Map Me

Literature Map is a reader recommendation generator that seems to work off what readers authors share, and I'll quote here: "The more people like an author and another author, the closer together these two authors will move on the Literature-Map."

Ah, vanity, thy name is byline. I didn't think mine would even register on it, but lo and behold:



(My map is a bit bigger than this, but I couldn't fit it all on the blog and have it readable.)

Some PBW trivia: Judith Ivory and I belonged to the same RWA chapter way back when I was rookie, and we talked a couple of times, mostly about gardening. She's a lovely and very kind lady, and I probably share only one reader with her, but I'll take it. I laughed when I saw Rob Thurman's name (not pictured) since I never imagined we'd share readers. I'm also a little startled by how many names I didn't recognize, but I guess that's because I don't read much genre fiction these days. Must remedy that.

I nicked this generator link from author Sara Donati, who has a very interesting map of her own and blog post about it here.

Call Me Kate

Gerard over at the Presurfer linked to a fun photo-comparison generator that finds the celeb you most resemble, and I had to go make sure I wasn't starting to look like the Cookie Monster.

My results say I'm a 44% match to Kate Burton of Grey's Anatomy and Scandal fame:



It's actually pretty accurate; aside from the hair color we could be sisters (I would be the younger, heavier, snow-haired sister, ha.) I did a little research and found out she's also the daughter of actor Richard Burton, which I thought was pretty neat.

If you try out the generator, tell us which celeb you resemble in comments.

Hello 2034 Me

Upload a photo of yourself to this ageing simulator generator, and you'll be able to see (and even talk to) a composite of your future self.

Here is what I'm supposed to look like at age 73:



It's not terribly accurate; my eyes are quite a bit lighter, my ears don't stick out, and my natural hair color right now is much whiter than hers (maybe future me has it dyed to the salt and pepper look?) I think I'll have a few more wrinkles and jowls, too, but that helmet hairdo? Ah, no. Never.

(Link swiped from Gerard over at The Presurfer)

Online Art Therapy

Thanks to the internet and art generators everyone can create digital masterpieces, and one of my favorite places to play with color and shape is Bomomo. To use this generator you simply click on a tool button, and then click your mouse and hold down the button, and move your mouse to guide the bouncing color-generating tool circles around the design area.

Here's a look at the dashboard, and a pic I made by sampling every one of the tool buttons:



Using just one tool can result in very cool art:



Using Bomomo can also help when you're feeling blocked or frustrated; watching those little bouncing circles do their thing is surprisingly relaxing, and whatever you create with them may shift your mood to something more positive.

Bonsaing Inspiration

The Bonsai Story Generator takes any text fed to it (up to 6K) and randomly rearranges the text to produce new sentences. As you might expect this creates a small mountain of nonsense, but it also produces some interesting word pairings and clusters, a few of which can work as titles, prompts, scene ideas and more.

I took about 4K of my NaNo novel and Bonsai'd it, and then weeded through the results, deleting out the gibberish and whatever else was useless. Here's what I kept, along with some of my thoughts in italics:

Driving through the lionsgate to be ruined

But he should hurt a little as my son-in-law. (Beautiful line for a mean mama-in-law.)

She caught her ladyship's feathered bonnet.

She would have had a traveled veteran.

Tell the wound.

The man looked down into our society, Lady Hardiwick said.

Greville would send Prudence into tarts (I love this as a description of a compulsive eater)

Well, he beheld the mare.

Agitation kindled a gentleman.

The fact that she would do no longer.

She heard a kindly older brother.

As a girl she'd been silly enough to cross their path. (This sparked a new scene for me)

No man had fainted from her.

I haven't a groan.

You are a morning salon, abundantly furnished. (What a nervous man might say while trying to compliment a beautiful, well-endowed woman, maybe)

He is not indulging in the company as yet

the great house at Netherfield Park stood like a spinster (You can't imagine how helpful this was to me. Honestly. Hugely.)

Stand back, she can make himself sick again. (Instant, hilarious imagery)

Julian with no other sound.

He will look at the most generous good enough to be ruined (is there any better description for a penniless rake?)

Lady Maycott released a ridiculous fiction (A lot of us are prone to doing that.)

