Review: Fantasy World-Buidling Questions

These are hardcore questions. Patricia C. Wrede wrote a very intensive list of questions to help you determine the intricacies of your newly invented world.

Usefulness: 5 out of 5

Hot dayum. This is everything you could possibly need to know. I like to imagine that Wrede sat down with Tolkein and took this list straight from his brain. You can chose to ignore all the "trivial" things, like art and culture, for basic world-building, or you can develop a living, breathing society/world/plant. It's a spectrum of awesomeness.

Fun: 1 out of 5

This is another one of my "I like learning herpderp!" moments. However, this is grueling work. There are SO many questions and it takes soo much time. I can't even explain how time consuming this list can be.

Hipster: 3 out of 5

It's okay. This site is sort of well-known, but articles are always a harder to find.

Review: Articles and Advice for Writers

This is a short review. There's so much information provided by these articles, I can't really quantify this for everyone. I'll give you some scores and let you figure it out for yourselves :)

Usefulness: 4 out of 5

Lots of options here. So many different things to learn. Definitely an article for everyone.

Fun: 3 out of 5

I like learning. Stop judging me >.<

Hipster: 5 out of 5

I found these searching the web for how to make mead. So, yeah. Not exactly easy to find.

START HERE AND GO UP Review: A Way With Worlds

A Way With Worlds, hosted by Seventh Sanctum, is a collection of articles to help you world-build and otherwise structure your story. It's pretty easily understood and have over 56 articles to chose from on specific topics of world-building. I don't have anything particularly in depth to say about it. The site is pretty even, average quality.

Usefulness: 3 out of 5

These articles are all useful. Technically, that makes it 5 out of 5. However, I'm grading based on the usefulness as a world-building tool. As such, there are some articles that are totally useless. Specifically, the fan-fiction articles. Like fan service? Totally not worthwhile. Not even a little bit.

Fun: 2 out of 5

I find it fun because I like learning >.< The fan-fiction articles are definitely funny and some of the world-building articles can be as well. Nothing overwhelmingly interesting for other people though.

Hipster: 4 out of 5

You really would only know about this if you troll around Seventh Sanctum. It's another one of those "hidden in the sidebar and you probably won't notice it" kind of things.

Review: Limyaael/Arin i Asolde

Holy carp. This woman is absolutely, mind-bendingly fantastic. Every writer, fantasy or not, needs to read Limyaael's rants. They are glorious. They are perfect. They are quiite a many. But a lot of what she says is important for writers to understand- things like "how not to write a cliche even if your idea IS a cliche". Limyaael has, for all intents and purposes, put an entire creative writing class up on the internet, for free. (This link is to a mirror which houses all of her rants. This is convenient, because they were written on Livejournal, Insanejournal, and other similar sites and only later conglomerated into a giant list.)

 Usefulness: 5 out of 5

These are so useful. Yes, technically they are geared towards fantasy writers. Yes, sometimes they are personal opinions of Limyaael. HOWEVER, this woman is so well-written, so well-versed in literature that you can't help but take her seriously. She quotes Swinburne.

Besides that, she often points out things that make writing flat, boring and uninteresting; these are points that any writer can value, whether scifi, YA or fantasy. Limyaael wants you to succeed and is simply explaining what parts of writing can be bolstered and what can be torn down.

It's actually hard to write with the amount of sincere admiration and awe for her that is currently spewing from my every pore.

Fun: 5 out of 5

This is a biased answer. It has to be. Because, honestly, site design wise, Limyaael is using Livejournal. It's boring. It's ugly. It's bugly. Buuut, I love reading everything she writes, be it her stories or poetry on Fictionpress (Limyaael) or her hilarious and well-written rants. I find them incredibly enjoyable and therefore 5 out of 5.

