Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Story tools and generators

Sometimes these can be genuinely helpful, and sometimes they’re just funny. Found any good ones?

Some cute tools here:
http://storytoolz.com/

especially the Half Title Generator.

There are several (serious and non) listed on our website:

ahem I knew that.

<.<

.>

Sorry. :slight_smile: Just figured other people might not have seen it.

(Edited to add: Wait… headdesk I think I totally read your comment wrong. Anyway. Whatever. Carry on, people. >_<)

I heard there was a name generator out there. I could really use one as I was traumatized as a young colt by a teacher that insisted that every writer included meaning into every character’s name… phooeey, the most I could do my characters from having the same initials.

This isn’t exactly a name generator, but several guides on How To Write Science-Fiction/Fantasy have advised against creating names that are too unpronounceable, such as the City of Ghjnpyuxkj. Said guides usually cite H. P. Lovecraft as a particularly bad example of this. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu is his most famous example, but he had dozens of 'em. I particularly liked Zstylzhemghi and Xoxiigghua. (The latter was a giant three-eyed octopoid monster that supposedly terrorized prehistoric Central American natives – its name influenced the development of the Nahuatl language, such as the modern Mexico City suburb of Xochimilco.)

This one has some truly fantastic generators. Really useful for naming, story ideas, prompts, that sort of thing. :slight_smile:

Seventh Sanctum is a good site. I have a couple of similar idea generators here, of which the magic system one is the most interesting.

For physical generators, try any fortune-telling method and apply it to your characters or setting. The Chinese “I Ching” (text is online) is a nice one. Tarot cards of any sort are useful; I have a set from a tabletop RPG called Everway, along with some associated “vision cards” which have fantasy art and leading questions on the back, like “what could go wrong here?” or “why is this person going the opposite direction from the rest?”.

Oh, and try the Mythic GM Emulator, based on the tabletop RPG Mythic. Both work by rolling d100 to generate leading phrases like “decrease/freedom” and answering yes/no questions based on your estimates of a thing’s probability.

I have a game called ‘Once Upon a Time.’ It is a deck that players draw from to create a story. Anyway… they have a guide book on how you can use the cards to be story generators called ‘Once Upon a Time Writer’s Handbook’.

You start by breaking the cards out into types like place, aspect (emotion), character, etc. You draw a card from aspect and character, for example, and that is your main character.

I bought it thinking I would be using it all the time…yeah… I have so many story ideas floating in my head that I’ve never needed it, but I do think it would be a fun activity for a writing prompt group to give the group a setting, a thing, and a character, etc.

It might be worth looking into if you are having a hard time coming up with starting ideas.

Here are the links -

http://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Time-Writers-Handbook/dp/1589781120
http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-ATG1030-Once-Upon-Time/dp/1589781317/ref=pd_bxgy_14_text_y