#4thewords

[ckret2]

so I do most of my writing on 4thewords.com. It's a site that turns writing into a game: you get quests requiring you to fight monsters that require you to write x amount of words in y time, and get loot and win prizes and progress through several plotlines and all that. Great motivation.

they've just started their annual halloween/not-nanowrimo-because-screw-their-recent-face-heel-turn/winter event. And one of the quests—a quest that will only ever be available during this one event and which expires 44 days after you pick it up—requires you to write 250k words.

that's 5,682 words, per day, for a month and a half.

and, my friends, when I play a game, I am a completionist.

so goodbye everybody, you won't be seeing me until December.

(this is a lie. I've decided to count my tumblr posts toward my word count since they're usually worldbuilding & character development, so I'll probably be here infodumping to fluff up my daily progress.)

(and if I've somehow sold you on the appeal of 4thewords my referral code is ZIUQJ49028)

[larissa-the-scribe]

Me, logging on to 4thewords to do some writing not long after the latest NaNoWriMo news dropped:

no no nonononono--

OH THANK GOODNESS

[novella-november]

Okay, everyone kept reccomending 4TheWords, so I tried it out yesterday and it is just as fun (and useful!) as everyone was saying!

I wrote 1k words in just half an hour, and then did almost 2k words before leaving for work :D

I highly recommend checking this fun site out, and make an account so you can use it anywhere; I don't think it has a mobile app yet, but it looks like it runs just fine on a mobile web browser, so you can use it like you would Google Docs!

If you enjoy the Game aspect, you can select monsters from a list of options, each having a combination of Word Goal + Timers depending on the monsters "level"; every time you reach the required word goal, you defeat that monster and gain loot for your character, which I assume is used to upgrade your appearance and such.

I assume from a few screenshots I've seen (but haven't looked around the site just yet) that there are more optional social aspects to the game, and you can buy things to customize your character, buy house decorations, as well as different maps.

On the writing utilities side, you can keep writing even after you've defeated the monsters if you don't care about the game aspect, and it will keep track of your word count with a timer that tracks your active time writing!

All in all, a very useful and fun website!

I highly recommend if you need some fun motivation to write, to check this out!

[vandijkwrites]

I put it in the tags of another post but if you like to gamify writing and haven't tried 4thewords.com before, DO IT. It is the #1 tool I've ever found for writing with ADHD and it is so cute and fun. There's always an adorable event going on during NaNo too!

During NaNo you can get a free month and other free goodies with the code wrimo23 and it gives you a free month even if you already subscribe! (And you don't have to cancel after the month to avoid being charged because it works on a pre-paid subscription model)

[sassysnowperson]

During the whole Nanowrimo meltdown, the writing community website I am currently a part of (4thewords, a word count gamification site where you use word count to fight cartoony monsters, collect items, and make sweet wardrobe outfits to show off) has received MANY QUESTIONS about their stance on AI. So they just released their own clarifying statement. It really does feel like whoever wrote it was directly responding to Nano, and that response is a big old middle finger.

Some excerpts:

"We don’t use generative AI"

"We don’t train AI on your words"

"All of our art is painted by humans, our words written by humans."

"Machine learning is a powerful technology. But generative AI, fueled by the stolen sparks of millions, is not a technology we endorse."

"We will continue to use technology to help us write. But we must be the ones to do the writing."

[the-pen-pot]

Woo! Hit my 1500 day streak today over in 4thewords

(There were some days where I didn't write but repaired instead, but still. I'm celebrating 🥳)

[jbankai89]

In light of NaNo's nonsense, I've moved my writing over to 4thewords, and I'm in LOVE. I've written more in the past week and a half than I have in months, it shares none of your data, and its perfect for ND writers, as it's like an RPG, and you get the instant gratification of fighting monsters by writing. I love it. If anyone wants to add me, here's my profile:

[furiarossa]

Wohoo, I'm on a roll, baby!