Hipster: 2 out of 5

Limyaael has a lot of sway on the internet.  There are a bunch of mirrors of her work out there and, undoubtedly, someone on a forum will bring her up. She is, in my personal opinion, the Plato of the online writing community. Her works are probably the most well-known of any online writer. She may be the only person to have analyzed and written essays about the overall quality of online work.

Review: Yarny

Just like all the other "write online" tools, Yarny is pretty sweet. In fact, it is probably the overall frontrunner. It's a writing platform that can work both long-term and short-term. You can use with or without an account (my favorite!) And the interface is rather pleasing, so I can't even complain about that! Hopefully I can come back in a year and say that this site is Dear to My Heart. Fingers crossed!

Usefulness: 5 out of 5

So, Yarny is really great. It is actually totally unfair for me to try to explain it, when Yarny does is so well. (The picture does enlarge, if you click it, and was in fact PrntScr'D straight from the Yarny website.)

Not only is Yarny an online text editor, but it allows you to tag your text and separate it into different "snippets", all of which are searchable. If you have an account, you can save what you've written to look at later. And, even ore delightful is that little section called "People/Places/Things". It allows you to store your research and information pertaining to your story. Genius, no? If Yarny and 750words combined to create a fantastic online word processor with motivational badges, this thing would be 6/5, maybe even a 7/5.


Fun: 3 out of 5

The aesthetic of Yarny is quite nice. It makes me happy. Most of the fun points for this site comes from how very nice it is too look at, without infuriating me during the writing process.

(Thinking about it, it's really hard for any word processor to get high marks for fun, if you look at it objectively. I think I find things fun that most people don't. Like... reading books online or arguing about the minute details of things.)


Hipster: 3 out of 5

So, this was a tough decision. I knew NOTHING about Yarny before trolling through the NaNo forums to find things to post about. However, it is also a sponsor of NaNoWriMo, so it is also plastered all over the website. I gave it a 3 based on my own personal confusion at its existence. Dislcaimer: This is a totally biased result.

Review: One Page Per Day

First of all, hello everyone. Sorry I've been gone for a little while. I had a bunch of tests and papers to get done, and I had to pick between the blog, the mini-Nano and the rest of my work. I'm on a 6 day streak on 750 words, which is awesome. I'm loving the cute little badges they give me :)

This is for a 5 day streak. 

Cute little penguin!

Second, and most importantly, my review of One Page Per Day! It's touted as an "online typewriter". You are only expected to write one page, hence the title. Supposedly "you are free from the tyranny of the infinite page".

Usefulness: 3/4 out of 5

Now, technically I could just say 3.5. But if I start using decimals, my "search by score" tag list will be way too long. Plus, the different scores are under different circumstances. 

I gave OPPD a 3 for use during NaNoWriMo. Writing only one page is not entirely useful when you need to write 1667 words a day. (Which, by the way is 6 pages long in Courier New size 12 and 5 pages in Times New Roman, size 12). Writing one out of 6 pages online doesn't seem particularly valuable. 

However, I do think this site is totally worthwhile for year-round use. Writing one page a day would be great to keep you in practice, something that practically every article about writing suggests you do.

Fun: 1 out of 5

Yeah, so, there isn't much fun about this site. In fact, it kind of makes me angry. At the bottom of the front page are the "Rave Reviews". These are lies. The quotes from Toni Morrison, Mark Twain and Norbet Platt have nothing to do with the site, but instead are about writing in general. This is cheating and I do not approve of it. If you want to include reviews, include real, actual reviews from your users, so people can have a complete understanding of how this is supposed to work. 

Hipster: 2 out of 5

Another one of those "I have no idea what this is, but someone suggested it, so I'm gonna review it!". It seems quite nice and, like I said, a 4 for anything outside of Nano. But you have to find it first.

Review: Written? Kitten!

"Written? Kitten!" is sort of the ideological opposite of Write or Die. They are both word processors that incorporate motivational tools. While Write or Die is about scaring the crap out of you and threatening to ruin all your progress, Written? Kitten! is about rewarding your good work with pictures of adorable kittens. (Blogger doesn't let me put exclamation points in the tags, which I find infuriating. Just a note.)

