6 ms·

Show HN: Brevity 500 – Short games to help you become a powerful writer

193 points by moksha256 4y ago

Hi folks, I've been experimenting with ways to teach people how to write better for a few years. During this time, I've worked in finance, sales, and software -- and everywhere I went, most people didn't write effectively, even when their job depended on it! 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!

wellthisisgreat 4y ago
Hey looks really interesting. What do you think is the applicability of this to fiction writing? Also what's HN's opinion of tools like ProwritingAid, Grammarly?
- moksha256 4y ago
  > What do you think is the applicability of this to fiction writing? 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.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  I think the fact that this doesn't evaluate your prose is a major plus. Grammarly is OK if you don't speak English very well and need someone to tell you what to do. But these are exercises for fluent writers to get better, and they are not going to want their writing evaluated by a bot.
jedberg 4y ago
I hit go and the first thing I saw was: "This game will challenge you to write well and write fast." 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  Sometimes I break grammar rules for effect...in that case, I like the rhythm of the single-syllable words "write well and write fast" better than "write well and write quickly". But you're totally correct. Maybe that's not the best place to flex rule-breaking :D
  - jedberg 4y ago
    Nothing wrong with a little rule breaking! But you have to establish trust first, so yeah, maybe not best to do it first thing. :)
sebmellen 4y ago
IMO the time given for the "games" is far too little.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Planktonne 4y ago
I don't agree with equating brevity and quality. 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  Yes, I've addressed this point here: https://brevity500.com/thoughts/why-only-brevity/ 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.
  - Planktonne 4y ago
    That is an excellent response, thank you.
    - tomgp 4y ago
      surprisingly excellent
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwjabah 4y ago
  - moksha256 4y ago
    From what I've seen, many corporate fuckwits could use a dose of brevity. They tend to cloak their message in verbose jargon instead of just making their point boldly and clearly.
fourthark 4y ago
A nit: introduction seems to say that the required words or phrases will still be available during the game, but I didn't see any highlighting and had to remember. (Firefox) 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  > but I didn't see any highlighting and had to remember 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 :)
xwdv 4y ago
Maybe there could be something similar but for coding.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  Kinda like LeetCode but instead you're given some code and asked to refactor it, then the system checks whether the code continues perform the same function?
csallen 4y ago
Cool! I love educational games and think they should be created more often. 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  Thank you sir! I try to limit text to a maximum width where needed, but can look into making the whole site a little less wide too.
  - csallen 4y ago
    This is how it appears on my screen: https://i.imgur.com/oWBfOxU.png https://i.imgur.com/oWBfOxU.png (no max width)
    - moksha256 4y ago
      Oh geez, that is terrible. None of my screens are that huge so I never got close to testing anything like that. I'll work on it!
    - moksha256 4y ago
      Just pushed an update that limits width to 1000px, appreciate the suggestion. Took longer than it should have because my CSS is shitty :P
throwjabah 4y ago
Personally I think this is a useless tool. Writing ability isn’t so easily trained like muscle memory and 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. 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?
- moksha256 4y ago
  > Writing ability isn’t so easily trained like muscle memory 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.
UmYeahNo 4y ago
Calling these exercises "Games" is a stretch. 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  The required terms are viewable in a pop-in that shows if you click the "i" icon in the bottom-left corner during gameplay.
Krasnol 4y ago
If anyone needs ideas to write fiction, they should try RimWorld. Stories write themselves. https://rimworldgame.com/ https://rimworldgame.com/
infogulch 4y ago
Fun project, thanks for sharing!
reifyx 4y ago
I think both the idea and execution are great. These games would be useful even just as problem statements. I like that each problem clearly defines the desired tone and goals, and that the sample solutions have explanations. 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
- moksha256 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! 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.
thimkerbell 4y ago
Mobile phone offers noplace to edit the original text. What am I doing wrong?
- moksha256 4y ago
  I tried to make it responsive because I knew a lot of people would visit the site on their phone. In my testing, gameplay works on mobile...without an on-screen keyboard. When that keyboard pops up on the screen, there isn't much room for anything else. 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.
  - thimkerbell 4y ago
    I see no on-screen keyboard. I cannot get one to appear. How should I be typing, without one?
    - moksha256 4y ago
      I'm not sure why a mobile phone wouldn't show an on-screen keyboard with a textarea in focus. Doesn't sound like an issue with Brevity 500. The site is visually designed to be responsive but it's really designed to be used with a non-mobile screen and a real keyboard.
      - thimkerbell 4y ago
        Android 11, in Chrome. And in Firefox. Options offered (in place of any keyboard) are Copy, Search, Select All, and Share. Well, it's a lovely thought. Maybe someone can make one that works on mobile phones.
        entwife 4y ago
        I'm using the same setup. There were several pages to click through before the timed text editing challenge. Two pages showed the text to edit in a static form before the timed challenge.
hammerbrostime 4y ago
Fun! Unfortunately, this leans into the fact that I tend to be brief-to-a--fault.
- moksha256 4y ago
  > brief-to-a--fault Not sure if intentional, but either way, well done!
elefantastisch 4y ago
Conceptually, I really like this. Congratulations on getting it out there, and thank you for sharing. 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. 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.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    Very cool app, but just wanted to agree with OP that I wasn't a huge fan of the timer. Writing is an anxiety provoking activity for most people, and adding a timer can make it more so ( or at least it did for me).
entwife 4y ago
This is a nice start, and succinct writing is a valuable skill. For a serious student of writing, the automated feedback is insufficient. Human feedback would be most useful. Designing automated feedback would be tricky, because the rewritten text must both be grammatically correct and have the same message. FYI, There is a sentence simplification exercise inside of the larger app "Elevate Brain Training" on the Google Play app store for Android.
- moksha256 4y ago
  > Human feedback would be most useful. 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.
er4hn 4y ago
When trying it out to see if there is any automated sentiment analysis, I noticed that my line of "a" just stretches endlessly out and breaks the text box. Anyways, does HN want to offer feedback on the first game involving explaining an issue to Mr. Smith about his ACME engine part? I was so concise that I couldn't submit without adding some screaming noises to get my word count up. (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 ===
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
aviditas 4y ago
Unrelated to the site itself, which I am excited to try out, searching duckduckgo for 'brevity 500' only shows the promotion posts here on hackernews, twitter, etc. and not the site itself. If I go to google, the site is the second result. I didn't check any of the other search engines, but it might be worth a little time to make sure people can search and find your website with ease.
- moksha256 4y ago
  I put the site online just 1 day ago, and didn't really tell anyone about it until this HN post. I expect that the situation with search engines will change as the domain matures and becomes more known.
rkagerer 4y ago
Well that was a waste of time. 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.
- O__________O 4y ago
  >> “Waste of time, it’s a sales pitch.” 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.
  - rkagerer 4y ago
    That's fair. Sorry if I came across too harsh... it's how I felt after the test drive.
akprasad 4y ago
Congratulations on shipping! 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  Thanks! > 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.
loxias 4y ago
0. Congrats on shipping. 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.
- moksha256 4y ago
  Thanks for such thorough feedback! > 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!
dzink 4y ago
Ha! A few days ago a showHN startup post pitched a business that charged $55 for 500 words of your content, edited. Combined with a game like this that charges editors money to let them edit and you’ve got quite the business model.
sercand 4y ago
Congrats on shipping! 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.
riffraff 4y ago
I like this! 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!
jordiburgos 4y ago
I can't learn like that. Just getting in front of a problem and asking me to fix it. 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.

