Let's get into some resources you can use if you're aspiring to be a writer!

Contests:

While Wattpad contests, whether they be Wattpad-hosted or individually-hosted, can be very useful and a fun experience, getting your work out there in other contests off-site is extremely important.

One of my favorite contests I've seen is the 53-word contest by Press 53. It's a free monthly contest where they put out prompts and you write an entry exactly 53 words long. It doesn't hurt to submit!

Another one that is both a contest page and a wonderful resource is Screencraft (the website). It's for scriptwriting and filmmakers rather than novel writing, but it has so many resources available on its page for new writers. Plus, if you want to get into screenwriting and filmmaking, that site runs contests that go straight to the biggest names in the industry: Netflix, the Academy themselves, WB, Universal, Apple, Amazon, and more. Even if you don't have anything to submit to the countless contests (they're adding contests basically every day, so there's no shortage of them), they have so many resources that make it one of the best websites I've encountered for writers.

Look local, too. I fear too many people look too grand and want all the large contest prizes, which is awesome. There's no harm submitting to them since it gets your name in their systems and things like that, but looking local is just as important. Look at your local literary magazine, look at your local college's or high school's opportunities (depending on how old you are), look at your local newspaper and see if you can get an opinion piece published, etc.

There are other websites you can look at for potential contests. Here are a few examples: Nothing in the Rulebook (it's best to frequently check this one since contest hosts directly submit to Nothing in the Rulebook to get advertised, so the earlier you check, the earlier you can apply), Almond Press (great for dystopian writers), and Christopher Fielden's website (it has a crap ton of contests and is frequently updated).

Another thing is try to downsize and look for contests specific to your location. You can consider this local, but if you live in a big place like America, you can also downsize to just your state without going so local that you're only submitting to things within twenty miles of you. If you live in Alabama, consider looking up contests specifically in Alabama. Also, don't limit it to strictly short stories and that kind of creative writing. Try writing poetry and submitting to poetry contests, as that's a different form of creative writing. Do you have an essay you wrote for school that you're proud of? Submit it to an essay contest! There are plenty of creative non-fiction essay contests out there.

Yet another thing is self-help books. You'd be surprised how high-in-demand they are. I'm a little embarrassed about it and also don't want to doxx myself, but I have been published with self-help books (along with ghostwriting for various genres, but particularly sci fi and romance). A lot of people don't know that I actually am a multi-published writer, but... yeah. Surprise. Wooo! So I'd recommend looking for self-help publishers and pitching a potential self-help book to them. They're typically short and sweet, normally no more than 100 pages tops (though mine tend to be in the 50–75 range), and it's about lived experience, so I find them relaxing to write.

Lastly, you can also submit to the Wattpad reading lists and various publications. For example, I submitted to ShortStory's 5-Minute Anthology and was published in there with my short essay Body Language. Being published in a literary collection like that is considered a publication, so there's no harm in submitting! In general, the Short Story profile is extremely helpful, so I strongly recommend checking them out!

There are countless Ambassador genre profiles, like Fanfic, Romance, TeenFiction, and more, so if you wrote a story that may align with an Ambassador-run profile, feel free to submit to it! Though keep in mind it can take a while to sort through submissions due to the high demand, so it may take a while to get added.

Quick summary list:

1) 53-word contest by Press 53 (website)

2) Screencraft (website)

3) Look locally

4) Nothing in the Rulebook (website)

5) Almond Press (website)

6) Christopher Fielden's website

7) Look for contests based on your location

8) Consider working with self-help publishers

9) Submit to Wattpad genre profiles and publications

Learning:

YouTube is honestly your best friend for things like learning. I was able to learn so much about writing from constantly watching film analysis, believe it or not.

I'm a native English speaker, so I can't speak as much about YouTubers for learning the English structure, though technical writing is far easier to learn than the creative writing, as at least the technical writing can be called "right" or "wrong," while the creative side is far harder to attach labels to. That's why I strongly recommend watching videos about the creative structure and analyzing where movies went wrong or where they went right.

A good example is the YouTuber The Closer Look, who analyzes movies and makes it his goal to learn with the audience, as he is a screenwriter looking to improve his craft. He teaches the audience things about screenwriting rules. So if you have interest in screenwriting, he's a great pick.