Usefulness: 3 out of 5

This is, again, a biased post. I believe Written? Kitten! is less useful than Write or Die, because I believe the threat of destroying your work is more motivational than the gift of a cute kitten. However, for those of you who prefer positive motivation, this will be great. It plays right into the Internet's love of cats. Like Write or Die, it does not have an export button or any kind of formatting. Personally, I believe copying from Written? Kitten! is a little easier, because it doesn't take you to a new page like Write or Die does.

Fun: 5 out of 5

Kittens. Seriously, do I need to say anything else? Mrroow.

Hipster: 2 out of 5

About as well known as Write or Die. Really, these two sites are sort of tied to each other by their contrary natures. 

Review: Write or Die

Write or Die was created by a man called "Dr. Wicked" so you know something nefarious is going on. Like other online writing tools, this one is about motivation. It is about getting you to sit down and write and write and write until you can't write no mo'. It does this by deleting your words. Yes, that's right. It makes you write by threatening to unwrite what you've already written. If you're not writing constantly, Write or Die will delete, word by word, everything you've done. Better finish in time then, no?

I am reviewing WoD as a web app. However, for those of you who want all the evil that it entails without the "giant kitten of distraction that is the internet", there is an iPad/iPod/etc. app and a desktop version that works on Mac, PC and Linux.

Usefulness: 4 out of 5

Write or Die is really useful. This is because it cracks the proverbial whip in getting you to get your words down. It has 4 difficulty settings: Gentle, Normal, Kamikaze and Electric Shock. Gentle and Normal don't really count, in my opinion. Gentle simply gives you a pop-up box suggesting you keep writing and Normal plays an annoying sound, which can easily be avoided by turning your speakers off. Kamikaze and Electric Shock are the truly useful modes. Kamikaze is the mode everyone hears rumors about, the one that deletes all your hard work. Electric Shock, well, that doesn't even have a description on the webpage, so you know it must be the purest of evils.

You can also set a grace period. This is the amount of time you have before Write or Die imposes its evil motivational techniques. You can chose between Forgiving, Strict and Evil. As a personal suggestion, Evil may be too evil for most.

The true usefulness of Write or Die, however, is found in its time limit and word count goal. You decide how hard this is supposed to be. If you need a leisurely stroll, try 1000 words in 30 minutes. If you want breakneck speed, try that same thousand in 10 minutes. You plug in how much needs to get done, in how long, and Write or Die makes damn sure that you do it.

It does lose points for the lack of export capability. To save your work, you must copy and paste it into your own text editor. It would be quite nice if I could save it online or it would export as an already formatted file.

Fun: 4 out of 5

This is fun for masochists everywhere. I really don't think people use it angrily. It's not only fun to race against the clock, but its fun to see your words disappear and scramble to replace them. That being said, that could just be me.

Hipster: 2 out of 5

This is a pretty well-known site. The author created desktop and iProduct versions because he had such a big following.

Review: 750words.com!

750words.com is a site that I love. It is set up as an online way to write your "morning pages"- 3 pages written every day, generally long hand, as a way to clear your mind and get ready for the day ahead. This site has a word processor that notifies you when you've written approximately 3 pages, or 750 words. Not only is that rather nice, but it gives you badges for each "streak" of days you get- a turkey, for example, is three days in a row. It also allows you to track "metadata". Structured as "WORD: answer", it can track how many drinks you have a night, how happy you are feeling, whatever you decide to score. (It generally works best on a numerical scale, as the metadata is graphed for you. I, however, also track what books I am reading. It doesn't graph well, but it's interesting to see what I write based on what I'm reading, or if they even correlate at all).

