Learning how to become a better writer is generally not fun...books, lectures, and videos are passive and boring and tedious. Getting feedback from real people is generally most effective, but difficult and time-consuming.
Brevity 500 is my attempt at creating a learning experience that is active, engaging, and NOT tedious. It offers static human-generated advice along with real human feedback for paid users.
So far, in early testing, the games seem to appeal most to marketers and salespeople, but as a technical writer and developer myself, I think these games can help anyone build a strong foundation to become better at any kind of non-fiction writing.
Try it out and let me know what you think!
The implementation confuses me though.
It's not clear at first that all "games" (though I would think it's rounds of a single game, not distinct games) are available rather than this being some kind of daily challenge.
The instructions are very drawn out and repetitive. There's no reason the Welcome, Background, and Rules couldn't be on one screen. The Mission page should just be merged with Rules.
The time limit seems pointless given that you get to see the text before the game starts. You could just write your text in Notepad using as much time as you want. I would either get rid of the timer (greatly preferred) or stop showing the text in advance (if you must).
It's not clear what other rules (AI?) are being used to judge whether a response is valid, so when you get marked invalid even though you're using all the required terms, it's not clear what you're supposed to do to make it valid.
It would be nice to be able to review the Background section of the instructions while writing.
After completion, you see your response compared to a target, but you can't see the original anymore to compare target vs original to see how the target improved on the original.
Great concept, good job on shipping. I think you put in the right level of polish for a Show HN to get good feedback. I would expect a fancier set of valid/scoring for it to be worth a paid service.
I agree on combining the intro screens, I would want maybe 2 clicks max before being in the game (especially once I've already understood the general concept). I like the timed aspect, it in a way made me actually play, I probably would have just left if it wasn't timed.
This might be silly, but I think the game "experience" itself could also be more fun in terms of personality. It's obviously a more adult target than say math blaster, but I wonder if there isn't still room for some whimsy with a character, a mission or something. Maybe you play as some sort of freelance copy editor at computer in a work from home virtual room or something, and you are getting emails to an inbox, and once you open an email/level you have to respond to it in a certain time, and that makes your boss unhappy/happy etc. All the same mechanics you already have. If you can determine some sort of score maybe it goes to points or money or something, then you can do silly stuff like buy a virtual cat bed for your cat or plant for your desk, or something silly like that as you progress. Basically, more game like/more gamified.
Yeah, the time limit doesn't serve much of a purpose beyond creating some playful pressure.
> It's not clear what other rules (AI?) are being used to judge whether a response is valid, so when you get marked invalid even though you're using all the required terms, it's not clear what you're supposed to do to make it valid.
> It would be nice to be able to review the Background section of the instructions while writing.
> After completion, you see your response compared to a target, but you can't see the original anymore to compare target vs original to see how the target improved on the original.
These are all good points that I will work on.
An enhancement I'd like is being able to scroll in the editor box when "Show required" is enabled. Right now, the latter overlays the editor and hides much of the text until it's disabled (possibly a small-screen problem - mine is 768px height).
1. This is really cool. Also scary. I think I might be the target market for this, I've long known that communication is my greatest professional weakness at this point, and within that, brevity is something I gotta learn.
2. I did one of the games (CVS, pharmacy, chemistry) and it was terrifying! By which I mean "I think I might be exactly the sort of person who needs to be FORCED to do this, and I did so, and it was DIFFICULT AND UNCOMFORTABLE", which means your thing works. :D
3. I had to copy the original text to a side buffer so I could refer to it while I was writing. It would have been better if I could see it, and the required words, on one part of the screen (left? top?) while I entered my new text somewhere else.
4. The timer didn't seem to work for me (firefox, linux), but that's fine, there's no way I could have gotten it done in time, and seeing the numbers decrease would have made it even harder. ^_^;;
5. I understand that "grading" in any sense is hard (you need a human), so I appreciate offering the example "correct" response, but you know what would have been even better? several "valid" rewrites, and perhaps a few that aren't! What I mean to say is, as an admittedly poor writer, seeing both an example of what to do and what not to do could be of use.