MauLer is another one who is... an interesting one to recommend. I don't watch his podcast, EFAP (I find it a bit too... much), but as an individual YouTuber, his long-format reviews are entertaining and really nitpicky, but honestly, seeing those nitpicks are fun and give you a new perspective of how some view stories. I don't always agree with him, though he is certainly entertaining.

And also just something to keep in mind is don't watch YouTubers with the intention of agreeing or disagreeing with their opinions on stories. The point of consuming this media is to consider new perspectives, not to put everything they say into your work or have someone be a mouthpiece for an opinion you do or don't agree with.

Another way to learn is to look at online writing blogs, like the Grammarly blog, for tips on technical writing. Feel free to find blogs that allow comments and engage in conversations with fellow writers.

You may want to consider joining other writing websites if you don't already, like Inkitt, ao3, Quotev, etc. There's no such thing as too much networking! Follow a whole bunch of people on there and learn more about their writing process!

Similarly, consider starting a blog using a site like WordPress. Not only is WordPress experience sought after by many employers, but it's also good to write more often. Maybe try having a weekly blog, no matter how few or many read it, that way you're frequently practicing. I personally will be doing a Wattpad Blog soon through Wattpad that I'm excited to start. The more you write, the more you learn! I will post a guide for how to write blogs in the near future.

Most importantly, ask questions. Writers love being asked about writing. It's our passion, after all. Ask your favorite Wattpad writers about their writing process. Heck, maybe even open an interview shop and ask to interview them. You can also do this with local literary magazines and authors. Feel free to email or call them and ask them if you can ask them some questions about the writing/publishing process. Most of the time, they're gonna say yes!

Lastly, life. It sounds silly to boil it down to "life," but the fact of the matter is, sometimes getting better at writing simply means gaining more life experience. Try to travel if you can, watch movies/read books from genres you haven't considered before (and/or indie movies/books), try new things (i.e., yoga, a new sport, or even just going to a new restaurant), etc. Sometimes just walking through the woods and thinking can be an eye-opening experience and give you a bunch of story ideas.

When I filmed a Korean short film for my Korean class last year, my friends and I went into the nature preserve on-campus and went to the most peaceful bridge. Despite it being night with no lights nearby, it felt so bright near the bridge thanks to the crystal clear view of the sky. Even though it was freezing (I live in upstate New York, lol), I found myself relaxed and at peace, and it gave me so much space to feel every inch of my body, and maybe even my mind, too. I've decided to go back there this semester to film another project. Sometimes you can have your eyes opened by the smallest of things, so I encourage you to go out and find those experiences! Safely, of course. Maybe it's best to bring a friend along the way.

Quick summary list:

1) Learn through YouTubers (The Closer Look, MauLer)

2) Look at online blogs (i.e., Grammarly)

3) Join other writing websites (Quotev, ao3, etc.)

4) Consider starting a blog

5) Ask writers and publishers questions about the writing/publishing process

6) Gain as much life experience as possible

Tools:

Text-to-speech, or TTS, is your best friend. There are countless TTS generators out there if you just Google them, but plenty of sites, like Word, have built-in TTS generators as part of their accessibility. When editing your work, be sure to read it out loud or plug it into a TTS generator, as you are going to catch more errors hearing it than you do reading it in your mind. If you're writing a story with dialogue in it, definitely read the dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural.

Celtx is another great tool if you want to get into screenwriting. It has both a free and paid membership, and of course the paid is better, but the free is honestly a pretty good free software. It gives you a few script files for free and gives you the core formatting tools you need, which is typically the most daunting part for aspiring screenwriters. Celtx will do all the formatting for you, so you don't have to worry about the correct way to format things like dialogue.

Along with that, if you want to get into screenwriting, search up popular movie scripts and see how they're written. Most movie scripts are actually available online! For example, even though I've been learning screenwriting for four years, I still look at the Dune (2021) movie script frequently to study it. If you just Google "Dune 2021 script," you can find PDFs of it. Even if you don't want to learn screenwriting, it could be beneficial to read these scripts to see how they present their stories in a different medium than novel writing.