Usefulness: 4 out of 5

Because 750words has a specific premise (write 750 words a day), it may not be perfect for everyone. However, the word processor and the premise are not why I find this site so useful and so dear to me. Those badges are incredibly motivating. Seriously. They are a great idea. In a similar vein to fitocracy, the fitness site that "levels you up" based on how much you work out, 750words badges for day streaks is something that keeps you going. If you have, say a 100 day Pheonix badge, you are NOT going to want to break that streak and lose it all.

The metadata is also really cool, as it plays to my sciency side. I like the idea of being able to track certain values over the course of your writing.

The 750words site also breaks down each day's work into percentages. It tells you how happy what you wrote was, which words you used the most and whether you were feeling introverted or extroverted (or more accurately, whether your WRITING was so). The statistics make for a really interesting understanding of your creative work.

Fun: 3 out of 5

Seriously, it's the badges that make me happy. Nothing else is really fun. (Well, I mean, I find the data fun, but I feel that's not an overwhelming majority in the opinions of most writers.)

Hipster: 3 out of 5

It's pretty obscure. I mean, most online writing tools can be pretty obscure. A lot of 750words problem is that it ends up used more like a diary and less like a creative writing tool. Not that that's a problem, necessarily. It just changes the demographic and means that you hear fewer writers' voices in the discussion of the product.

Review: Donjon

This site is completely new to me. Or, more accurately, a good DEAL of this site is completely new to me. In fact, anything that is not the Fractal World Generator is a whole new world. (I can be very obnoxious sometimes.) I decided to go through this generator, by generator, by generator, by generator. Y'see, unlike the other generators, that I had either seen before or were very small and could be understood rather quickly, Donjon is similar to the Sanctum or Chaotic Shiny in that it is a conglomeration of a multitude of generators.

 Usefulness: 4 out of 5

 Donjon is very focused on Dungeons and Dragons and Dungeon Mastering. That makes it "sort of" useful for writers (you have to make sure you're not archetyping too hard, which DnD tends to do). However, unlike many of the generators I normally frequent, this has a nice set of SciFi world/system generators. It'll give you planets! That's so convenient if you want to write a SciFi but don't want to worry about all the planets you're not ACTUALLY writing about.

The naming generators are pretty intense, about as hardcore as Rinkworks. You pick a main group of names (like "Outsiders") and then a subgroup (like "Earth Elementals"). There are so many options as far as names go, plus he separates them into Fantasy and SciFi.

Fun: 1 out of 5

This is a boring website. Oh god, it's so boring. The design is bland, there is no humor involved. It's not fun. I can find literally no redeeming qualities in it, as far as fun goes.

Hipster: 5 out of 5

I've been on this site a multitude of times and never realized that there was more than one generator. That should be answer enough.

Review: Fractal World Generator

This is a really cool generator I get to review today. This generator creates planets. Yes, readers, whole planets! Combine with, say, Chaotic Shiny's culture and constellation generators and you could have a home for your novels for the rest of your life.

Usefulness: 3 out of 5

I think this generator has a limited popularity. Yes, it's crazy convenient to have a world map generated for you in seconds, with the option to adjust certain parameters. However, any WriMo who needs an entire planet created for their novel is probably going severely overboard.

The generator has multiple different style planets as well, which means you can create your home world and the planets in the system, which can be incredibly useful for SciFi writers who may need a plethora of planets to discuss.

Fun: 3 out of 5

This is totally biased. In all honesty, I should give this a 1 out of 5. So, for those of you who don't care about my biases, just assume that's what it is.

However, I must say, it's really cool to just magically create a planet at the click of a button. I like to think I'm playing god and "Letting there be light" all throughout the universe. So, if, like most writers, you have a serious God complex, this can actually be pretty enjoyable.

Hipster: 4 out of 5

I have no idea what this website is. I have never actually looked into it until now. You can generally find a link to this generator on writers' forums, hidden in their somewhere, but only to the generator. However, the side links say that it has multiple generators involved (that I have never heard of anyone using). Obviously, this will involve a second review to determine the value of the rest of the site.