Miss Maycott, please allow any callers.

I don't care how often he will have us.

It will likely turn the decanter.

It is not the makings of our invitations

Built in pieces, Miss Maycott.

your kindness has no other sound. (I just loved this.)

You have a bloody clue. (as opposed to the cliched haven't)

I feel so dreadful for her, much of her too.

She sat back on her own feelings

The roads are recovered

I will cut open your hopes (this one gave me shivers, and is definitely going in the story as part of a rant.)

You can also feed poems, song lyrics or any other type of text to the generator to be bonsai'd; I do this sometimes with long, imagery-rich poems to get title ideas.

Texterize It

Gerard over at The Presurfer found the neatest word-art generator, Texter, which allows you to paint with words, ala concrete poetry (click on the image to see a larger version):



The generator's controls allow you to customize your word-painting to include whatever text you want, colors, angles and more.

Forgery

Coining or inventing words is a regular task for storytellers, and in certain genres plays an important part of world-building. Not every writer forges new words -- some are fine with using only words that already exist -- but word smithing can be fun and a great way to stretch both your vocabulary and your imagination.

When coining words for your fiction one of the easiest methods is to create compound words by joining together two small words to forge a new construct. Some examples of these that already exist in our language are copperhead, eyebrow, flowerpot, handbag, ladybug, sandstorm and windmill. When you create a compound word you should consider what the two words you're combining mean, how they relate to each other, and when combined what sort of imagery they invoke for your reader. Let's shuffle the example compound words I just gave you and see what new words we can invent:

copperbrow ~ eyebag ~ flowermill ~ handstorm ~ ladyhead ~ sandpot ~ windbug

Copperbrow made me think of a warrior wearing some sort of metal band or helm to protect his forehead or eyes. I imagine if a character doesn't get any sleep they'll acquire a huge matched set of eyebags. Flowermill invokes two ideas -- a village perfumery or a brothel that specializes either in catering to virgins or procuring them. An agitated translator for the deaf might indulge in a handstorm, while a garden of ladyhead plants might bloom with genteel elegance. An ancient fire extinguisher could be called a sandpot, and an exotic alien insect that lives its life entirely within the air currents above a planet (or another species of blustering, ineffective politician) should be named windbugs.

If compound words seem too obvious, you can meld them together more completely by joining them at shared prefixes or suffixes. For this you can play with Degraeve.com's Invent-a-Word generator, which recombines words that share common prefixes or suffixes. It also allows you to choose the specific number of letters to be shared by the recombined words. Here's part of a list I got when I fed "word" as a 3-letter shared prefix to the generator:

word + ordain = wordain
word + ordeal = wordeal
word + order = worder
word + orderly = worderly
word + ordinal = wordinal
word + ordinance = wordinance
word + ordinaries = wordinaries
word + ordinarily = wordinarily
word + ordinate = wordinate
word + ordination = wordination

The generator can also be useful in reverse melding two words with a common suffix; here's a partial list of "word" as a 1-letter shared suffix:

aglow + word = agloword
borrow + word = borroword
claw + word = claword
draw + word = draword
few + word = feword
flaw + word = flaword
flow + word = floword
gnaw + word = gnaword
hallow + word = halloword
harrow + word = harroword
law + word = laword
low + word = loword
pew + word = peword
pillow + word = pilloword
shadow + word = shadoword
shallow + word = shalloword
show + word = showord
tallow + word = talloword
thaw + word = thaword
threw + word = threword
wallow + word = walloword
whew + word = wheword
widow + word = widoword

Do you have any particular tricks or tools you use when coining words for your stories that you'd like to share? Let us know in comments.

Ninja Texting

I'm off today to do some writing. While I'm gone, here's a new and very cute way to text:



Want to have a tiny little ninja do some texting for you? Go here.

Calm & Cool

I've always wanted to design a motivational poster for writers, and now I have:



Want to customize your own version of the Keep Calm poster? Go to the TheKeepCalm-o-Matic and do it for free online.

