These Words Kill Monsters

This is a post for people who want to write, so if you are not interested in writing, see you next time. For folks writing novels during National Novel Writing Month: You've got nine days left! Feel free to take that as "You only have nine days!" or "You have nine full days," whichever motivates you more.

I won NaNoWriMo 2020, for the first time since the initial Barbary Station draft, which was seven years ago. This year I finished a first draft of a story you might actually read one day. Here's my word count graph:

The Y axis is project word count, and the X is, of course, dates. The NaNoWriMo website recommends you write 1,667 words per day for thirty days, which is what that rising light blue line represents. You might notice that the first day the number of words I wrote, in dark blue, significantly exceeded the recommended word count was November 11. That's when I joined 4thewords.

And I frickin' doubled my daily word count.

Writing is my full time job at the moment, so you'd think (I'd think) I'd write more like 7,000 words in a day. As it turns out, 5k is the max before my brain protectively removes my conscious ability to string sentences together, and it's usually a real struggle to write that much. That was before I found a website that gamifies the hell out of drafting.

4thewords is a browser-based role playing game in which each word you type is a blow against a monster (or a sapient, nonbinary cloud opponent, in the case of this month's special event). This game has been around for a few years, and rumor is it hasn't always been a stable writing platform. However, I wrote the whole second half of a novel in it this year, and I didn't lose a single word to technical issues. That's better than Microsoft usually does for me.

I attribute my writing speed increase to two features of this game:

  1. I get started earlier and keep writing longer because there are quests! Nothing keeps me engaged like helping imaginary people. You are great, don't get me wrong, but you aren't going to see any benefits of my work for a year at least. These people are being hunted by giant spiders which are vulnerable to words. And,
  2. the game's monster battles are time-limited. If you don't defeat the beasties in the time which ticks down in the left corner of your writing space, the monsters escape (to kill again, presumably).

And if those factors don't inspire you, completing quests often wins you colorful clothes for your avatar. Yes, there are weapons, accessories, pets, mix-and-match armor sets, and unnatural hair colors. It's a good RPG.

So if you've never checked 4thewords out, or haven't seen it in a few years, I highly recommend its free trial. It might be the boost you need to get across the NaNoWriMo finish line. And, since I wrote this post in the game, thank you for joining me in this battle against a ferocious nimbbit.

R. E. Stearns