193 points by moksha256 4y ago

wellthisisgreat 4y ago

Hey looks really interesting. What do you think is the applicability of this to fiction writing? Also what's HN's opinion of tools like ProwritingAid, Grammarly?

moksha256 4y ago
> What do you think is the applicability of this to fiction writing? 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.
spoonjim 4y ago
I think the fact that this doesn't evaluate your prose is a major plus. Grammarly is OK if you don't speak English very well and need someone to tell you what to do. But these are exercises for fluent writers to get better, and they are not going to want their writing evaluated by a bot.

jedberg 4y ago

I hit go and the first thing I saw was: "This game will challenge you to write well and write fast." 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.

moksha256 4y ago
Sometimes I break grammar rules for effect...in that case, I like the rhythm of the single-syllable words "write well and write fast" better than "write well and write quickly". But you're totally correct. Maybe that's not the best place to flex rule-breaking :D
- jedberg 4y ago
  Nothing wrong with a little rule breaking! But you have to establish trust first, so yeah, maybe not best to do it first thing. :)

sebmellen 4y ago

IMO the time given for the "games" is far too little.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Planktonne 4y ago

I don't agree with equating brevity and quality. 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.

moksha256 4y ago
Yes, I've addressed this point here: https://brevity500.com/thoughts/why-only-brevity/ 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.
- Planktonne 4y ago
  That is an excellent response, thank you.
  - tomgp 4y ago
    surprisingly excellent
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwjabah 4y ago
- moksha256 4y ago
  From what I've seen, many corporate fuckwits could use a dose of brevity. They tend to cloak their message in verbose jargon instead of just making their point boldly and clearly.

fourthark 4y ago

A nit: introduction seems to say that the required words or phrases will still be available during the game, but I didn't see any highlighting and had to remember. (Firefox) 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.

moksha256 4y ago
> but I didn't see any highlighting and had to remember 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 :)

xwdv 4y ago

Maybe there could be something similar but for coding.

forgotpwd16 4y ago
Kinda like LeetCode but instead you're given some code and asked to refactor it, then the system checks whether the code continues perform the same function?

csallen 4y ago

Cool! I love educational games and think they should be created more often. 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.

moksha256 4y ago
Thank you sir! I try to limit text to a maximum width where needed, but can look into making the whole site a little less wide too.
- csallen 4y ago
  This is how it appears on my screen: https://i.imgur.com/oWBfOxU.png https://i.imgur.com/oWBfOxU.png (no max width)
  - moksha256 4y ago
    Oh geez, that is terrible. None of my screens are that huge so I never got close to testing anything like that. I'll work on it!
  - moksha256 4y ago
    Just pushed an update that limits width to 1000px, appreciate the suggestion. Took longer than it should have because my CSS is shitty :P

throwjabah 4y ago

Personally I think this is a useless tool. Writing ability isn’t so easily trained like muscle memory and 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. 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?

moksha256 4y ago
> Writing ability isn’t so easily trained like muscle memory 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.

