TESTING OUT CHRIS FOX'S "WRITE 5,000 WORDS IN AN HOUR" METHOD // a writing experiment vlog 

Good on you for trying the dictation! I am the sort of person who cannot do that at all, my brain doesn't work that way. I have to write and see words. I do agree on this point that he's not necessarily saying anything that no one has thought of, but I think those actionable steps together is what kind of clicked and helped me. Loved seeing this video and your thoughts!

I wish I was a productivity machine. 5000 a hour, 20,000 a day, 100,000 a week, 2 books a month, 24 books a year, just imagine!

OMG. THIS GAVE ME THE BIGGEST REVELATION. I'm always torn between my art tasks and my writing tasks, never finding enough time for both. WHAT IF I COULD DICTATE MY NOVEL WHILE PAINTING??? WHAT IF, KATE?? WHAT IF?? Because I can listen to audiobooks while painting - what if I could be making my own story instead of listening to someone else's?? And how have I never thought of this before??

I know this is a pretty old video but I only just discovered Chris Fox and his books and he has helped me SO much. One trick I figured out for dictation is rather than stopping and saying "open quotation", "close quotation", "period" etc I will instead say "BB" for quotation marks and "JJ" for period, etc and then just use the find and replace command when editing it later. Repeated letters are so much quicker to say and aren't usually mistaken for any other word so it helped speed up my dictation and keep a creative flow much easier. Also for complicated fantasy names, words, or spellings I just use a super short and common name like "Bob" or "Steve" and then find/replace it later for the correct name. It's hilarious to go back and edit it later and see stuff like "Steve raised the mighty sword of Bob and brought it down on Tim's exposed neck. The men around him broke into exhausted cheering, having proved the might of their vengeful god Betty" 😂

I can write 5000 words in an hour easily. They won't be good words - in fact more than half will just be the word 'something' - but I can write them.

What if you had a challenge "I can't write for more than 2 hours a day!" And try it for a week. You could plan what you're going to work on. And maybe even do an outline. But once you hit 2 hours, you can't write any more that day. It's like the antithesis of a "write for 24 hours" challenge.

Personally I dont like dictation but I found out that this five minute sprint method is incredible for me. it take 2 min to write the outline for the scene and in 5 min I can write 200-250 words so I can write 450-500 words in 15 min and 900-1000 words in half an hour (without breaks of course, but at the point that im in the flow with music and I am seeing how much Im getting done I dont need breaks). Thanks Kate!!!!

I have written up to 7,000 words in an hour when I was really panicky about my NaNoWriMo wordcount. But that's words. The number of salvageable sentences was laughable.

5000 words in 1 hour? Bro my NaNo progress chart would hug me for that.

Dictation is definitely a no for me. I think there's something to be said for finding a balance between fast drafting and concious the-best-it-can-be drafting. I would never have the energy to edit something I just word-vomited onto the page, so I think it would ultimately take me longer. That's awesome if it works for some people though!

I’m notorious for not doing the exercises at all, and just going straight for it. Love that you’re giving this a try, and can’t wait to see your progress. I’m so excited to try this one day. My average is around 3200 per hour at the moment.

Kate: Duke do you want to go outside?! Duke: **licks floor** 🤣

I'm not a fan of dictation because my talking brain and my writing brain work so differently. Writing 40-50wpm is easy for me, but I have really bad ADHD so speaking in complete sentences is hard. Also I already work from home and don't go anywhere or do anything so trying to dictate while doing other things just wouldn't add much.

To the folks that "can't" do it (myself included), I suspect you/we can. It just takes practice. More importantly, it takes a desire to do this. I really should attempt this again.

As someone with chronic fatigue I experience burnout very easily, so I found this very interesting! Will definitely give it a try

His writing books are so good! 5000 wph and Lifelong Writing Habit really helped me.

This honestly inspired me to write for at least five minutes before I go to school. I've been giving the excuse "when Nano comes I will be writing all the time, I don't need to write now." Not the case now that I'm thinking about it. So, yes, five minute sprints before I go to school and before I go to bed. Sounds good.

This was one of your best videos in the series. I like how you organized it. 1) Reading Christ Fox's book, 2) doing the exercises, 3) trying voice-to-text to increase word count, 4) conclusion. I saw how your process developed over time.

