I am a (web) programmer by day, writer by night. I've written a couple novels, unpublished so far. A few weeks ago I sat down to sharpen the saw and after struggling to come up with something to write about, I realized I could use a tool to give me random writing exercises so I can focus on the writing itself. Something like a writing prompt, but more compelling and interactive. Inspired by the practice of coding katas, I decided to create WriterKata. It has a hundred or so exercises so far, a social aspect, and some slight gamification features. Any writers in the HN sphere are invited to check it out, give feedback, etc. It is 100% free.
Of technical interest, this is my first Node/Express site, coming from the Rails world. I enjoyed the low-level nature of it but did miss a lot of the built-in features Rails gives you. Don't know what you got til its gone, I guess. :-)
This is an excellent idea, very cool, very nice (although, why Courier New?? ;-)
What happens to the exercises once they're completed? Is there some sort of social review, advice from mentors or the like?
Edit1: after using it for a (very short) while, some thoughts.
1/ It would be cool to be able to compare what others have written for the same "katas".
2/ Some katas are uninspiring/difficult. A button to change it would be nice ("try another").
(3/ Maybe it's just me and I need more practice, but for some stories I find it hard/impossible to fit everything in just one sentence.)
Edit2: Okay, so from the "board" we can access "public cycles" of users. This is nice, but it would be interesting to access the work of others not from their usernames but from the katas themselves: group all answers to a given kata (possibly limited to the katas one has already completed, as to not be influenced by the work of others).
It could also be nice to be able to continue a story -- although I'm not sure how this would work.
It's a cool idea. It reminds me of a writing exercise we used to do in a journalism class in high school. The teacher gave us an assortment of facts about a story, and from those facts, we'd compile ledes (opening sentences and/or paragraphs).[1] As many strong ledes as we could muster from the same pool of information.
A strong lede is compelling, informative, and brief. Those goals are tough to reconcile. You'd spend 5-10 minutes nailing the "perfect" lede. Then you'd go through it carefully, cutting out anything extraneous or sloppy. Then you'd toss it out and start again, approaching the story differently.
Despite the nature of the exercise, it never felt boring or repetitive. It was great practice, too.
[1] Don't ask me why journalists spell it "lede," when "lead" is perfectly fine. It's a quirk of the trade, sort of like the journalistic use of "graf" for "paragraph."
"Lede" is supposedly a holdover from the time when news was printed using actual metal lead type, and "lead" was accordingly shorthand for type itself. The alternate spelling avoids a potentially confusing homograph.
Hmm. Makes sense, I guess. Served a useful purpose. Thanks for the info. :) Also, shame on my high school journalism teacher for not having pointed that out.
Your comment brought to mind "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs. I believe he used to suffer badly from writer's block (and morphine addiction). Burroughs had no recollection of writing the novel, apparently it's just his habit notes strung together.
If you were to read the pages of Naked Lunch in a random order, it would make just as much sense as if read in the order they were printed.
> Inspired by the practice of coding katas, I decided to create WriterKata.
Would you be thinking of one in particular? I'm always up for more practise.
One question – I noticed that you're doing some validation of the inputs (i.e., I can't seem to submit a sentence without a period) – could you explain the reasoning for this?
On the one hand, it seems fairly constraining (and probably comes with a few unfortunate edge cases). On the other, perhaps that's the benefit of the kata philosophy.
You might find the SailsJS project interesting ( http://sailsjs.org/ )--it brings some very Rails-y things to a Node application. One of the best features is Waterline, which is somewhat like ActiveRecord and all that good stuff.
Hey, nice idea! Can't comment on functionality or usability, (I only loaded the initial page) but I'm guessing this has some appeal, since out of a small sample of two here in this room, one is interested enough to take a go at it later, and the other is wavering.. Thanks! :)
It would be interesting to put the code on something like GitHub if you are willing to do so. We may then propose commits and tell you the bugs we encounter.
This can also be a very useful tool for elementary school students. So, you may want to also produce a junior-writerKata version. While adults would not pay for themselves for writerKata, as "parents" they would be more willing to pay for it for their children to improve their writing skills.
Yeah, I had to look up a few terms myself. I think defining them somewhere might be a good idea, even if it's just making that term a link that opens a new tab to the definition.
Not sure I'll use it, but I love it. Reminds me of that time I did NaNoWriMo and we gave random little challenges to each other to spur us ever onwards in that quest for 1666 words per day.
I accidentally registered as a user when I hit enter with the email field containing only the letter 't' and the password fields empty. Just thought I would let you know.
If you really want to improve the base of katas, allow fellow HN writers to submit their own for you to review and add to the pool -- I'd love to add some!
Thanks. When you are logged in there is a tab at the top called 'Builder' that lets you submit your own kata instructions. You even earn experience for it. :-)
For someone that excelled at writing at school but never took it any further than that, this was an excellent experience for me to get me thinking about writing creatively again.
What would be amazing is to let me not progress until I successfully met some of the grammar conditions that were placed upon the sentences/paragraphs (eg. I had to google what an appositive was) but was not sure if I successfully used it correctly.
That is an excellent idea. I want to do something where once you complete an exercise, only then can you see how others answered the same one. Kind of like Project Euler if you've ever used that.
Hijacking this thread to ask: is there a service or community where you can get your writing evalueted by human being? The purpose would be to improve my English writing skills.
Paid services are OK too.
What kind of help are you looking for? Are you a native English speaker looking to improve your general writing skills, or is English your second language and you would like help in that area?
Thanks, I plan to make it more obvious in the near future, but if you click on a user profile from the 'Board' you will see 'public cycles' towards the bottom. If you click on those you can read cycles people have made public.
Hi, thanks for checking out the site. When you complete a cycle, you will be presented with the choice to make it public or private. Public will earn you some experience.
Of technical interest, this is my first Node/Express site, coming from the Rails world. I enjoyed the low-level nature of it but did miss a lot of the built-in features Rails gives you. Don't know what you got til its gone, I guess. :-)