Poster Me

While image searching for some cover art for a large print edition of one of my novels (the few print copies I have came to me all dinged up) I found something I'd never seen in the results: two quote posters with my byline:



I traced the images back to The Quote Factory, which allows you to download "famous quotations" in low resolution (screen use) for free or higher resolution (for home printing) for a couple bucks. You can also create your own custom quotations, which is how I imagine the quotations from my books got there - I've seen both before on that Goodreads site.

Since I'm already quoted on the site I thought I'd try to create my own poster with something interesting I've said about writing, and with a few clicks produced this on the screen:



I then downloaded the free version of my poster, which comes out like this; pretty nice for a low-rez image. While anyone with a decent photoshop program can produce the same sort of poster themselves, the Quote Factory is a fun generator to play with (there are a few choices as to the type of background, font and layout.) I also like the option to download whatever you create for free -- just remember that whatever you create stays on the site and can be sold to others.

Tuesday Ten

Ten Things About Color Palettes and Palette Generators

Freeware Caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

Big Huge Labs' Color Palette Generator will generate a color palette (complete with inventive names and HTML codes) based on any of your photos.

The 30 day free trial of Color Wheel Pro software allows you to create innumerable color palettes of your own.

According to the designer, ColorBlender.com is "ia web-based tool for creating color palettes (here referred to as "blends") for web design and other types of digital design. The main feature of the tool is to have a complete "blend" of 6 matching colors created when choosing only one "base" color. This makes it very quick and easy to create a color scheme for e.g. a website, as you can instantly use the colors for text, backgrounds, links, border etc."

ColorRotate allows you to work with virtual colors in 3D (I didn't want to register so I couldn't past the front/splash page, but I was able to rotate the cone thing and the site is frequently recommended as legit and very helpful.)

CSS Drive's Image to Colors Palette Generator also generates palettes based on any of your photos but gives you a range of palettes from light to dark as well as a complete color palette.

Tiny Eye Labs' Multicolr Search Engine allows you to pull up a selection of Flickr photos that match the color (or combination of colors) you select for the search.

ColRD's Palette Creator page changes according to the colors you pick, and also allows you to export your custom palette designs.

Pictaculous generates multiple palette suggestions based on your uploaded image and works from your phone, too.

Silk allows you to create online with virtual silk (this lovely link was stolen directly from The Word Nerds.)

59times.com's Web Color Generator generates some neat random color palettes.

Finally, I thought this ColorMatters.com article on color branding and trademarking was a fascinating read.

The Quick Brown Whatsahoosit

If you're a poet or writer who likes playing with nouns you might try to feed some of your text to the N+7 generator, which according to the site "involves replacing each noun in a text with the seventh one following it in a dictionary. (In French, it is also referred to as the 'S+7' procedure.) Here you can enter an English text and 15 alternative texts will be generated, from N+1, which replaces each noun with the next one in the dictionary, to N+15, which takes the 15th noun following."

I tried a classic bit of typing practice, and here are the results:

N+0: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.

N+1: The quick brown foxglove jumped over the lazy dogcarts.

N+2: The quick brown foxhole jumped over the lazy dogfights.

N+3: The quick brown foxhound jumped over the lazy doggies.

N+4: The quick brown foyer jumped over the lazy doggies.

N+5: The quick brown fraction jumped over the lazy doglegs.

N+6: The quick brown fracture jumped over the lazy dogmas.

N+7: The quick brown fragment jumped over the lazy do-gooders.

N+8: The quick brown fragrance jumped over the lazy dogsbodies.

N+9: The quick brown frail jumped over the lazy doilies.

N+10: The quick brown frailty jumped over the lazy doles.

N+11: The quick brown frame jumped over the lazy dolls.

N+12: The quick brown frame-up jumped over the lazy dollars.

N+13: The quick brown framework jumped over the lazy dollops.

N+14: The quick brown franc jumped over the lazy dollies.

N+15: The quick brown franchise jumped over the lazy dolphins.

(Generator link swiped from Gerard over at The Presurfer)

Your Olympic Body Double

This is fun -- the BBC is giving us all a chance to live vicariously as Olympians by offering this body matching generator which tells you based on your height and weight which athelete at the games you are most like (in shape, obviously, not in fitness.)

I plugged in my stats and found out I have a Brit twin:



I've no idea what handball is, but now I'll have to find out. So who is your body double at the games? Let us know in comments.