6. I wish there were a way to spend 1/20th as much for 1/50th of the paid product first, before committing to buy the whole thing. There's a large psychological difference between $5 and $100 and I'd pay $5 right now to test out the paid version 10 times, even though I'll probably pay $100 for it, later. I might not though! I might forget! But that made my brain hurt so hard I'd drop $5 without a thought.
7. A difficulty level for each game would be FANTASTIC! Can you do that? Perhaps just 3 levels. That way people like me who are looking to take their writing ability from "completely horrible" to "acceptable" can have an easier time.
> 3.
There's a "Show Required" button in the bottom-left of the gameplay screen (i.e., the screen with the timer) that shows the original text with the required terms underlined. Do you see that button?
> 4.
That's weird, because I only use Linux and mostly test in Firefox. If you happen to see any console errors or other clues, feel free to post them.
> 5.
Totally agree. I might establish a forum to make this more feasible, not sure yet.
> 6.
I can understand that notion from the consumer side, but as a maker, I've never had any luck with small voluntary payments. For this particular venture, a major component of the value-add is uncapped access to real human feedback, and this cannot be scaled. Because of that, I can't justify charging anything lower.
To come at it from another angle, I think $100 (or even $300) to learn a life skill that can drastically improve your personal and professional life is a great deal. Especially since the cost of many professional writing courses can be several times higher, in spite of being (in my opinion) much less effective.
If you're hesitant to spend the money, that's fair...consider joining the email list to stay in the loop. Or spend the money, and I'll just give it back to you if you have any regrets :D
> 7.
Interesting, haven't thought about such a thing. Maybe I'll consider it!
OK, I can now reliably repro!
At the first screen, _click_ play. Then press enter 5 times.
Every time I do that, I get a stopped timer and no starting text. Same when extensions are disabled. I don't see any obvious errors in the console, other than "Autoplay is only allowed when approved by the user, the site is activated by the user, or media is muted". Which I'm pretty sure I see when I use the mouse to click.
edit: Refined it a bit more. Every time I use the mouse to click the final button "Go" it works as intended. Every time I press the enter key instead, I get the timer stop & no starting text bug.
I hope you can get some amusement in the fact that I'm procrastinating writing a design doc for work by debugging your writing app. :D
Yup, I did. Also, I noticed that some times the game starts up with the required text, but sometimes I get a blank page.
>other clues...
On it! I triggered the timer stop again by going back and forth using your back links a few times. Another difference is the first time I used the site, I proceeded only with the enter key, not a mouse click. I'll poke at it for a few mins and see if I can find an easy repro case, least I can do...
> or even $300...
I'm afraid to tell you what it would be worth to me, if I knew ahead of time it worked. ;)
I wasn't trying to say "I think $100 is too much for this sort of thing", lol no. (I'd pay $$$ for something like this + a human to evaluate, coach, and push me in the right direction)
I was trying to say "I bet you'll get way more sales if you offer a bite sized trial AND the full package".
> Or spend the money, and I'll just give it back to you if you have any regrets :D
(I was already mentally gearing up to commit to buying it, and trying to do at least 1 a day starting with my next paycheck, tomorrow. ;) )
> Maybe I'll consider it!
Please do! I've now gone through a few times to see different prompts and I'd love a easy, medium, hard tag, because some are much easier than others, and, psychologically, being able to choose those in advance makes it easier for me to force myself to actually do it.
There's a definite trend in marketing/business communication to cut everything down to the bare bones and call that quality. At best though, this is an over-simplification. Not every piece of writing has the same purpose, and the current fashion for brevity aims at clarity but often hits stilted instead.
https://brevity500.com/thoughts/why-only-brevity/
In short, brevity is a surprisingly excellent heuristic for writing quality. It can provide a quick and objective metric, which is handy for an online game meant to provide an engaging learning experience. Note that brevity on Brevity 500 is relative to a human-derived metric, which makes the conciseness you're aiming for more meaningful.
