Midlist Writer: Websites for Writers: American Folklore

Monday 18 October 2010

Websites for Writers: American Folklore

It's Monday, so it's time for Websites for Writers, when we look at sites to inform and inspire all you scribblers out there in Internetland.

This week we're looking at American Folklore, a massive collection of folktales, jokes, rhymes, tongue twisters, and much more. The first thing I liked when I started looking at this site is that it has sections for Canada, Mexico, and Latin America. Nothing annoys people outside the U.S. more than to hear "American" used solely for people within the U.S. It's nice this site recognizes there are lots of countries in the Americas.

Author S.E. Schlosser has collected an impressive array of folk treasures. Got a story set on the railroad? There's a whole section devoted to railroad folklore. Need some tall tales or pithy expressions about local weather? Go to weather folklore. Have some Native American characters? Check out these Native American tales. Of course there's a large collection of ghost stories and monsters, but how many sites give resources for ESL readers? There's even a bizarre tale about Henry Hudson meeting some gnomes.

You can search by subject or state and you're sure to find something to enrich your story, whether historical or contemporary. This is also a great resource for nonfiction writers. So go check it out, just make sure you don't get sucked in and spend the whole day reading instead of writing!

Bigfoot shot courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Love this! Thanks for the great resource.; 23 October 2010 at 14:16

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The Case of the Purloined Pyramid

The Last Hotel Room

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet. Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets. Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change? A portion of my royalties will go to a charity for Syrian refugees.

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The Scavenger

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