(BBC link filched from The Presurfer)

Free Quilt Design Online

I rarely see any free online stuff for quilters, so I'm going to hijack today's post for my quilter pals and anyone out there who likes to sew and design.

The August '12 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting has some interesting patterns in it, and while I was figuring out yardage for a neat maze quilt I noticed a little ad on the page for "free online quilt design" with something called Quilter's Toolbox. The advertiser, Thousands of Bolts, also called it "a new way to shop for fabric."

I figured it was some kind of fabric picker thing, but I decided to visit the site and see what the deal was. Turns out they offer an actual block and quilt generator that you use with swatches of fabrics you can buy from the site. Once you register and choose the fabrics you like (it's free, and you just add the fabrics you like to your wishlist) you can begin using the toolbox right away.

The toolbox, which allows you to drop-and-drag fabric swatches from your wishlist into a variety of patchwork block templates, is extremely cool and very easy to use. In less than a minute after registering I designed this:



The block design screen looks like this:



And when you drag and drop your fabric choices, changes to this:



Once you're happy with your quilt block, you can then use it to design a quilt:



You can save your block and quilt designs, keep them private, or share them with the site's community, which makes it an excellent generator for friends or groups who want to collaborate on the piece. This is also so incredibly neat for anyone who has ever wanted to try quilt designing by computer but didn't want to invest in the pricey design software. It's most definitely a new and excellent way to shop for fabric.

To use the toolbox, I recommend you watch the two-part video tutorial first (part one is here and part two is here). Also, if you don't have a pattern for or know how to make the block you're designing, no worries there -- click on the little blue question mark beside "Quilt Block Instructions" at the bottom of your wishlist window and complete instructions on how to make the block will come up on your screen.

Visual Fun

Big Huge Labs, home of many fun and useful Flickr toys, has one generator I often use for title and story ideas: the photo fortune generator.

The generator, which provides a random pithy quotation and three random images based on a single keyword taken from the quotation, often produces some interesting combinations. Here are a few screenshots of my results (click on any image to see larger version):



Classic fairytale and fable retelling is a favorite device among fiction writers, and this one seems to hint that there might be more to the story of the goose who laid the golden eggs. Such as, what has that pretty girl been feeding her flock? Whatever is shining in that jar? Might be fun to explore. Title ideas: The Golden Goose Girl, A Light Lunch, Hold What Glitters.



I cringed a little as soon as I saw the first image -- quite painful looking, and reminded me of this guy who came into the ER who had . . . no, I better not tell that story. Anyway, the following two pics added some irony and a wry chuckle to the tableau, especially followed by Plato's silly pronouncement. Title ideas: Good for Evil, Make It Happen, The Spoiler, Forked (and there's a Twilight parady begging to be written.)



The Woody Allen quotation adds a bit more comedy here, but the images tell a different story -- a very engimatic one. The beautiful feline, the bright flower and the hall filled with paintings would make interesting and (if handled correctly) powerful story elements. I'm thinking a thriller or mystery. Title Ideas: What the Cat Saw, Silent Bloom, Torn to Masterpieces.



This was my favorite of all the ones I generated; I love the grinning pup. The sunset (or sunrise) and the fetching young lady all add suggestions of romance, as does the Howe quotation. Title ideas: Loving Enemies, Better Friends, Sunset Smile.

If you don't care for the randomness of this generator but are still in finding inspirational images tailored to your needs, you can head over to Flickr and perform a search using keywords that directly relate to your story. I did one search with the keywords strong, stubborn and warrior and found this amazing but totally unexpected artwork that gave me some new ideas on how to flesh out one of my secondary characters.

Hodge Podge

For you NaNoWriMoers, author Kris Reisz has a great post up about writing, creativity, and one of a writer's most valuable skills: persistance.

Seventh Sanctum has a fun new generator that gives you a description of a pony. Not impressed? But it's not just a pony, it's a magical legend pony.

A StarDoc reader sent me this link to a ceramic sculpture of the Lok-Teel by TheFinalHikari. It's not only adorable, it's also quite accurate to how I've always envisioned my helpful little mold.