Review: Rinkworks Name Generator!

Rinkworks is one of my favorite places on the web, specifically because of their Book-A-Minute series. As someone who is from the Internet, you would've thought I'd already know about their name gen. Nope. Not a clue. This is proof that people on the internet don't look past what they're looking for/at.

Usefulness: 5 out of 5

Let me tell you why this is so useful, because I've been giving a lot of perfect scores for these gens. THIS is useful because it is the first and only generator I've found that truly let's you control what is generated. The Advanced System has a damn instruction manual to teach you how to gnerate names based on YOUR personal preferences. I would explain it here, but it's quite long and honestly, I haven't completely mastered it yet. But it's the perfect generator for someone who's attempting to build their own culture. You can define vowels, consonants or even strings of letters to include in the names.

And, say that's too much work for you (as it would be for me in the midsts of NaNo-frenzy). Rinkworks also has a thorough "Simply" interface that cane generate names from, if I can count correctly, 33 different categories. Including Pokemon. And, well, you'll always have me at Pokemon.

Fun: 2 out of 5

 The Advanced interface really drops points for the overall fun. Yes, I want to give it a 5 out of 5 because POKEMON, but I didn't. That was responsible of me, wasn't it? Due to the fact that you have to read a long instruction manual to use this tool, it really drags you down.

Hipster: 4 out of 5

The actual Rinkworks site is more of a 3 out of 5. The Book-A-Minute thing is pretty damn funny and gets visitors coming. The Name Generator, however, is hidden enough that I didn't see it until now (which I'd like to say is years after first finding the site, but I honestly can't remember). While this could just mean that I'm blind as a bat or oblivious, I'm going to instead assume that it's just hidden away and only sneaky people can find it. It's gentler on my ego.

Review: Behind the Name: Random Name Generator

I will be doing a review of the Behind the Name website later in the semester, as far as naming websites go. However, since we're on the topic of generators, I wanted to review their Random Name Generator.

Usefulness: 5 out of 5

Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Noooo Meghan, Behind the Name can't be a 5! It's only one generator!" And, technically, Some of You, you'd be correct. If I was basing the usefulness of a site on how many generators it had, Behind the Name would get a 1. However, that's not what this rating is based on. The usefulness of this one generator is exorbitant. This generator can name anyone. You can use it for a YA novel, maybe, the name of the sexy Italian male lead. Or maybe you need it for a historical piece, some Norse vikings off to conquer the world. Maybe you're naming some fantasy characters- You could use a less well-known culture to pull names from, or just pick the "Witch", "Fairy", or "Kreatyve" options. Hell, you can even name Transformers style. This generator packs some serious heat.

Fun: 1 out of 5

Outside of the short list of "interesting" options (Witch, Transformer, Hippy), this generator is not very much fun. Okay, I'm being really nice saying that. This generator is boring. You go to it, hit your buttons and move on.  No playing around here.

Hipster: 2 out of 5

Behind the Name itself is a pretty well known website. It contains the history and etymology of not just first names, but surnames as well, so it's the kind of site that is frequented by more than just writers. This little generator sits on the sidebar just waiting for you to click it. However, the shoddy layout and graphics of BtN may make finding things a little difficult- It's hard to look at something so ugly for so long.

Review: The Forge (By Thewingless.com)

I've been playing around with this guy for a while now, and I have to say I'm not very impressed. The site and it's layout are gorgeous- well-designed and minimalist with a color scheme that doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out. I was so happy looking at the design that I thought about adding  design element to my grading scheme. However, using the actual generator interface was such a downer, as you'll see based on my grade.