Scrivener is a fantastic writing program I personally use. While it's expensive, it has the best layout for me. It can be complicated to learn, but once you do, it's super useful. Scrivener allows you to organize notes, have easily accessible research folders, format it like a proper manuscript, etc. I definitely recommend looking at recent YouTube videos of Scrivener to see what it looks like.

Novelcrafter is another good one that you can use. I personally don't use it, but my father does, and he showed me how it worked. If I didn't already dedicate to Scrivener years ago, I would switch to Novelcrafter now due to its clean layout and also the fact that you can make character profiles, where every time you type your character's name in the text, if you hover your mouse over it, it'll show a brief description of the character and anything important for you as the writer to remember.

Grammar editing software like Grammarly, QuillBot, and ProWritingAid can be useful as well, though I personally edit mostly using TTS as that helps me catch far more errors. Keep in mind grammar checking software can be wrong, so it's not a 100% foolproof grammar plan, but it can help.

Grammarly I've noticed is best for things like spelling errors and the other basics like that, so if you're a non-native English speaker and/or someone who struggles with spelling, Grammarly could be very helpful, especially since it lets you choose what language you want to write in down to the specific styles (i.e., Grammarly has options for both US and UK English, and I find they're more accurate than other editing software's US and UK English settings).

QuillBot is the most aggressive checker. That means it tends to make the most errors because it's too aggressive, but it also catches the errors that Grammarly and ProWritingAid miss.

ProWritingAid is an okay checker, but it's very passive, in my experience, and it misses many vital errors. However, it is pretty good at catching when you're using the same word too often. For example, if you use the word "look" too often, ProWritingAid will catch it, so if you think you repeat words too much, writing using the ProWritingAid site could be beneficial for you.

Quick summary list:

1) Use text-to-speech

2) Use Celtx for screenwriting

3) Look at movie scripts to learn about scriptwriting

4) Consider using software like Scrivener and Novelcrafter

5) Consider using grammar editing software (Grammarly, QuillBot, ProWritingAid)

AI:

*Sigh*

Okay, fine, let's talk about AI. I am so flipping tired of talking about it, so let's speed through this, shall we?

I work in AI and have trained it for two years now, so I understand AI concerns. I'm not going to sit here and tell you to use AI to write. Don't. For multiple reasons. For one, it's just not fair to people who actually work hard to write. AI writing is lazy. Another reason is because AI sucks at creative writing. It just does. Trust me, I specialize in training it to be better at creative writing because it sucks that bad at it that I'm constantly working on the creative writing side of things. It's messy purple prose at best.

That being said, AI can be a valuable tool. Like any other piece of tech, when used right, it can be extremely helpful. I personally use AI for research. I'm at a crossroads: I love sci-fi but suck at science. Yeah, sounds great, right? I'm bad at math and no matter how hard I try, I can't understand that kind of stuff. So, I use AI to help me research things like the atmosphere on different planets, the results of certain cosmic disasters, how spaceships function based on humanity's current tech, common sci-fi errors, etc. While it is science fiction, if I can include realism even in the science-y bs, that can help immerse readers.

AI when used as a research tool is really, really useful and will cut down hours upon hours of research time. Some might see this as lazy, but honestly, if I'm gonna spend hundreds of hours writing a book, I think shaving some hours off the research time is justified. So I don't think there's any problem with asking AI for help with things like research, brainstorming, writing tips (though be cautious about this one since it's not great at writing), and other general things like that. It's like asking a friend who's good at science to explain a science concept to you.

That being said, I very strongly discourage using AI for actual writing. Things like asking it to strictly check your grammar is fine, though sentence rewrites I discourage. While some people overblow it a lot (a few rewritten sentences isn't inherently plagiarism, y'all), I still discourage it mostly under the reason that AI doesn't write well, and you're better off finding your own style rather than relying on AI to rewrite your work.

So, to summarize, I think it's fine to use AI as a tool for things like research, brainstorming, looking for lists of synonyms, and providing grammar tips, though using it to actually write is not a good idea.

That does it for the resources chapter, though I will have more chapters for guides and tips and tricks in the future! There are countless resources, so I'm sure I'll make another resources chapter in the future, too.

I'm working on a chapter that breaks down various writing careers and ways to help boost your writing resume, so that'll be next. See you soon!