Symbols & Words

One way to exercise your imagination and come up with some new story ideas is to use online generators that provide you with random prompts. The latest I've found, The Creative Idea Generator, is very simple and quite fun to use. You click on a word, image or surprise button to produce words and symbols, then move and rearrange them to create different pairings, idea clouds, plot circles, etc. It's almost like making your own story road signs, which is great for sparking ideas.

Here's a screenshot of my first test drive:



I paired the symbols with the words at random and then rearranged a few as ideas started forming. The downstairs symbol + "contract" made me at once think of someone who sells their soul to Satan (this is probably because I just reread The Grimrose Path by Rob Thurman) but I also got a very strong image of a nice cleaning lady character who doesn't just clean up corporate offices.

Other random story ideas I had: Where do you keep an important hostage? On a boat. A plague that turns 99% of the population into sleepwalkers who act out their dreams. When the ski lift fails, all that saves you is your scarf. A bug that either contaminates the world's petroleum supply, or renders it obsolete. An alien blade so beautiful that to look at it blinds you (the blade made of light has already been done.) A murder mystery where a writer kills everyone who violates his copyright -- or maybe an editor or someone tries to kill him over an inconvenient copyright. Fish and chips, I need to eat dinner (and I did have fish and chips last night, so it even inspired a meal.)

This generator is especially useful because we all interpret images and words differently, thus no two people are going to get the exact same ideas from it. I like the simplicity, too; it prods your imagination without overwhelming you with a lot of data.

Link nicked from Gerard at The Generator Blog.

Custom Ten

Ten Things You Can Design Online

Design your own bedding or pillows over at Inmod.com.

UK clock maker DesignOClock.com allows you to customize the face of an analog clock with your own images and text.

Custom Clothing Designer has over 100 garments and accessories you can customize.

MyDeco.com's 3D room planner helps you design a room online and view it in 3D.

Can't find a bumper sticker that fits you and your ride? Design your own here.

Make your own custom flower bouquet, centerpiece, or even a wedding cake online over at DesignedBytheBride.com.

For you hoof fashionistas out there, you can design your own shoes here (rather pricey to buy them, though.)

Make your dream garden with Better Homes and Gardens' online Plan-A-Garden designer (one hoop: to use it, you have to register for their newsletter.)

LogoEase.com has a free online designer to help you build the perfect logo.

Need to work out a custom wedding dress for your character? Design it online here.

I Robot

Sometimes you just need a robot, right? Thanks to Robohash, now you can generate "provide unique, robot/alien/monster/whatever images" by just visiting the site (your IP address generates one) or by typing in some text.

Here's what I got:



Don't be fooled by the single red eye or the television antenna on his head; he's 100% ready and able to wipe out the laundry for me.

Link swiped from Gerard over at the Generator Blog.

Virtual Design Ten

Ten Things to Help Design Settings

3Dream is a room-space design generator that allows you to custom design and arrange a given space. Requires download of plug-in.

Although I was a big fan of Degraeve's Color Palette Generator, it doesn't seem to be functional anymore (at least for my browser/computer.) Hunting around for an alternative, I found another generator here at CSS Drive that offers light, medium and dark as well as full palettes for URL images or those you upload.

The Color Scheme Designer helps you figure out a variety of color schemes, from monochromatic to analogic and more.

Design-a-Room.net is very basic, but of all the generators I found it was the easiest to use and didn't require me to jump through any hoops at all. Good for laying out a rough floor plan.

Armstrong.com has an impressive online design-a-room generator that shows you how different types of floors look like in a variety of room styles and colors.

FloorPlanner.com (registration for free account required to use) gives you the ability to draw up your own floor plans online.

Mydeco's design generators give you a lot of predesigned options to create rooms and mood boards (idea collages.)

Sherwin Williams has a pretty amazing online color visualizer that allows you to upload your photo of a room and virtually repaint it with their products.

Small Blue Printer allows you to build your own floor plans online, view them in 3D, walk through the structure and print out the plans. To help give you ideas, there are four pre-loaded sample plans you can work with, too.

Totally Custom Wallpaper has an online wall covering generator that allows you to create your own wallpaper, mural or canvas using templates, stock images or your own photos.