UmYeahNo 4y ago

Calling these exercises "Games" is a stretch. 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.

moksha256 4y ago
The required terms are viewable in a pop-in that shows if you click the "i" icon in the bottom-left corner during gameplay.

Krasnol 4y ago

If anyone needs ideas to write fiction, they should try RimWorld. Stories write themselves. https://rimworldgame.com/ https://rimworldgame.com/

infogulch 4y ago

Fun project, thanks for sharing!

reifyx 4y ago

I think both the idea and execution are great. These games would be useful even just as problem statements. I like that each problem clearly defines the desired tone and goals, and that the sample solutions have explanations. 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

moksha256 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback! 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.

thimkerbell 4y ago

Mobile phone offers noplace to edit the original text. What am I doing wrong?

moksha256 4y ago
I tried to make it responsive because I knew a lot of people would visit the site on their phone. In my testing, gameplay works on mobile...without an on-screen keyboard. When that keyboard pops up on the screen, there isn't much room for anything else. 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.
- thimkerbell 4y ago
  I see no on-screen keyboard. I cannot get one to appear. How should I be typing, without one?
  - moksha256 4y ago
    I'm not sure why a mobile phone wouldn't show an on-screen keyboard with a textarea in focus. Doesn't sound like an issue with Brevity 500. The site is visually designed to be responsive but it's really designed to be used with a non-mobile screen and a real keyboard.
    - thimkerbell 4y ago
      Android 11, in Chrome. And in Firefox. Options offered (in place of any keyboard) are Copy, Search, Select All, and Share. Well, it's a lovely thought. Maybe someone can make one that works on mobile phones.
      - entwife 4y ago
        I'm using the same setup. There were several pages to click through before the timed text editing challenge. Two pages showed the text to edit in a static form before the timed challenge.

hammerbrostime 4y ago

Fun! Unfortunately, this leans into the fact that I tend to be brief-to-a--fault.

moksha256 4y ago
> brief-to-a--fault Not sure if intentional, but either way, well done!

elefantastisch 4y ago

Conceptually, I really like this. Congratulations on getting it out there, and thank you for sharing. 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.

moksha256 4y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. 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.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  Very cool app, but just wanted to agree with OP that I wasn't a huge fan of the timer. Writing is an anxiety provoking activity for most people, and adding a timer can make it more so ( or at least it did for me).

entwife 4y ago

This is a nice start, and succinct writing is a valuable skill. For a serious student of writing, the automated feedback is insufficient. Human feedback would be most useful. Designing automated feedback would be tricky, because the rewritten text must both be grammatically correct and have the same message. FYI, There is a sentence simplification exercise inside of the larger app "Elevate Brain Training" on the Google Play app store for Android.

moksha256 4y ago
> Human feedback would be most useful. 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.

er4hn 4y ago

When trying it out to see if there is any automated sentiment analysis, I noticed that my line of "a" just stretches endlessly out and breaks the text box. Anyways, does HN want to offer feedback on the first game involving explaining an issue to Mr. Smith about his ACME engine part? I was so concise that I couldn't submit without adding some screaming noises to get my word count up. (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 ===

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

aviditas 4y ago

Unrelated to the site itself, which I am excited to try out, searching duckduckgo for 'brevity 500' only shows the promotion posts here on hackernews, twitter, etc. and not the site itself. If I go to google, the site is the second result. I didn't check any of the other search engines, but it might be worth a little time to make sure people can search and find your website with ease.

moksha256 4y ago
I put the site online just 1 day ago, and didn't really tell anyone about it until this HN post. I expect that the situation with search engines will change as the domain matures and becomes more known.

rkagerer 4y ago

Well that was a waste of time. 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.

O__________O 4y ago
>> “Waste of time, it’s a sales pitch.” 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.
- rkagerer 4y ago
  That's fair. Sorry if I came across too harsh... it's how I felt after the test drive.

akprasad 4y ago

Congratulations on shipping! 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.

moksha256 4y ago
Thanks! > 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.

loxias 4y ago

0. Congrats on shipping. 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.

moksha256 4y ago
Thanks for such thorough feedback! > 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!

dzink 4y ago

Ha! A few days ago a showHN startup post pitched a business that charged $55 for 500 words of your content, edited. Combined with a game like this that charges editors money to let them edit and you’ve got quite the business model.

sercand 4y ago

Congrats on shipping! 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.

riffraff 4y ago

I like this! 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!

jordiburgos 4y ago

I can't learn like that. Just getting in front of a problem and asking me to fix it. 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.