But yes -- shorter is not always better, certainly, which is why paid users are encouraged to reach out for human feedback.
Both in technical and creative writing, I agree that the main issue I've seen is unnecessary filler words, needlessly complicated sentences, and a difficulty clearly expressing the point and staying on-topic.
Some ideas - A copy of the original text with highlighted words above the editor might be nice - Not sure if the timer is helpful, might cause people to do a poor job for fear of running out of time. Could start without a timer and add it in as users get more practice
If you click the "i" button in the bottom-left during a game, you'll see the original text with required terms highlighted. Lots of people seem to miss that so I need to figure out a way to make it more clear.
In early testing, people seemed to enjoy the challenge the timer provides. But yeah to be honest, I personally don't like it...I'm a slow writer and hate to be rushed. Paid users can disable the timer.
Also: Extra points if your good at memorizing a list of arbitrary words that must be included, and you're a good touch typist. In these "games" Hunt-and-peck is a penalty, regardless if how facile you are at editing.
Stray thoughts:
- From "Play" to the actual game is 6 clicks. I'd much prefer 2 or fewer.
- Might be even more fun or game-like to work with text on the sentence level. Certainly much faster for a user to complete, and you have more options for assessment as well.
- I'm curious about what other people have submitted, though I expect there's a lot of noise in that data.
> From "Play" to the actual game is 6 clicks. I'd much prefer 2 or fewer.
I see what you're saying but...I'm not sure what's ideal. Fewer clicks with more info density, or more clicks with less info density. People have short attention spans. And a fewer-click-approach would probably not be mobile-friendly.
> Might be even more fun or game-like to work with text on the sentence level. Certainly much faster for a user to complete, and you have more options for assessment as well.
I try to vary it. Some games are longer and some are shorter...there are different lessons to be picked up from each.
> I'm curious about what other people have submitted, though I expect there's a lot of noise in that data.
Yeah I'd like to have some way to showcase user-submitted solutions at some point, because there are always multiple good ways to approach these challenges that a single human couldn't possibly devise. I don't save any data on the server-side for users who aren't logged in, but as more people sign up (hopefully), I'll have more submissions to play with.
Small bit of feedback that might be helpful: set a max width for your website. Currently it stretches to 100% width, but nobody really wants to write or read anything much wider than 800px, no matter how wide their browser window is.
Stories write themselves.
(also, this was valid, so no - there is no sentiment analysis or anything similar to see if you still got the message across)
=== Smith you dummy, your engine is BROKE. Ford will not bow to pressure. Your warranty is as good as an anvil from ACME in a loony toon cartoon. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ===
Although, I thought "games" would be different kinds of exercises, not just different prompts, so I am mildly disappointed :)
As others have said, I think the multiple-screen intro is not ideal, you might be able to fit everything in a single one.
I would consider adding scores rather than "pass/no pass", e.g. reduce text by 10% gets bronze, 20% is silver, 30% is gold.
But it is interesting, good luck!
Generally, judging validity just by whether a few phrases were kept seems pretty loose. I know, it would take incredible AI and might be completely subjective to decide whether the meaning is still there. But I didn't like that it seemed I could completely mangle the text and it would say great job as long as it was short and still had those phrases.
Did you click the info icon in the bottom-left? That should show the required terms.
> But I didn't like that it seemed I could completely mangle the text and it would say great job as long as it was short and still had those phrases.
Yeah my algorithm for determining spam and/or bad attempts isn't very advanced. I intend the site to help teach brevity to people who already know English well, so while it might be nice for the game to detect mangled text, it's not really a priority. I suppose people who want the functionality could use one of the automated writing assistant browser extensions for now.
One could "cheat" by submitting mangled text for amazing scores, but that would defeat the purpose of the game and be a waste of time :)
FYI, There is a sentence simplification exercise inside of the larger app "Elevate Brain Training" on the Google Play app store for Android.
Yes, the games without a paid membership are fun but not really a learning tool. Paying users can get real human feedback whenever they like.
