it does exist. I was hesitant to include it in the post for that reason, but I get along just fine with the free version, so you likely can too. The one con is that they don't have an easy way to download the content you create or access it anywhere else. Due to that I'd recommend writing your articles in whatever writing software you already use and transferring them to World Anvil once they're ready to share.
Tumblr (Best writing-related social media)
To clarify, it's not the best place for promoting your writing, but definitely the best for connecting with other hobbyist or beginning professional writers and sharing what you’re working on in a fun, low-stakes way. There's a pretty large, cool and quirky community of writers on there, original works and fanfic alike. Also a higher proportion of writers from marginalized communities (Neurodivergent, Disabled, LGBTQIA, POC, etc), some of whom run AMA pages dedicated to improving creative representation for the groups they're part of.
Plus, so many relatable writing memes. Careful not to get distracted by those. Or do, if you need a break. I’m not your mom.
Here are a few of the best Tumblr sensitivity-check blogs: https://www.tumblr.com/yourbookcouldbegayer/
So there you have it, my top five. That's all for now, but stay tuned for next time!
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