Every writer has its own style of writing. Mastering the skill of writing is not easy at all. It requires dedication, practice and knowledge. Without the solid writing skills no writer can join the effective and always-in-demand writers. Thanks to today’s development of the technology, the Internet has become full with various free outlining applications, grammar guides, writing software, and other tools and resources that can help the writers to easier research, create and publish their works, making this process less complicated and more efficient. Here are 10 tools and resources often used by writers to enhance their skills:
Plagiarism Checker by PlagTraker
PlagTraker is a free online plagiarism checking tool that would particularly helpful for copywriters, bloggers and web site content writers. Checks about 14 billion pages and highlights all the phrases that could be found in other sources. Moreover, the tool is available in 6 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Romanian.
yWriter
yWriter was primarily designed to be used by novel writers, but later it was further developed to also be compatible for writing plays and non-fictional stories. This free software helps the writers to better keep track of their work, breaking their writing into chapters and scenes, this way leaving their minds free to be creative. This is particularly useful when writing large novels, with lots of scenes, different characters, plots, etc.
OpenOffice
OpenOffice is a great office software set of tools used by writers for word processing, graphics, creating presentations, keeping databases, etc. The software is free for downloading, it is open-source and very easy to use.
RoughDraft
RoughDraft is a free word processor designed for general use by different style writers. It has easy to use interface, with all the important features, like a built-in grammar and spellchecker, simple system for easy printing with preview that shows how exactly the page will look, instant backup of all open files, important shortcuts, options for importing files or opening up to 100 at once, extensive help system, as well as special modes for writing novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays.
Mindmeister
Mindmeister is a free, secure, and easy to use mind mapping tool used to facilitate the collaboration between writers working on same projects in real time, with lots of features that allow them to directly exchange their thoughts, and ensure their work is save and no change is ever lost.
KTouch
KTouch is a free tool that helps writers learn how to quickly and correctly touch-type on a keyboard, that way helping them increase their productivity and efficiency. It includes different level training sessions that correspond with the typing skill level, and has system that measures the typing speed and precision and displays them while typing.
Evernote
Evernote is the perfect tool for those writers that cannot imagine working without constantly jotting down their ideas for later use or outlining their characters on notes spread all over their offices. With Evernote the writers can save and then later search their notes by keyword, tag or even by some printed and handwritten text inside an image, or even clip and share them on the web.
The Story Starter
The Story Starter is an idea generator with over 300 million “first sentences” to get new ideas that the writers can use for writing short stories, novels, plays, scripts. This great tool was awarded the 101 Best Websites for Writers in 2012.
Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster is one of the best free dictionaries and thesauruses that writers can use, and it also features other resources they might enjoy, like a vocabulary-building word of the day or maybe a free word game.
Urban Dictionary
Urban Dictionary is a free dictionary and thesaurus for writers that use slang words and terms, or new words and popular phrases.
Lona is a freelance writer, her hobby is writing tips and tech reviews.
16 Comments
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Maja
September 29, 2012 at 5:28 am
Off course these tools are helpful for improving writing qualities but personal dedication and hard work can’t be ignored.
Kristine
September 30, 2012 at 6:37 pm
These are great recommendations, I always make it a point to have a dictionary and thesaurus open to broaden my vocabulary while working on articles. Thanks!
Joy
October 1, 2012 at 4:43 am
Thanks for making these practical suggestions, being a freelance writer myself, I will surely find all of them helpful.
Pingback: 40 Tips to Boost Your Writing Skills to Master Level
Pallavi Singh
October 10, 2012 at 6:34 am
Hi,
Thanks for sharing the tools. I do agree that tools are great but I believe that the biggest problem we encounter while writing is the style, especially when you are a foreigner.
Some will say “your style is poor”, you top it up with your best words and someone else will say “your style is pompous, not casual at all”. If you try to use linking words (just to lead the reader on the path to your thoughts), then one guy will say “you are twisted”.
There is no way to learn about style. Although you have a squeaky clean English, the frontier between casual and pompous is hard to see…
kimwillson894
October 20, 2012 at 1:09 pm
Hi,
The above all points are good, am totally agreed with you. What am feel that for every writer they should have their own imagine thing in a unique way. That leads to good content. Google also expecting this from us. Thanks to share this informative post.
Janice
November 14, 2012 at 9:30 pm
Thanks for all the useful tools mentioned here. Especially I like the Mindmeister tool which helps
me plan new projects (new blogs). Again as said before the most important issues I see especially for foreign writer is style. A good article is one when every sentence completes the previous one. A lacking article is when every sentence starts a new subject, for example “Many men are suffering from hair loss.hair loss is an awful problem”. Anyway, thanks for the list.
Douglas
January 8, 2013 at 1:16 am
Thanks for the helpful tips!
This can really improve writing.
Valentin
February 8, 2013 at 8:04 am
Thanks for the review. Writing was always a pain for me, given that I’m non-native english speaker. I don’t know if you put plagiarism checker in the first position on purpose. In my opinion, plagiarism, including all kinds of spinning and rewriting, is slowly killing an informative part of Internet, as it increasingly becomes harder to dig out valuable information from a heap of sources with the same ideas and slightly different wording.
Makayla Garcia
March 24, 2013 at 3:14 pm
Great post. Very helpful tips. I am a freelance writer for the past 6 months. I was browsing the web for tips to enhance my writing. I found this blog and it is very useful. I dint have much knowledge about the stuff mentioned. Thanks for this useful article.
Brooks Destiny
April 8, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Very helpful post. one of my friends is a freelance writer and recently she was facing some problems. I am glad I found this post. I will surely recommend this to her. Thanks for writing in such simple language.
tantra
July 21, 2013 at 9:57 am
nice Very helpful post. one of my friends is a freelance writer and recently she was facing some problems.
Jasmin
August 25, 2013 at 10:56 pm
Because my mother language not English and i think a lot peoples are the same , so the best solution for me and others to outsource articles and every writing content .
here are some of best sources to outsource articles:
1-Odesc
2-Warrior forums
3-Blackhatworld forums
David Fitzgerald
April 8, 2014 at 4:45 am
Nothing beats great research when writing a great piece of content.
Elisa Negro
June 7, 2016 at 1:13 pm
Very interesting and well written article!
I’m trying to deeply understand how to improve my writing skills in order to be more efficient in my blog and my site management! So I found very interesting the tools you’ve pointed out!
Thanks a lot.
Mark
March 14, 2018 at 1:01 pm
I appreciate your blogging experience because it’s really worth it, especially on this 10 Tools and Resources That Will Enhance Your Writing. It is very useful, especially for bloggers.