Usefulness: 2 out of 5

Oh dear. The Forge is a really interesting concept. It's actually 4 generators, The Forge, the Landforge, the Spellforge and the Beastforge. It's a pop-up, kind of like a flash game, which lost it points right off the bat, because I do NOT want to have to deal with pop-up blockers when I'm trying to generate. The naming generator, the Forge, is shitty. No other words for it. Some of my suggestions were "Stone Slayer", "Sprite Dust" and "Maiden Form", yes, Maiden Form, like the bra. The Beastforge creates stereotypical beasts, the Spellforge stereotypical spells and the Landforge, you guessed it, stereotypical realm names. With a non-traditional interface and such uncreative suggestions, I'd skip the Forge all together and just head to Chaotic Shiny or the Sanctum.

Fun: 1 out of 5

Learning a new generator interface is not fun. Especially when generators are as simple as they can get to begin with. It's not fun to get shitty suggestions. If the Forge generated interesting names/beasts/spells/realms, it might actually be fun to figure out how everything works, play around with retaining bits here and changing bits there. However, this is not the case. It's boring. Honest truth.

Hipster: 5 out of 5

This is a sort of biased answer. I had never heard of this site before trolling through the NaNo forums. It comes from what looks like a personal site, something called thewingless.com, that leads to a scifi-esque layout. The Forge itself stinks of hipster, with an "About" and "History" page, explaining how the generator has a "stunning, streamlined user interface" and how "names have power".

Review: Chaotic Shiny

Oh Chaotic Shiny. You are so wonderful. Not as dear to my heart as the Sanctum, which has been with me since my first foray into the web-based writing world, way back in '05, but still wonderful.

Now, I'm just going to dive right into the review of this site, solely because I am about to do something I never thought I would. Try not to be angry at me, as I go over my own scale to descrbie how great this site is.

Usefulness: 6 out of 5

If Seventh Sanctum is the pinnacle of usefulness, Chaotic Shiny is the stratoshpere. It's like, having nukes in Civ 5 when everyone else has warriors. It's ass-kicking and name-taking. Shiny contains many similar generators to the Sanctum, broken up into similar categories. However, Shiny succeeds in two places the Sanctum does not. One, Chaotic Shiny generates a LOT of words. The "CivGen", or civilization generator, generates 50 separate words describing different aspects of your newly created civilization, ranging from culture, to population, to economy. You can even put in constraints, like what time period the civilization thrived in (ancient to far future) and whether or not they possess magic. For those of us who are just winging it when NaNo comes along, Chaotic Shiny is the place to go for substantial plot details.(You know this site is good when it can generate a valid DnD 4e character, dice rolls and all)

Two, Chaotic Shiny tied itself intrinsically with National Novel Writing Month.  Not only does Shiny have a generator meant to motivate us, suggesting that "If you write 163 words in a row that questionably-dressed hottie you've been eyeing will turn out to prefer your gender, after all.", but they even have a NaNo calendar app for FREE on their product site. NaNoWriters, you have found your home. Not only does Shiny know that you can't be bothered to come up with your own complex ideas, but they know just how hard it is to write your simple ones too. Shiny has your back through it all.

Fun: 4 out of 5

Shiny doesn't tie with Sanctum here because of their lack of contests. Shiny has a similar amount of humor based generators. However, the Sanctum ups the ante by having hilarious art contest using their generators.

Something that must be mentioned, however, and a large part of the reason that Shiny gets a 4, is their RPG Drinking Game. Yes, Chaotic Shiny randomly generates a drinking game based on RPG tropes. Srsly. I don't even know how to begin explaining how awesome that is.

Hipster: 3 out of 5
 Shiny's not Sanctum. Sanctum's tie to Deviant Art will probably make it the least obscure overall  out of everything I review (save, maybe Holly Listle). Shiny is not entirely obscure. Shiny has a huge product site and a damn good following both of writers and gamers. Chaotic Shiny is the kind of website that, if it's not incredibly popular now, has so much potential to be incredibly popular in the near to immediate future.

