Writing Resources

Editing Tools

• Hemingway Editor: This free tool helps you find complex sentences, passive voice, weak phrases, and more within your writing so that you can improve the readability of your work.
• Grammarly: Grammarly helps you find writing mistakes, such as improper grammar or misspelled words. You can either use their free product or sign up for a paid subscription to unlock additional features like a plagiarism checker, having the software help rewrite full sentences, and more.
• ProWritingAid: Use this tool to check grammar, shorten sentences, find out where to add sensory details to your text, and more. If you get a premium plan, it takes things to the next level by also providing feedback on your story itself and giving suggestions on how to enhance plots and characters.

Writing Advice Blogs

• Writers.com: This website hosts a ton of helpful articles for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and more. It’s a good resource for learning how you can enhance your writing and improve your novel.
• The Creative Penn: This blog is written by author Joanna Penn, who shares her insights into writing, helpful tools to make your writing journey easier, marketing your novel, and much more.
• Writer’s Digest: There’s a good chance you are familiar with Writer’s Digest, which is exactly why it needed to go on this list. This site is a great resource for learning about all of the different areas of writing – from creating characters to writing techniques to revising and editing your novel.

Query Resources

• Top Tips for Authors Querying in 2024: This YouTube video by M.K. Williams shares helpful tips on what worked for her during her querying process.
• Successful Queries: In this series from Writer’s Digest, you’ll be able to take a look at queries that were successful for real authors and learn why they worked.
• QueryTracker: When it’s time to send out your queries, this tool will help you research agents and keep track of the queries that you send out through the platform. You can also learn how fast agents typically respond, their reply rate, and more.
• Manuscript Wish List: Similar to QueryTracker, this website helps you to find agents and editors by genre.

Contests

• Writer’s Digest Writing Competitions: Writer’s Digest hosts a number of competitions throughout the year, including: Annual Writing Competition, Self-Published Book Awards, Short Story Competition, and more.
• Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Contest: The WLT Manuscript contest opens up in the spring and closes submissions mid-summer. They don’t require a completed manuscript – just the first ten pages along with a synopsis.
• L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest: The Writers of the Future Contest for new science fiction and fantasy writers is hosted every quarter, giving you multiple opportunities throughout the year to enter. They require works of prose, up to 17,000 words in length. Anyone who has been professionally published is not eligible.