Living in the age of the internet is a miracle if you’re a writer! I will fight you on that. It’s imperfect, but the ability to find information and visual references from all across the globe makes it easier than ever to fact check your work and find inspiration. But sometimes, you need more than a search engine. Here are some websites that have become a permanent part of my toolkit.
ORBIS The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman Empire: https://orbis.stanford.edu/
So, you might not be writing a book about the Roman Empire, but I’ve started using this tool to help me figure out an appropriate travel pace for characters in a pre-industrial setting. In the tool, you can set the departure and arrival points, the departing month or season and there are many options for the means of travel. You can even exclude certain means of travel. This tool has been very helpful to me in sorting out more realistic travel times for my characters as they navigate the world.
OneLook Thesaurus: https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/
Have you ever been searching for a word, but been unable to shake it loose in your brain? Me too. Often. OneLook Thesaurus is a special reverse dictionary/thesaurus program where you can enter a word, phrase, description or even a pattern of words and it will provide you with a list of words that you might want. For instance, if you put in the phrase “lost in thought” you can get the results of pensive, contemplative, meditative, and Reflective as the top four results out of more than a hundred.
Random Name Generator: http://random-name-generator.info/
A bit boring? Maybe, but useful. This is a simple name generator tool designed for real-world names that pulls on the US Census database for both first and last names. You can generate a list of names between ten and one hundred and select what genders of names you want. There is even a setting that lets you select the rarity of names that you want. While this is a simpler writing tool, it quickly generates a list of names for consideration that you can mix and match. In the past, it has been a solid starting point for me when working on new characters.