Word Count Programs

[Testaccount]

Hey, everyone!

I seriously need to take a break from the forums, but I have a question to ask. This month, my goal is to write 20K words. My major focus is to improve my craft and finish my stories. What programs do you use to track your daily word count?

[KennDemon]

There's probably something better out there, but whenever I care to track my count I start a spreadsheet in something like excel. I'll punch in the date, the total count on the story's document, and then calculate the difference between that number and what it was the day before/the last entry. It's also nice to put those numbers into a graph, but that's more work that isn't necessary.

[Testaccount]

Thanks! I never thought of doing that before. Thanks for responding to me! I'm curious to know what other people use, too.

[sarrowsmith10]

There's probably something better out there, but whenever I care to track my count I start a spreadsheet in something like excel. I'll punch in the date, the total count on the story's document, and then calculate the difference between that number and what it was the day before/the last entry. It's also nice to put those numbers into a graph, but that's more work that isn't necessary.

wow. that is actually a really good idea! I do very little creative writing, but I do a lot of technical writing at work, and I'm totally going to use this!

[punkarsenic]

ooooh i like that. you could go as far as to make your own lil dashboard of performance graphs from all the stats

[Strontium]

You can also use equations in Excel to auto add the numbers in designated fields together. It's pretty easy to use and it'll automate the process.

[kklekc718]

Nibble Writer on Steam ($10) is wonderful.
You'll have to export it a certain way to make it look correct (had several tries, and the spacing looked horrible. Finally set it right.)
Since you buy it from a "gaming" store, it actually have trophies for writing. Such as 1000 words in one day, reaching 50k words for a novel, or something. For a while, it actually encouraged me to write more, and that's coming from a guy who hates to write out stories (love making it, writing takes too long).

[CireWire]

I use Scrivener and it uses an awesome word tracker that splits it between how far you are to reach your manuscript goal and how close you are to reaching your session goal which is pretty neat if you need to hit a certain word goal for the day.

[Testaccount]

Thanks! I'll check it out. I saw your comment just after I made my excel spreadsheet lol

[CireWire]

Lol the spreadsheet is just as good so no worries

[Amecha]

All I do, personally, is sit down and write for the day in MS Word and when I stop for the day I add a page break where I stopped. I start from that break the next day and just keep going. When I want to check my progress between multiple days I just check the word count for each section against the word count of another section.

If you're having trouble keeping your word count up and want to incentivise yourself to write more words in a smaller timeframe there is this website called Fighter's Block. The link will explain everything but it's basically a mock battle game where you do damage and restore your health by typing quickly. You set your word goal and difficulty and can pause in case something comes up. I personally found it to be rather neat and a great way to get the creative juices flowing as a warmup for writing for the day but far too distracting for actually fleshing out a scene. It does get me thinking and writing much quicker though which is great for those pesky first drafts.

[DiegoPalacios]

I literally googled word counter out of curiosity and found this https://wordcounter.net.
You just copy-paste your text and gives you details like: Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, reading time and speaking time.
Hope it helps

[sarahrebecca58]

Use Focuswriter, it's great for concentration, and doesn't require the internet like cloud services do. It counts words, pages, lines, and characters. (If you ever submit poetry, they pay by the line.)

[emmyengberts]

A friend of mine got me addicted to 4TheWords: https://rosaswann.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/4thewords-most-awesome-writing-productivity-tool-ever/

Which is really really awesome!

Other than that, as above, I have an excel sheet that tracks my words written for the whole year and I can set monthly challenges to myself if I want to.