[HN Gopher] Show HN: Brevity 500 - Short games to help you becom...
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Show HN: Brevity 500 - Short games to help you become a powerful
writer
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!
Author : moksha256
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-06-29 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brevity500.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brevity500.com)
| xwdv wrote:
| Maybe there could be something similar but for coding.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| 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?
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The required terms are viewable in a pop-in that shows if you
| click the "i" icon in the bottom-left corner during gameplay.
| er4hn wrote:
| 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. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| ===
| O__________O wrote:
| Sentiment analysis has to do detection and classification of
| opinions, emotions, etc.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis
|
| Believe concept you're looking for is semantic similarity:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_similarity
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Mobile phone offers noplace to edit the original text. What am I
| doing wrong?
| moksha256 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I see no on-screen keyboard. I cannot get one to appear. How
| should I be typing, without one?
| moksha256 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| And the prize goes to entwife, I mistook the preliminary
| text display for the one we were supposed to edit.
|
| Thank you.
| entwife wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| elefantastisch wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
| Peritract wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Peritract wrote:
| That is an excellent response, thank you.
| tomgp wrote:
| surprisingly excellent
| [deleted]
| throwjabah wrote:
| moksha256 wrote:
| 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.
| csallen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This is how it appears on my screen:
| https://i.imgur.com/oWBfOxU.png (no max width)
| moksha256 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Just pushed an update that limits width to 1000px,
| appreciate the suggestion. Took longer than it should have
| because my CSS is shitty :P
| infogulch wrote:
| Fun project, thanks for sharing!
| hammerbrostime wrote:
| Fun! Unfortunately, this leans into the fact that I tend to be
| brief-to-a--fault.
| moksha256 wrote:
| > brief-to-a--fault
|
| Not sure if intentional, but either way, well done!
| Krasnol wrote:
| If anyone needs ideas to write fiction, they should try RimWorld.
|
| Stories write themselves.
|
| https://rimworldgame.com/
| jedberg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Nothing wrong with a little rule breaking! But you have to
| establish trust first, so yeah, maybe not best to do it first
| thing. :)
| fourthark wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 :)
| reifyx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| throwjabah wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| kareemm wrote:
| 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!
| moksha256 wrote:
| 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.
| throwndajakajd wrote:
| This is how you write and you want users to PAY for this? Are
| you taking a page from Blizzard and making an out of season
| April fools joke?
|
| 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.
| Shared404 wrote:
| 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?
| Miraste wrote:
| 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.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| 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.
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| 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?
| [deleted]
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