Review: Serendipity

In keeping with the last (and my first) post, I'm reviewing another generator site today. Serendipity Generators, at nine.frenchboys.net, is a site you can find through the sidebar or Seventh Sanctum. Serendipity is similar to the Sanctum in that it is a conglomerate of different generators. However, Serendipity, unlike the Sanctum, is nowhere near as exhaustive. In fact, recently (like, as of 9/12/12), the site has been undergoing some changes that have caused the full list of generators to be unavailable.

Serendipity is probably best known for the French name generators, though they also have Japanese, Medieval (which is really more English) and Fantasty name generators as well. (Just a hint, the beginning of the word links to female generators, the end to male.)

Usefulness: 3 out of 5

Serendipity can be incredibly useful, in a limited scope. The naming generators are the best. They provide accurate sounding names that are not going to confuse your reader. The City and Stronghold generators provide a good chunk of text describing your possible locations. However, with some of the generators missing, this site is almost useless compared to the Sanctum. It eeks into a 3 solely because of the varied modern name generators it provides- a counterpoint to the Sanctum's primarily Fantasy ad SciFi namers.

Fun: 2 out of 5

Noooot really anything fun going on with the current selection. Not that that's a problem. All the generators do their job splendidly. It's just, nothing's funny, nothing's particularly interesting about the site. It's a generator site and that's that.

Hipster: 3 out of 5

This is a little hard to judge. Serendipity IS on the Sanctum's linklist. Therefore it cannot be completely obscure. Plus, the site explains that spammers took down the full generator list. This means that its got a following, for sure. However, because I have been unable to 1) google it (it is not present in the first page of a "serendipity" google search, which is partly due to an overused name) or 2) connect it to any big name websites (besides the Sanctum), I must assume that Serendipity is at least a little bit obscure. Writers may pass it around their inner circle, but it has a relatively small presence on the web.

Review: Seventh Sanctum

Seventh Sanctum is a website that is dear to my heart. I have used it hundreds of times to flesh out details in a novel. It is a "generator" site- Hundreds of lines of code created to produce random outputs in certain categories. My favorite section of the site? The Naming Generators. It contains 23 different generators that can name characters in styles from "Dark Elf" to "Western". It also contains naming generators for places, taverns and pirate ships.

Usefulness: 5 out of 5

This website is so incredibly useful. Say you need to describe a slew of potions in a magician's den for your high fantasy epic? Potion Generator. Say you need some technologies from the far future or, more accurately, some crazy sounding devices for your Dr. Who fanfiction? SciFi Tool Generator. Best of all is the "Writing" section of the site, which contains over a dozen generators for plots and story ideas. Have no idea what you want to write for NaNoWriMo? No problem! Just pick your favorite plot generator and you'll have a novel idea in no time. The Sanctum also has extensive links to other generator sites, organized by what section you're looking in. Not only is the site itself super useful, but it is just as happy to send you somewhere else if you aren't getting what you need.

Fun: 5 out of 5

A lot of generators on this site are just hilarious. The Cat Being Name Generator, for those of us writing werepanthers or anime-style catgirls, can suggest names in the vein of Thundercats, with offerings like  Felinni and Caracal-a. The Humor section, though small, contains generators for Questionable Spells, Questionable Anime Attacks, and Evil Animal Minions like the "berserk android squirrels!"

Hipster: 1 out of 5

This is a judge of how obscure this website it. The Sanctum is not obscure. You will hear mention of on almost any writing forum on the Web. A good portion of the site's following are artists from Deviant Art, a highly popular art-post and critique website. Deviant Art users participate in art contests based on the Sanctum's many generators. With such a widely known and popular website tied so closely to the Sanctum, it is one of the least obscure writing tools on the great wide Web.

Overall, the Sanctum is an incredibly convenient site for the NaNo months as it decreases the amount of time you need to spend on logistics and the time-consuming act of "being creative". Instead of agonizing over what would be the best name for the IT department working with the cops to try and catch your murderer, you can just click a button and bam, "Bureau of Programming Installation and Implementation".