Online research for mystery writers is now a normal procedure. Some writers want to visit places to do their research, talk in person to the people involved and take classes to learn how to use weapons, visit a body farm, etc. But for most of us just starting out, we really have to rely on online resources and our local library. Online you can go just about anywhere you want to go, get pictures of places, people, events, and happenings. We can even watch videos on YouTube.com on a wide variety of subjects. I-Tunes even offers a lot of free online courses you can take to help your writing or even learn a new skill. Yes, when you finally make enough money from your book sales you can run off to Africa to research some local native poison darts and how they are made or whatever.
Some of the best tools online are offered for FREE and we will list a couple of the ones that we use all the time in our research for our articles. These are in no particular order but we hope they will prove useful to you in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page – online FREE resource of information on just about every word, subject, place and thing you could imagine. It is a great place to start your research and we use it all the time. You can go to the main page or just put the word or phrase in a search engine box and the word wiki after it and you will find your information. Try it!
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ Need to look up some quick information, maps and pictures about any country in the world? Then who better than the CIA and the Factbook pages online.
https://www.loc.gov/: Perhaps the greatest source of information is the Library of Congress. They don’t have their entire collection online but they do have a lot of FREE online resources and they have every single book that has ever been in print in their collection. You can even ask the Librarians any question that you need help with your research and they will try their best to get it for you. You may even be able to do an inter-library loan through your local library on some of L.O.C. books that your local one doesn’t have. Of course, they also house all law books and presidential papers, a large collection of old photographs and so much more. It is almost the next best thing to being there.
https://nij.ojp.gov/ The NIJ is a great online resource for mystery writers as they have information about every topic in the Criminal Justice arsenal including a very nice section on forensics.
https://www.lexico.com/grammar The Oxford Online Dictionary for Grammar and Usage is every writers friend. *Has been changed to the Oxford Lexico*
You want to research a cold case file or write a story based on solve unsolved case? The National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology and the Law at Stetson University College of Law website is a great place to start.
https://www.fbi.gov/If you are a mystery writer and you haven’t bookmarked and visited the FBI’s website yet then you are missing out on some great FREE information about crime and criminals.
https://www.dhs.gov/The other government website with free information on crime and criminals would be the Department of Homeland Security. Great place to do some research.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-historyAnother great place to do historical research is the History Channel’s website. I always like to go to the “This Day in History” page and check out the latest or should I say what happened in the past that I may have forgotten.
Free Online Courses at MIT: Want to brush up on your writing skills before you begin your mystery novel but don’t have the money to go back to school? Why not take a free course or two from MIT. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has Open Courseware classes in a wide variety of subjects that you can take and enjoy. You can even take some beginning classes in Archaeology if you want to write a mystery about an Archaeologist!
We hope you will like, share and comment below. Or you can even send us your listing of helpful writing resources websites using our CONTACT US form and we will be sure to add them to our resource listing.