Doing the hardest thing first definitely helps. That's what got me through writing my Bachelor's Thesis (which I just finished the first draft of)

Chris shares a lot of this stuff on his channel too. I tried adopting some of the method for NaNo a couple of years back. I'd plan out a scene to some degree ahead of time, then I'd write it. My actual writing speed was about 3k WPH (I can do 100 WPM on typing tests but obviously there's no thinking involved there). I wrote each scene as a sprint rather than writing for a set time (32 scenes for that project). For me I found it easy at the start, but I needed more time to think of the scenes, how they fit into place etc as the story went along. I'd say that for every hour writing you need 1-2 hours letting the story evolve and percolate in the mind. If you see Chris's 21 days to a novel challenge, you'll see he does similar, thinking in his off time. In short, focused writing works great for getting words down. Having some idea of what you're going to write really helps.

I think the only way this could be done is if you know undoubtedly what you want those 5000 words to be. NO TIME FOR THINKING lol

I want to be writing friends with you.

While this book didn't get me to write 5k words per hour, it did get me to write everyday. I genuinely loved this book.

How interesting! Everything is worth trying once but I think I might struggle with dictation because ✨I hate the sound of my voice ✨

For all the people saying they can't use dictation because or they can't churn out good quality material that fast, you clearly never acquired any other skills such as walking, speaking, driving or playing an instrument. You will obviously get better at all of these skills if you practice them. If you don't do the exercises, and you don't keep practicing, and you don't track your progress you will never know how much you can improve. The same is true of all skills. If you work at them diligently, you should improve. Someone mentioned writing 24 novels but they'd all require loads of editing. Nope. Lots of authors don't need much redrafting, they write clean. If you could gather that data, you'd quickly establish that the cleaner drafts come from the people who've done it a lot more. The argument that everything you turn out will be trash if you write too quickly is silly. Look at speed painters, or chefs chopping cucumber. There are a whole bunch of things we can do, each of which improves our overall writing speed. If you continue to practice, you will get faster, and require less rewriting and less editing. You do need to actually do the work though. Regardless, if you go from 1,000 word per hour, to 2,000 word per hour and never get close to 5K, you are probably better off... You can also read Kevin Anderson's book on dictation, he's written a fair bit and knows what he's talking about plus 2K to 10K by Rachel Arron which is similar tips to Chris's but reading the same general ideas from two different people might help them stick in your mind better. 500 words a day is 180K a year 1,000 is 360K a year 2,000 is 720K a year You don't need to hit giant figures to really benefit from this.

i think context is very important here when it comes to the word count for Chris - he types fast and practice really helps. He can get 1200 words to 1500 words per short sprint so I'm not surprised he can make 5000 words per hour so really it's practice and finding out the length that is your sweet spot for getting the most words. I've read his book - I always thought my sweet spot was 20 minutes but I will be redoing the exerces soon to see if that's changed. I'm going to re read it again soon. Greeat video

Well, the book isn't 99 cents anymore, but I still bought it. I need to step up my writing game so that I can account for non-writing days. When you said you got 1K in the bullet method my interest was greatly increased. Thanks for the suggestion. Glad I'm already tracking for milwordy!

I think speech-to-text would be very cool for non-fiction, because it's a bit like giving a presentation. For fiction I'm not quite sure since scenes need to ruminate in my inner cinema a bit and writing leaves more time for that.

I read this book a few years ago. At the time I only typed and tried the dictation. Last year I switched fully to dictation and ended up discovery-dictating 6-7k in a full hour. I kinda want to review this book again, because I actually didn't use most of the advice in it to get to my rate, just talked faster. It's a good book, in my opinion, but there are lots of ways to approach dictation (And even more to take on writing in general) so it's nowhere near hard and fast. I will say that dictation has increased the amount of time I spend on edits but I'm a slow typist and it cut the time of a rough draft to 25% of what it once was.

I can't do speech to text for my stories. I don't see words in my brain that way, it's so visual and my brain somehow makes it words through my fingers 🤷‍♀️😂

Dictation is probably an efficient process that I need to work on, but mostly I don't know what I think until I see it written out. When I dictate I feel as though I'm speaking from a void, even for mundane stuff... Since that now seems ridiculous, maybe I'll try it some more.

