
Show HN: WriterKata – a site for writers to practice their craft - willstepp
http://writerkata.com
======
willstepp
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unpublished so far.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. :-)

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bambax
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.

~~~
willstepp
Great advice, thanks for those ideas. They are now on my list of things to do.

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mad44
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.

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Alterlife
It's been a while since I've had to know what a participle is... but I am
interested in improving my writing.

Why not define the terms and give an example of each... atleast to folks who
are not logged in.

Props to you: This is a very cool idea.

~~~
elmogallen
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.

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Swizec
LOVE IT!

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.

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tcwatrous
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.

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RV86
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!

~~~
willstepp
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.
:-)

~~~
RV86
Awesome! Just needed to log in to see it. I'll contribute. Nice work!

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fumeboy
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.

~~~
willstepp
That would be an amazing feature, but it seems extremely tricky from an
algorithmic perspective. Anyone have any ideas?

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lispylol
Oh this is neat. Would be super cool if you could view how others did the same
exercise.

~~~
willstepp
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.

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rimantas
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.

~~~
escapologybb
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?

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mring33621
I am surprised at myself, but I love this! I've been at it for maybe 20 mins &
want to quit. But I haven't yet.

PLEASE PLEASE make some way to share/see others' responses!

~~~
willstepp
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.

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nsomaru
Hi,

lispylol: you can view other's 'public' cycles.

Question to creator: how do I make my cycles public? Have been scrutinising
the interface, perhaps not closely enough ;)

~~~
willstepp
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.

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niix
This is great. I have recently been intrigued with the idea of writing a
novel. Thanks for this!

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jamesfranco
My writing skills suck. This would be really helpful!

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slvn
in martial arts, when we use the word kata, we mean very abstract and advanced
structures, while the basics are referred to as kihon

