What writing website do you visit the most?

There are a lot of great sites out there for writing-related topics. Some of them are kept up by writers who have been in the industry for a long time. Some of them are kept up by people with almost no experience or knowledge (looking at you, random youtubers who pretend to be grade A agents or successful authors yet have no examples of their work).

But for the most part, at some point, whether you realize it or not, advice sites are a sinkhole rather than a help.

The absolute best writing site I’ve found is called: 4the words.com.

I remember writing about a site called Fighter’s Bloc before, but if you aren’t aware of what it was, it was a site crafted where you fight a little monster by finishing words. Every time you stopped writing, your avatar took damage. Too much damage, you die. But if you go until you accomplish your target word count, you win!

4thewords is a similar site, except in all way better. It essentially gamifies writing.

You have an avatar you can customize. A map you can travel through. A quest book. There’s a main story line. Side quests. Basically anything you tend to see in an easy app game, this site has crafted. Your job is to travel into the wilderness and battle monsters, each with a different target goal and different drops, leading you to craft better weapons, better armor, etc.

There’s also an Inn that works as a forum, but I really don’t recommend going there. Forums are time dumps generally. Ignore them as best you can. I’ve never actually read a single post on 4thewords and haven’t started my own despite there being a quest to do to because that’s not the purpose I want for my account.

On the writing side, the site allows you to create as many files as you want, which you can organize into different projects. Each project can be divided into different sections, holding whatever files you need. All the files and projects can be customized, by color and shape, allowing you to easily see at a glance the files you’re looking for.

In terms of actual productivity, the monsters you battle each give a different incentive. Some are word count battles, where you are given a certain amount of time to accomplish a certain amount of words. For instance, the Wignow makes you write 250 words in a 30 minute time frame. Each monster is a different type of challenge, some giving you a relaxed time frame, some giving you a tighter one. There are also monsters who are endurance battles, more similar to the little 2-bit monsters you would have battled on Figher’s Bloc. These fights are really good for brainstorming sessions or dumping sessions where you’re just trying to get words out in order to push yourself into the zone.

All in all, I find the site really helpful as a writer :)

~Emmi