One thing that's helped me get into dictation is doing morning pages--a 15 min. daily brain dump/train of thought thing. It's low stress and gives me a place to experiment with the process: standing, sitting, walking, thinking about how I want to say something before speaking, etc. I also use a digital voice recorder. So I'm free to travel about and often do. Then seeing how the software transcribes my speech is a guide for improving dictation.

This was such a fantastic video! I've heard of Chris Fox and I believe I even have his book, but I never finished it. I love that you gave a high level look at the entire book/system. I'm going to go back and give it another read (and finish it this time!). I will definitely try dictation, too. And I laughed when you said Brando Sando. That's how I refer to him, too. I guess a lot of people probably do! Thanks again for a great video!

My dog were more excited when you asked Duke to go outside, laughs. As for dictation - I use it situationally, but I don't really think in words. It slows me down to sit and struggle for the right word, when my normal process is to close my eyes and describe what it is that I'm seeing. I do think I'll pick up the book though, maybe see if anything will integrate into my method.

Kate, i’d love to hear how your dictations are going several months out. I’m glad that you mention it sometimes, but I’d love for you to talk about whether or not it’s an essential part of your process or a convenience thing.

I'm so jealous! This was going to be the year I tried out dictation for my writing and then the virus came and our kids are doing eLearning from home. I was so looking forward to using that time when my house was empty during the day so I wouldn't be self-conscious when writing/dictating (on top of some scenes not being possible to dictate in front of my kids).

Woah, that's a lot of words, nvm in an hour. I've heard about that book, excited to see how it treats you!

This is the earliest I've ever been 🙌🏻

This was such a helpful video! I've been struggling with time management (cuz covid) but this brings me hope. Getting his book. Another great writing experiment!! Thanks!

Personally I think 4 books a year is nuts. Now seeing you try his method out I understand how that can be possible, but still I can't help wondering if four books a year is necessary and if it will cause too much stress for writers (especially if that would become a norm in the indie industry). Sure, of course fans like to receive the next volume in the series as soon as possible, but then again - at least for me - part of the fun is waiting for the next one and the wait makes the new book release an event. If my favourite authors would crank out a book so often, I wouldn't necessarily be excited about the next release after a while since it would be just another this year, you know? Of course this is highly theoretical since I haven't followed any authors who publish so often, but this is what I think would happen with me. I think two books a year would be the most I would go for as a writer, both for my sake and for the readers. I haven't tried dictation yet, since I think I would feel pressured, but I think I will after seeing you do it! Thanks for a great video!

Kate. This video? It gave me SO MUCH motivation to do prep for nano! Thank you so so much!! 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

I've read his book and he's got a lot of valid points. I have to dictate because of metacarpal tunnel syndrome. I've been able to crank out over 20 (single spaced) pages in an hour through dictation without using punctuation this way for my audio journal. It is completely doable in all honesty. I'm glad that you finally gave dictation a try, @Kate Cavanaugh. :) I often outline with a fountain pen with notebook and a zettelkasten system for keeping thoughts together - most of my writing is non-fiction personally.

I have ultimately settled on dictation (into a Sony recorder) after trying so many ways. However, I pause the recorder and speak the punctuation, and try to get as close to finished as I can. I typically get 3K/hr of really good words. I’ve dictated my past 8-10 books this way, and I’m getting better.

I've never read Chris Fox's book, or tried dictation before, but i'm definitely interested in trying it and i'm DEFINITELY the sort of person who reads through once before attempting the exercises, just because I like to know what i'm getting into

as someone already almost 5000 words behind on my goal this week (today's the last day of my test week), I really needed this. thanks :D

I feel like I never have time to write so I will definitely try out the dictation method. I don't really listen to the radio so it will make my drive times a little more interesting and productive😄!

