A great writing tool that doesn't get half as much credit as it deserves is the website TV Tropes. Don't let the name fool you--TV Tropes contains tropes from all different sorts of medium, from plays to fanfiction to literature to anime, etc.
Sometimes, when I'm stressed and don't feel like being productive, I turn to anime (guilty pleasure, besides chocolate). Those days. I can blow out 10, 15 episodes, no sweat. Anime was actually the vehicle for my discovery of TV Tropes. The site does an amazing analysis of ALL the tropes in many animes. And I confess, I read them! Now, you may be asking why I'm such a dork, to which I'll answer 1. I am and 2. 50% of animes are actually very worthwhile if you have a taste for it, but the other 50% is hilariously bad, and reading up on tropes for the bad ones always result in great laughs. Reading up tropes on the good ones is also helpful for inspiration--tropes get a bad name sometimes (people call them cliches or stereotypes) but you have to realize that many things in writing are tropes. In fact, there are 7 basic kinds of plots (or 9, check me on that) and you might be like no way, but read them on TV tropes and you'll find that is it, in fact, true. There are 7 kinds of plots. Gasp! Does that mean we are unoriginal as writers? No! What matters is your execution of a trope, your own personal twist.
Like I said, tropes can be helpful. You can see which tropes were done well in which works (the database in HUGE. Most books with a respectable readership have a trope page), and which tropes were done not so well. I'm writing this post because I've come across a trope in my MS called ESCAPE BY AIR VENT. And now I'm sort of in a pickle. I can't seem to remember if I was being lazy when I had my main character escape by air vent, of if it served a purpose. Because if I was being lazy, that is a big no-no. Tropes are not crutches to use when you can't think of your own original twist.
*sigh* Now I must think of how to revise the air vent scene.
What tools do you like to use to help you write?
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