[borealwrites]

If people are looking for a fun writing tracker, I suggest 4thewords! Kill monsters by writing! You don’t even have to use their word program, you can just copy/paste!

I’m not describing it well, but 8/10 I do recommend! It’s a little clunky on mobile though. Also it’s 100% free. There are paid versions too, but the free version works just fine

[creatively-storm]

yeah i think the best thing is to do the nanowrimo challenge, but without using the site. I just joined 4thewords and it's definitely fun!

Yeah, I most definitely agree! I need to mess around some more with the 4thewords mechanics, but it's been really fun so far! I'm so pumped to the challenge this year! This year I'm definitely breaking it down to 200 words a day at least, probably more around 300? Because last year was my first year of participating and I clicked 1,000 words a day. -_- Newsflash, I did not do 1,000 words a day.

[chaoslynx]

we're so back probably maybe

[ckret2]

o shit

[fachefaucheux]

WriteFest! // Day 1 + Goals

It’s that magical time of year again! You know, the one where amateur writers all across the internet take on stupidly ambitious word count goals and drive themselves batty trying to reach them. I am no exception.

I’ve been doing word count goal challenges during the last two months of the year off and on since 2001 (really dating myself here, eh?). And despite all the terrible business that’s been going on with the most infamous one, I’m not going to quit a two-decade long habit just because other people are asshats. 

The OG Word Count Challenge helped me write my first “novel” Way Back In the Day, actually. That story was a bizarre fever dream about a guy who found a nuclear warhead in the supply closet of the care home he was working in…and getting rid of it required him to go undercover as vicar and infiltrate MI6??? Obviously, that didn’t end up going anywhere. But you can see glimmers of the same tried-and-true plot devices in it that I’ve been using ever since: a mix of action and humor, the fantastic and bizarre, shady con men pretending to be religious authority figures. (I don’t know why fake priests seem to be a running theme across my stories. I blame Catholic grade school and an overactive imagination.)

Since I tend to favor quantity over quality, I’ve escalated over the years to usually setting my word count goal for November at the 100k mark. But this year, I’ve been confronted with a challenge too insane for me to resist! I do a lot of my drafting on a website called 4thewords that I discovered nearly two years ago (great site, tbh, I highly recommend it to anyone who is more productive when they gamify their life), and this year, they’ve raised the challenge bar to a whole other level. For this year’s WriteFest, the top goal is to write 250k in 44 days. That’s roughly 5,700 words a day, for those of you who don’t feel like whipping out your calculator app.

So, of course, I had to do it.

Is this a good idea? Probably not. Am I still going to try my hardest? You’re goddamn right.

But I am cheating juuuuuust a little. I’m not doing it all on one WIP. This year, I’ll be working on completing Mushroom Picking Season (maybe 20k left? hopefully), the first volume of Canticle (if there’s more than 200k left on that, I’m totally cooked), and making a pitiful attempt at pushing my dissertation to the 25k mark, which is about halfway. (Yes! I do stuff other than write gay shit! My dissertation contains no gay lunatics, sadly. But it does contain an overabundance of (yugo)slavs.) Tally all those up, and you’ve got the 250k, with some wiggle room for just writing some unhinged smut to pad the total when I’m too tired to write anything semi-coherent.

As tradition dictates, I started on November 1st. Not at midnight, because I’m old and decrepit. But at six in the morning. And the results are in!

Day one, done and dusted. Total words: 8,226. For a brief moment, I’m ahead! Only 241,774 to go!

Of course, it’s the second now that I’m posting this. Once again, at six in the morning. I think I’ll try to snag another couple hours of rest before charging into the breach once more. Today’s goal is at least 6,000 words. But probably more, since I owe ya’ll an installment of Niv/Yule hijinks on Sunday. If I get really ahead this weekend, maybe I can even take a very small breather sometime this coming week. (I’m going to need it. For Reasons.)

Stay tuned to see how fast this project goes off the rails! (And snag a sneak peak at some writing snippets, if I’m feeling ambitious.)