Also what's HN's opinion of tools like ProwritingAid, Grammarly?
Possibly. Knowing how to be terse and how to be meandering is a valuable skill in itself. In the business world, a long winding approach can be helpful to take the spotlight off of something. In the fiction world, maybe you could use long-winded dialogue to establish a particular personality for a character.
People write quickly. :). Normally I wouldn't nitpick that, but since your whole site is about making better writers, I immediately have a trust issue if you can't use adverbs correctly.
But you're totally correct. Maybe that's not the best place to flex rule-breaking :D
I need more guidance on what are the problems, how the problems are fixed, examples, etc...
Hence, I can't be a better writer just being put in front of a text to correct.
My two cents on this add a difficulty level. 1370 characters to 500 characters is too difficult to many. Reducing 300 characters to 150 characters would be a better starting point for me.
The site presents a phrase (mine was scraped from a blog post), and after several clicks asks you to rewrite it more concisely while retaining certain important words.
I thought they might take my response, give it to the next visitor to improve, and show me the result. Or let us vote on the best one. Instead they just reward you with a pre-canned answer, which, frankly, was less interesting than the one I composed.
Couldn't help feeling it's a veiled pitch to sell their $100 "Learn add-on".
You'd have as much fun rewriting this comment in less than 100 words.
Obviously might be improved, but based on the posters responses to (constructive) feedback and having used it, game does not strike me as a bait and switch sales pitch.
Not sure if intentional, but either way, well done!
If you think it's something other than your on-screen keyboard that's messing it up, feel free to link a screenshot and tell me your device, browser, etc so I can look into it.
The people you’re talking about do not actually need to write well. The assumption is that the reader is capable of handling better writing and thus if the writing is better, the reading will be also. That’s not the case, not merely because improving writing often doesn’t improve the experience of reading, but also because most people don’t have extensive reading capabilities.
We test students entering college on their reading comprehension, and in general we only require them to understand approximately 60-70% of what they read. This means that 30-40% of what most people write is pointless crap that can go in the trash. Some idiots who aren’t considered confident in their intellectual abilities might scoff at this assessment, but unless I am reading and writing for an audience that also is capable of understanding the expression, then it is pointless to attempt expressing more.
That’s why I believe you noticed that most people don’t do well in reading/writing… it’s simply not a skill most have and it also is not overly meaningful that is the case. Why paint for the blind?
Writing is improved through practice. That's why there will be 500 games.
> this website does not handle tone, style, or describe how to use grammar as a tool as opposed to it acting as a governance over your writing
Guidance on tone and style is provided, and paid users get lessons that go over techniques to achieve desired tone and style.
> The people you’re talking about do not actually need to write well.
Not sure what you're talking about...my experiences are first-hand accounts.
> in general we only require them to understand approximately 60-70% of what they read
Right, so if the underlying material had less crap in it, people would get more out of the time they spent reading it.
> That’s why I believe you noticed that most people don’t do well in reading/writing… it’s simply not a skill most have and it also is not overly meaningful that is the case. Why paint for the blind?
Most people cannot speak well in front of an audience either. Does that mean public speaking is not worth learning? Learn how to write well if you want, or don't...it's up to you to determine if it's worthwhile or not.
There are others who don't share your opinion who may gain a lot from this site.
I was impressed by your project and will consider paying down the road. I think an app like yours plus human feedback is a killer combo to help people learn to write better. This kind of writing isn't even really about writing - it's about self-editing.
Good stuff!
Edit: “ Writing is improved through practice. That's why there will be 500 games.” See you’re wrong about this. Writing is improved much the same way that personality is. And being a funny dick can win more points than being kind and boring.
I think this tool is an excellent start. As you point out there are other skills in writing, but maybe this tool is just the start of a suite (or gym) of tools to help people become better writers. I applaud the creator's efforts to help people.
As I recall, most of the texts in reading comprehension tests are so badly written that it's amazing anyone can understand even 70% of them. Are you saying that because people can't understand difficult texts, people shouldn't bother trying to write clearly and concisely?
