Find the Gold
By Annette Rey
Here I am with more sites for writers. I hope you are cataloging them somewhere in a file on your desktop.
The list is growing.
I know of so many sites out there; I am eager to include all of them, but I must focus and first give you a specific list for finding WORDS.
www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/
Take a look at what this site brings – http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/topic/birds/ – an entire page of names of birds. Think how you can use that in constructing poetry or describing an outdoor scene or refreshing your memory as to a bird you want to mention in your story. This site offers topic groups to search to flesh out your writing, like: Crime and Law, Culture, Personality and Emotions, Religion and Politics, Science, Technology, War and Conflict. Under the topic Clothes and Fashion I found thirty-nine names for shoes! Just looking at that list gives me ideas. If I am writing about an old woman, I could say “she pick-footed forward in her Dr. Martens.” Do you see how just seeing a word inspires great ideas and sentences?
Don’t look at dictionaries as a mundane resource. Today they hold gold.
Writer's Block No More 