Okay, I have developed a new version of Lovecraft Copywork.

Here it is:

(I purchased the domain)

It’s great!

Firstly, each story is divided into paragraph “passages”.

Progress is managed per passage both x/y words and x/y characters, and a little progress bar.

The next word to type is indicated and all prose in the passage is gray and becomes back as typed.

Any character that is not the next expected character is ignored.

For example, here’s a screenshot of a passage “in progress”:

Passages can be selected with the mouse or changed via tab.

The current passage is marked via the a light gray background color.

When a passage is “done” the background is marked green.

Progress for a passage can be reset at any time using a small button in the button right of the passage.

Progress for all passages can be reset with a big red button at the top of the page.

For example, here’s a screenshot of a “done” passage:

Passage-wise progress for each story is reported on the main menu and when all passages for a story are “done”, the story background is marked in green.

For example, here is a screenshot of the main menu showing passage-based progress for some stories:

The best part of all?

All progress is maintained between visits!

It’s great.

It’s really fun.

There is still a small sense of a typing exercise, but fun because of the gamification.

The persistence across visits makes it feel more like an app.

I also had to clean up the text a little, minor formatting and replace non-ASCII characters with their equivalent (so the user can type them in on the keyboard).

Next:

  • Add many more stories.
  • Do a lot of typing and get a feel rough edges on the interface.
  • Maybe show story-wise progress at the top of the page.

Wild ideas:

  • Text-to speech wile typing.
  • Keep track of which paragraphs are typed the most (most popular)
  • Provide a filter paragraphs to a selected set of “most interesting” or “recommended”
  • Add a timer at the top of the page, e.g. 20 min
  • Daily email with a reminder to do your copywork.
  • Add to calendar button to schedule copywork
  • And on…

Eventually, I’d like to share it with lovecraft people / writer people and writer+lovecraft people on reddit and get some feedback.