Helpful Humpday

So, hopefully everyone enjoyed last week’s HumpDay Help, and has been making use of  The Phronontistery and delighting over the arcane and wondrous words there.  This weeks help, is not quite as extensive but definitely something that I’ve used time and again when I’m playing with rhyme and meter (neither of which I do well), is called  RhymeZone. What I love about the site, are its search settings.

Do you want a perfect match to your word? What if  there isn’t one?  Well then  RhymeZone can help you fool your audiences ear by getting a close match to the sound of the word. What if you want a word that rhymes with your word, but you want more it to have three syllables? RhymeZone’s search engine gives you that option too.  It will also search for synonyms, antonyms, and homophones.

It’s search engine doesn’t stop there though; it allows you to find out of Shakespeare used your word and tells you where, searches quotes for your word, checks the spelling of the word for you, and can even look for images of the word you’re working with.  It’s just an all in all amazing site and one you could spend hours and hours on, take it from me, and not get to the end of its usefulness.

So whether RhymeZone is an old friend, or a new discovery I hope that you go there this week and play with all the different things it can do. You never know when you might come up with your next huge idea.

Until next time Scribes,

Encourage one another!

Helpful Humpday

Welcome to one of the reoccurring features for the Summer!  Remember waaay back in May I said that I was working on things? This is one of the things! I’m so excited.

Why Helpful Hump Day?

Well because everyone  just can’t decide to what do do with Wednesday. People seem to be longing for Sunday reaching backward through the week desperate for more time, or they are clawing towards Friday and the promise of a break.  So I decided that there needed to be something positive done with Wednesday, and voila Helpful Hump Day came into being.  Keep reading to find out what exactly I’m talking about.

By now I know most of you are adept at using the internet to find all kinds of amazing content helpful for the writing process;  pictures, quotes, dictionaries, thesauruses,  and all that jazz.  But you probably aren’t aware of some of the other writing helps available, simply because they aren’t marketed towards writers.  Imagine that, cool things that are not being tagged for our use and enjoyment. The horror!  Every Wednesday in June, I’m going to work at undoing that oversight by sharing some fantastic places you probably don’t know.

 

Ever gone looking for an archaic word dictionary online and come up empty handed at the end of your search? I’ve been there.

It’s definitely a writer’s problem imagine this:  you’ve got an erudite character, or someone whose vocabulary is greater than your own, and you’re struggling to find words to put in their mouths while they simply glare at you and wait for their dialog to be written.  Creativity grinds to a halt, and you begin to notice how many other things you could get done if you weren’t trying to, you know, write in character.   You’ve almost convinced yourself that your time would be better spent doing laundry/weeding the garden/washing the dog/ staring at the cat/watching the texture on the wall slowly fill with dust, when you remember HUMP DAY HELPS and the fact that I told you about:

The Phronontistery

Not only, has the owner/writer  Stephen Chrisomalis compiled an amazing archaic catalog of words, he has done it for free. You can tell, he just loves language. Why else would he not only give an archaic word dictionary away for free but include a name section,  a “lost word” section, his own favorite word section,  and so much more also for the amazing price of absolutely nothing? His site, while not targeting writers, is a cornucopia of delights. Go and use it and then like the very best customers, leave him a tip. You tip your baristas (or should) you tip your wait staff (or should) so don’t skimp on the tips for Stephen (don’t be one of those takey-takey people on the internet).

Let me know in the comments what you’ve used Stephen’s site for, or how it has helped you. You can also leave requests for things you’d love to have as a writing tool but haven’t found on the internet anywhere. I’ll try and locate them for you and then present them in an upcoming Hump Day Help segment.

Until next time, encourage one another Scribes!