Writing goals

A daily goal and a streak are the simplest way to keep a draft moving, and Plotra does the counting for you.

Open Stats from the ribbon (it is under More, in Team and progress, until you pin it), or run "Open writing stats and goals" from the command palette. Clicking the session count in the status bar opens it too. The view needs no module, and anyone who can open the project can see it.

The Stats viewCopy Anchor Link

Four tiles along the top, then the chart, the goals and the notes with a target.

A tile whose goal is met says Reached and its bar turns from orange to teal.

What is countedCopy Anchor Link

There are two counts, and they measure different things.

The project's words per day. Each time a note is saved, Plotra compares its word count with the one before and adds the difference to the current hour's total. This is counted for the whole project, not for each person, so if you write with someone else, their words are in the total too. It drives Today, the chart and the streak.

Your session. The words you typed in this browser tab since you opened the project. It is counted in your browser, only while your cursor is in the note that is changing, so it is yours alone. The one exception: a co-writer typing in the very note your cursor is in is counted as you.

A few things follow from counting this way:

• Pasting text, importing into an open note, or restoring an earlier version changes the project's count like typing does.
• Words you delete are counted separately as "cut". The chart shows words added, so a day spent trimming still shows the new words you wrote.
• Only text notes are counted: folders, chapters, scenes, notes, characters, locations, research notes and world entries. Canvases, timelines and dialogue trees are not.
• Days end at midnight in your own time zone, taken from your browser. The line under the chart names the zone. Two people in different time zones can see the same hour's words on different days.
• The numbers follow a moment behind your typing, because they move when a note is saved.
• What counts as a word is in Word counts.

How a session worksCopy Anchor Link

• A session starts at zero when you open the project in a tab.
• Reloading the page keeps it. Opening the project in a new tab or window starts a new one, and closing the tab ends it.
• It is a net count: words you delete while your cursor is in the note come off. It is never shown below zero.
• Start over in the Stats view resets it whenever you like.
• The status bar shows it as "N this session", or "N / goal this session" with a session goal, and a tick once you get there. It appears once you have typed something or set a goal. See The status bar.

The session is kept in your browser tab and nowhere else. Plotra does not record words per person.

GoalsCopy Anchor Link

Set these under Goals in the Stats view. Type a number and press ↵ or click away. Clear a field to remove the goal.

Anyone who can edit the project can set the project target. For everyone else the field is greyed out and reads "Set by the project's editors."

Because Today counts the whole project, a daily goal in a shared project is met by everyone's words together.

StreaksCopy Anchor Link

A streak is the number of days in a row that reached your daily goal. Without a daily goal, it counts days with any words added at all.

• A streak is not broken by today until today is over: if you wrote yesterday and haven't yet today, it still stands.
• Changing your daily goal changes the streak, because every past day is measured against the new number.
• Streaks look back one year. Longest is the longest run in that year.
• Like Today, a streak is built from the project's words, so each project has its own.

Targets for chaptersCopy Anchor Link

A chapter has a Target words property. Open the chapter, go to Properties in the inspector, and enter a number. The Stats view then lists it under Notes with a target, with its count, its target and a bar. Click a row to open the note in a new tab.

A note's count includes everything inside it that isn't in the trash, so a chapter counts its scenes.

To give another kind of note a target, add a number property called "Target words" to that kind in the same panel. See custom fields. You can also show Target words as a column in the Outline.

The chartCopy Anchor Link

Words added per day shows one bar for each of the last 30 or 90 days; the two buttons switch between them. Beside the heading is the total for the period and the number of days with writing.

• Point at a bar for the day's number, the date, and the words cut that day.
• The dashed line at the top is labelled with a round number at or above the best day. With a daily goal, a second line marks the goal.
• Table shows the same days as a table, newest first, with Added, Cut and, with a daily goal, whether the goal was reached. It is also the version a screen reader can read day by day.

Where goals are storedCopy Anchor Link