I would say you should read No Plot No Problem by Chris Baty (the founder of NaNoWriMo a NaNoWriMo Novel) it is very good for making you think about how to write a lot of words all at once. If you think about milwordie as 50000 words every month for 12 months. Or even if your just thinking about writing for NaNoWriMo

RE: dictation. I use Dragon professionally, and there was even training I had to go through in order to use it properly. The most important thing I learned in order to make Dragon work correctly, and this was fairly universal for everyone learning dictation in training, is that you need to develop your "dictation voice." I've found that this is also fairly universal regarding software as well since at home, I can't really afford Dragon either. Monotone and Enunciation are the two biggest things that control how your software will recognize your speech and encode it to text. Put a tiny little pause between words will also help with recognition. Don't skip the training phase in the software, you're teaching the software how to hear your voice, not just teaching you how to use that particular piece of software. If you slow down and get used to the software, and let it learn your voice patterns, you'll soon speed back up and be rocking a 220wpm dictation speed. Knowing what to type/dictate... work in progress... :)

I loved Brandon Sanderson's youtube lectures!

I tried dictation before and I don't think it would work for me. I hate editing a lot. I'm an outliner and like my first draft to have at least decent prose and punctuation. so when i looked back at what I "wrote" it was a nightmare for me. but i'll definitely try the micro writing sprints.

I'm with Sanderson, I don't think of writing in that way. Dictation doesn't work for me, but hey, if it works for you, go for it! I write... uh... Not a lot. My writing is fueled by PTSD episodes, so basically I write when I'm struggling with that. One day, I'd like to finish my project, but by the same token, I kind of hope I never do? That make sense?

I have read is firt trilogie series and the novella that comes with it. The novella and the firt book were amazing to me. Book two and tree have good plots but take on to many POV to my taste.

This is some powerful stuff!! The dictation idea is BRILLIANT especially with scenes mapped out in full detail ahead of time. I’m gonna try this literally now.

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to do this video. It's been incredibly enlightening. I'll try this out myself.

Honestly, I'm weird cause I can, at full force, write about 2000 words per half an hour, though I can't promise they're good words haha. So if I do that for an hour, I'd have 4000 words which isn't too far off what Chris Fox is putting forward. But even doing that can wreck my hands for the rest of the day lmao, I'm not sure that trying to write 5000 words would be very helpful for me all around. I literally hate dictating anything, so I have to type. I think I'm better with pacing it and doing it over a few hours. But the book seems pretty good for advice anyway? It seems to be pretty helpful even outside of the main point of the book.

Duke, what a handsome dog with such a gentle face. 🥰💜

I've never heard of dictation before this! So excited to try it but I just need a time when no one else is in the house because that would just be embarrassing. I'm trying to find quicker ways to write BC with my current schedule my only time to write is on my commute :///

I'm loving your makeup too! You look gorgeous!

I'm in the process of training my brain to use dictation instead of writing. But it´s weirdly hard, I was really surprised.

I wrote my first two novels using his system of writing 5k an hour and my output is through the roof. It's an amazing system and glad you tried it out!

Dictation is my new obsession :) I can lay in bed with my eyes closed and dictate. I'll keep my dot points next to me and dictate my first draft. Ir's probably the laziest yet fastest and most efficient way to write lol It also helps you get past your internal editor. Also, I prefer to make a voice recording and then type them up later. The Text-To-Speech is just too distracting for me. Typing up the scenes is sort of like a second draft where I can discard repetitive points and include better ones. Also, it feels good to be able to type up a lot of words especially if you use them to progress on 4theWin (a site that gamifies writing).

I could not handle dealing with voice-to-text for too long, but this is a pretty good video.

really enjoy these writing experiment vlogssss ~~~~

I think my WPH max was somewhere around 2800, which I always thought was a lot considering I only use two fingers of each hand to type. 5000... that's insane lol

Ahh! I have the same standing desk! I don't know why that made me so happy. You're a champ, Kate, by the way. Good luck with your audacious goals.

Thank you, Kate. I just bought the book.

How did I miss this upload?! Loved watching your experiment. I really should go back and try this again. When I've tried it in the past, I didn't do too well because I'm like Brandon Sanderson.

5000 words while in Margaritaville? That I want to read. LOL I've done micro sprints for years now, bc my attention span barely meets hamster standards. They work for me.

First! Thank you for always posting such lovely videos, you are an inspiration and ray of sunshine. Second - I downloaded a dictation app to try it out on a screenplay idea and use it this morning on my drive to work. Got 1400 words in, but no punctuation or line breaks and probably half of it is nonsense as I'm thinking out loud. I can't decide whether I'm happy about it or not.

