Writers' links

Thesaurus.com: great online reference, free, comprehensive

Reverse Dictionary: the best for finding types of things by category, eg "ornamental".

Wordnik: their lists of "Related" words is brilliant for broader searches.

Thesaurasize: especially handy for finding types / examples of things

Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary: elusive names of parts

Visual Dictionary: better search-function than Webster's

Visual Thesaurus: amazing, limited vocab, some free searches

Hex-Hub Colours: originally for html codes, great colour names

Using English: idioms: handy idioms search, good categories

Free Dictionary: idioms: richer lists but no search by meaning

Rhyme Zone: substantial lists of rhymes by syllable count, including short phrases, with colour and bolding to distinguish the more frequently used words / phrases

Dictionary of Similes: rich collections across literature to inspire you

Behind the Name: huge, great searches, every language & era

Behind the Surname: huge, great searches, every language & era

Popular UK names: latest stats with downloadable spreadsheets

Popular US names: rankings searchable for any year after 1879

3 traits: 3 randomised character traits, often an inspiring mix with useful contradictions / complexity

Quick cameo: Randomly generated quick character cameo, ideal for walk-on parts, writing exercises, and getting started

Jobs ideas: Randomly generated lists of jobs, to inspire a wider range of possibilities for your character

Choosing / Researching Locations

Location Works: Massive archive of cool locations, interiors and exteriors, with lots of photos for each one so you can really embed the detail and atmosphere

Location Partnerships: Another massive archive of locations, interiors and exteriors, with lots of photos and a sense of the surroundings as well

121 Locations: List of 121 types of locations for story settings, including ones that might not occur to you, with inspiring pics

Atlas Obscura: Map of the world's most extraordinary sights with one-click previews to inspire stunning locations in every climate.

Pexels: Copyright-free photos & videos. The videos are great for writing more active description. The search in the link is set to "seaside": search for whatever you need.

The Deep Sea: Neal Agarwal's scrollable site through to the ocean floor, with the creatures you find at each depth.

Luck-of-the-Draw Locations

Earth Roulette: A Random travel generator for unusual/interesting settings, with photos and info.

Map Crunch: Randomised Google street-views from all over the world: great for inspiration and practising description.

Map & layout generators

Azgaar maps: Free world-map generator with heaps of options. Use the maps as is, tweak them, or create your own from scratch.

City generator: Generate maps and customise them by city size and adding/removing features, plus change the colours/text.

Village generator: Generate village layyouts and tweak the details. More visually clear and manageable than cities, esp for practising describing locations.

Use these plot generators as springboards for writing exercises and to get a feel for the essential ingredients of a story or what elements you personally need in place to start writing. NB: These are random generators using databases, not AI.

Mystery Plot Generator: From Reedsy, with great character snippets and a spot-on range of ingredients to get you started. You can also use the dropdown to choose another genre.

Quick Plot Generator: The essential bare bones for a story: a character, their defining characteristic, an opening setting, a key event, a theme, and your character's aim.

Big Huge Labs Plot List: Randomly generated list of story ideas, great for getting you started and probing story ideas with who/what/where/when/why questions.

Servicescape Prompts: Instead of a randomly generated, the prompts are handwritten by individuals, which makes them wonderfully rich and thoughtful. It also has a wide range of genres and sub-genres across fantasy, romance, and sci-fi. Use these to practise specific skills like picking cool locations for events, writing zoomed out scenes, fleshing out characters, mapping story tension, etc.

Tools and resources for creating Imaginary Worlds (fantasy, science fiction, and all the related genres). I've repeated links from other sections if they're especially useful for world-building.

MyNoise: Professional soundscapes for medieval villages, spaceships, old libraries, ocean life, etc, with sliders to tweak the elements.

Ambient-Mixer: Crowd-sourced soundscapes with a huge range plus specific categories for fantasy, science fiction, and steampunk. Also lets you mix your own soundscapes.

Azgaar maps: Free world-map generator with heaps of options, tools, styles, etc. Use the autogenerated maps as is, tweak them, or create your own from scratch.

City generator: Generate maps and customise them by city size and adding/removing features eg castles, river, coast, plus change the colours/text.

Atlas Obscura: Map of the world's most extraordinary sights with one-click previews to inspire stunning locations in every climate.

Steampunk London: Incredibly detailed OS maps of Victorian London (specifically, 1893-95), with easy online browsing.

Roman travel times: Calculate travel times for ancient-Rome style civilisations, with options for different seasons, travel by ship, horse, foot, donkey, plus the cost of it all.

Medieval price lists: Genuine medieval prices, complete with assorted wages, to compare the respective worth of things, esp in terms of a labourer's day wage.

Behind the Name: A hugely comprehensive list of names which you can browse by language, meaning, gender (incl unisex), etc. It also has ancient, medieval, and mythological names in a bunch of languages.

Reverse Dictionary: Heaps of types-of-things, whether you need little boats, tropical fruit, words about ink or spaceships... a one-click brainstorm to fill your world. (Make sure you scroll below the ad at the bottom.)

Writing prompt generator: Heaps of lovely plot outlines (handmade, not ran-gend) in fantasy and sci-fi, with extensive sub-genres

Weird Animals: 70 of our weirdest animals, handily categorised by type, to inspire you for inventing your own fauna

This is an idiosyncratic list of sites I've found useful, rather than a comprehensive one. Some of the categories lean towards US/UK info, but I've started with more general links wherever possible. If you have a great link you'd like to share, please email me so I can add it.

General history & culture

• Wikipedia's timeline of inventions
• Advertising archives from before 1900s to present day. NB: To search by decade, don't click on the decade image. Go to the Menu bar (three straight lines at the top right), then click Search, then type in the decade, eg "1980s". This will bring many more results.
• Retrowow – Retro furniture, style and fashion in Britain from the 1950s to 1980s
• The People's History– Detailed summaries of daily life in the US from the 1800s to present, including cost of living, events, fashion, popular culture (music, TV shows, etc), sport, and technology a great one-stop shop
• Edwardian Promenade: Timeline, slang, and famous women of the Edwardian era
• Vintage Dancer: Clothing by decade from Victorian times to 1980s

Music

• US Number-one hits from Wikipedia
• UK Number-one singles from Wikipedia

Weather

• US Naval Observatory – Sun and moon data for a year, searchable
• UK Met Office– Past weather events from 1990 onwards; climate summaries by month and season from 2001 onwards

Names

• Behind the Name– Database of names and meanings from all cultures, including names from ancient civilisations (Matching site for surnames: Behind the Surname)
• SSA baby names– Most popular US baby names, searchable by year, from 1879 onwards
• UK Office for National Satistics – Most popular UK baby names, downloadable, from 1904 to 1994 and from 1996 to the most recent data.