[novella-november]

If anyone wants to join me on 4thewords for a 999 words Co-op/multiplayer battle, I'll be starting it in a few minutes!

room code is:

CLAVD17177

I have it set up so you are allowed to copy+paste in anything you've already written for the day, and 7 more people can join for a total of 8 players.

The length of time given to write 999 words with this monster is 99 minutes, so 1 hour, 39 minutes.

[tippenfunkaport]

Inspired by a recent poll, could you tell us a bit more about the software you use for writing and the advantages with it?

Thanks so much!

Can I keep this short is the question...

So, for anyone who didn’t see the post this is referring to, I mentioned on another post that the writing software I use is...

4TheWords for drafting (brainstorming, first draft, etc)

Scrivener for all subsequent stages (editing, formatting, etc)

ProWritingAid for a final look before I submit / post

Longer version (and, like, I could talk about this all day so feel free to ask follow ups but I will try to contain myself)

4TheWords is a fantasy RPG-ish writing game where the words you write defeat monsters, earn loot, complete quests, etc. I have been playing it for five years ish and the game-ification just works really well for my brain. Earning silly little prizes and moving the game plot along keeps me motivated to keep writing when otherwise I would be a useless slug so I do most of my early stage writing on there like drafting, brainstorming, journaling, etc. It is silly but I love it and it basically saved my writing life when I was in a huge slump so they have my undying devotion. The company is also the kind you feel very good about supporting and they are HUGELY queer friendly with a big yearly Pride event with many of the main in-game characters being queer and/or trans. (The closest the game has to main characters are a lesbian couple that just got married as part of the Valentine's Day event last month!)

It costs money but a) there is a 30 day free trial of you want to check it out and b) there is a community pool if you cannot afford the fee as well as frequent sales/deals. (If anyone wants to try it out, feel free to use my referral code when you sign up because then you’ll get some extra crystals and I can send you a welcome present of some loot! If the image link above is annoying, dm me and I will give you it via text for copy and paste.)

Scrivener is very robust writing software that I use for fiction, non-fiction and scriptwriting. I only rarely use it for first drafts (bc I use 4TW for that) but I do almost all my editing / rewriting / formatting / publishing in it. I have been using it for probably about a decade and am still finding new tools and features I didn’t realize it had. I absolutely swear by it. The learning curve can be steep but luckily it’s one of the most popular writing programs in the world so there are a TON of great tutorials out there. (My advice? Just watch a video of something like the top 5-10 features and then play around and look up stuff as you have questions instead of trying to do the whole long tutorial it comes with.)

Disclaimer that I only own the desktop version. There are mobile versions that are a separate purchase from the desktop version but I don't use them.

Biggest selling points of Scrivener to me are:

while many writing services have a monthly fee, Scrivener is purchased exactly once and you can use it for life on your laptop and desktop AND you can get 50% off that one time price with a NaNoWriMo winner code (this alone is enough to buy my loyalty for life)

it’s incredibly versatile for both plotting and publishing and works really for my writing process (which is, admittedly, chaotic and weird) and has near infinite customization. It's esp great for making story bibles, organizing research, and plotting out larger works with lots of cross references and chapters you need to rearrange

as a script writer, Scrivener only cost me a one time fee of $35 and includes all updates and bug fixes until the next major version (which happens like once a decade). FinalDraft is $250 and that only includes the current version (which changes about once a year) to do the same thing. That’s a no brainer to me.

ProWritingAid is editing software. Like Grammarly but MUCH more robust with a lot more reports you can run. It’s not replacement for a human editor (AI editing can only do so much) but I like it as a second pair of eyes before I post or submit something because it does catch a lot of the basics and makes me feel a little better about sending something out. There is a limited free version and the full version can be pricey if you pay the monthly fee but I bided my time until the lifetime subscription went on sale for 50% off and paid once and now I have it to use for life.

There. That was almost short, right?

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Let's goooo!!!