I have SO MANY A.D.D butterflies that dictation will be just one big cluster of words. But it makes sense that that's how one gets the most words.

My mild ADHD says nawh with dictation...my brain gets hella lost. Haha.

Kate, this is a fantastic video here. Thank you.

Thanks, Kate. I picked up the book and have started reading through it. So far, I like what I see. I do use voice dictation to write more quickly. I was able to write a novel in 5 months using that method. I hope to condense the time even further.

Oh I'm excited

Dictation does not work for me... It's just garbage. I cannot talk through things that way. I um and ah and stutter my way through it... The results are unusable, honestly not even worth the time to edit. The only exception is dialogue. Talking through a dialogue scene before writing it can help me make it more realistic and natural

5000 words in 1 hour means 1,4 words per second... wow I don't think that's possible for me since English words are pretty short and I write in German. Maybe I'll try dictating too :D

Hi Kate! How are you and how have you been feeling lately?

This is good information. Thank you for giving the high lights on his method. This may work for me. I tend to think of ideas easier when I am moving around outdoors.

I found when I stared reading outloud to my boys I realized my mouth would get tired I'd start sounding drunk. The nurses would laugh. It would be cool to see what voice to text would make of it

Only just started watching this video, and Kate, today's make-up/eyeliner look makes you look like a disney princess :D

Just got home and saw your vlog! I’ve been visiting friends on their ranch and taking dogs to the groomer. What a nice surprise to find you waiting for me…”Just for me” …. :D I do the dictation as a nice break from staring at the computer screen for hours at a time. If you did 900 words dictating for 10 minutes, that is 5400 minutes for the hour. But you have to have 8 or 9 scenes lined up to make good on the 5K on a steady basis. :D (My opinion and experience.) I have that book of Chris Fox’s as well, and it’s very energizing. But it applies to first drafts (or even zero drafts), again, in my opinion. :D Happy Sunday!

I have the book and I've started it, but I haven't gotten deep into it. I've never tried dictation just because I'm not big on talking in general. Or outlining lol

Man, I wish I could do dictation, I definitely had to try after watching this. I have too much of an accent(??) for it to agree with me. And all the formating to script is not something I want to think about! I shall leave it to the higher minds

I hate (love) how pretty your eyes are 😍

So glad you covered this, I've been thinking about trying his system so it's great to see someone go over it. Thanks!

I can write 5000 words an hour. [proceeds to recreate the dictionary]

Thanks Kate!

This is so cool and interesting! I'm definitely going to give this book and some of the methods a try. I don't think dictation would work well for me, I really need to write the words out when I'm writing, but that's such a great idea. Love it!

I may consider using the dictation. I write really fast, but I’m legally blind so it can be a strain. If I could get through scenes faster by dictating them, it might mean less strain for my eyes - and faster writing!

Yes, I'm going to do this tomorrow. I need 4,000 words and giving myself 2 hours. Thanks for the inspo

Live transcribe is an app made with Deaf and HOH individuals. I use it because of everyone wearing masks I can’t read lips. It transcribes pretty good. And you can copy and paste too. So it could be helpful for transcribing. It adds punctuation, except things like “” or paragraphs.

I'm thinking of using Dragon for Nano this year. I've used it before when I was at work and it helped so much! I loved it. Oddly enough, I tend to do more description that way.

Wow... so I'm adding those books to my TBR... I need the advice and motivation... thanks!!

I'm your 100th like

That corgi is adorable! And I would like to test this method as well.

I haven't read the book, but this might be the thing that pushes me over into actually trying it. I've been meaning to try dictation for ages bc I think it might really work for me -- at least when I'm writing first person -- so any pressure to try that is probably valuable.

I’ve been waiting for years for dictation to get actually good. Because I’m so bad at typing it stunts my creativity. And I get so frustrated. This is great.

I just tried dictation and had to clean up a lot, but the time it took speak and clean up the 500 words I just wrote was still shorter than it would usually take me

I tried that too aaand I got 181 words in, within 5 mins - from 140ish from a few days ago! Lovely.

I think I'm in camp Brando Sando, my mouth doesn't write the same as my hands. But I did pick this up when Liselle originally started talking about it, and it definitely helped my sprints for my project at the time, which was my writing comfort zone. With my current wip... not as much, I really have to focus my attention on every word.