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.

From my quick reading of the source (jquery/not minified, so it was easy to scan through) valid is just the having all the required terms and a minimum length based on the round.

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.

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.

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).

Thank you for this! I enjoyed the exercises. Speaking for myself, I liked the pressure of the timed task.

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).

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.

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!

> 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.

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

> Do you see that button?

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.

Could it be a browser extension interfering? Maybe try running in private browsing mode and see if you still get those quirks.

Gotcha, yeah this business model probably isn't final. I'll probably tweak a few things as I talk to users and figure things out.

Ran in private mode w/o extensions, still can repro. There's gotta be some difference between giving the final button a click, and whatever happens in a browser when I press enter. I don't know anything about browser programming but hopefully that helps you find it.

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.

Yes, I've addressed this point here:

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.

That is an excellent response, thank you.

surprisingly excellent

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is how it appears on my screen: https://i.imgur.com/oWBfOxU.png (no max width)

Just pushed an update that limits width to 1000px, appreciate the suggestion. Took longer than it should have because my CSS is shitty :P

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!

If anyone needs ideas to write fiction, they should try RimWorld.

Stories write themselves.

https://rimworldgame.com/

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 ===

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!

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.

> 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 :)

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

> 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.

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.

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

Nothing wrong with a little rule breaking! But you have to establish trust first, so yeah, maybe not best to do it first thing. :)

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.

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.

Fun project, thanks for sharing!

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.

>> “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.

That's fair. Sorry if I came across too harsh... it's how I felt after the test drive.

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

> brief-to-a--fault

Not sure if intentional, but either way, well done!

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

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.

I see no on-screen keyboard. I cannot get one to appear. How should I be typing, without one?

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.

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.

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.

And the prize goes to entwife, I mistook the preliminary text display for the one we were supposed to edit.

Thank you.

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

Maybe there could be something similar but for coding.

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?

> 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.

Don't worry about the haters. The throwaway's response is verging on trolling and isn't worthy of your concern.

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!

Thanks! Yeah exactly -- I actually believe that one of the most fundamental issues with traditional writing instruction is that it focuses on writing tips, which are mostly useless because everyone's first draft of anything is always bad.

Writing instruction should instead focus on writing faults so that people know how to actually improve whatever they initially wrote down.

I discuss that notion more here:

https://brevity500.com/about/

Part of the reason I went public this early was that I wanted to work directly with people to provide them feedback on their own writing samples. That will help me better understand this site's users, but there's a selfish motive also: it will help me gather writing samples to use for the next ~490 games that need to be built.

All that to say -- I don't mention it on the site, but for the near-term, everyone who signs up will get pretty personalized attention and feedback.

If the aim of professional writing is to communicate your ideas and convince your audience of their value, and we accept HN votes as a proxy...

you may want to sign up for GP's course.

Wow.

Congrats, you landed an even bigger egg on your face.

OP, congrats on your progress. This looks interesting, and has the potential to help a lot of people.

Mr. Throwaway, do you have nothing better to do with your life?

You created a throwaway account to shit on someone else's efforts. You knew it was wrong, otherwise you wouldn't have created a new account. Just move along if you have nothing of value add to the discussion.

When I was writing full-time, we had strict word limits. It meant we spent a lot of time removing unnecessary words. My writing skill improved immensely because of this "training". Writing is a skill like any other. It can be trained. The problem most people have is that they don't know how to train it.

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?