Goals and statistics

The Writing goals screen (open it from the main menu at /goals) is where DragonWriter tracks your progress. It has four tabs: Statistics, Goals, Sprints and Leaderboards. Sprints and Leaderboards each have their own guide; this page covers the Statistics and Goals tabs.

All calendar days follow the timezone set in your account, so "today" and each day's total line up with your own clock. A footnote under the activity heatmap names the zone in use, with a link to change it in your settings.

Statistics

The Statistics tab is a snapshot of your writing life. It is the only tab that reads through your manuscripts, so it does a little more work than the others when it loads.

Streaks and word totals

Four headline figures sit at the top:

Current streak — the number of consecutive days you have written, counting up to today (or yesterday, if you have not written yet today).
Best streak — the longest run of consecutive writing days you have ever had. Once earned it is yours to keep, even after a streak ends.
Words all-time — every word you have ever written, added up across all your days.
Words today — how much you have written so far today.

Streaks and totals count words written, not net growth: a day spent revising still counts as a writing day and still lights up your streak, even if you cut more than you added.

Activity heatmap

Below the headline figures is a GitHub-style contribution heatmap covering the last 52 weeks. Each square is a day, arranged in columns of weeks (Monday at the top, Sunday at the bottom). The busier a day, the deeper its colour, scaled to your own busiest day. Hover any square to see the exact word count and date. Today's square is marked.

Writing pace

The Writing pace panel shows:

Avg words per day — your average across the days you actually wrote. Days with no writing are left out, so a break does not drag the number down.
Days written — how many days you have written on in total.
Most active time — the hour of day you write most often, in your local time (shown only once there is enough history to tell).

Stories

A quick tally of your library: total stories, how many you have published, how many are in beta reading, and how many are collaborative.

Manuscript

Live totals across every scene in every story you own: total words, characters, characters without spaces, and paragraphs. Paragraphs exclude list items, so bulleted notes do not inflate the count. These figures are computed fresh each time from your actual scene text.

Words added vs removed

This panel splits your editing into words added and words removed, with the net change between them. It is honest about history: word tracking at this level of detail began at a certain point, so a footnote tells you the date it has been tracked since. Earlier writing was only ever stored as a daily total and cannot be split apart.

Most used words and phrases

Two ranked lists surface repetition so you can spot crutches. Most used words lists your ten most frequent words, with very common words (the, and, of, to) filtered out so only meaningful repeats show. Most used phrases lists three-word phrases you have used more than once. A phrase is never counted across a paragraph break or a sentence boundary, so the results reflect real repeated turns of phrase rather than coincidence.

Goals

The Goals tab holds goal cards you create to track progress toward a target. Use the New goal button to add one.

Creating a goal

A goal has a name, a target word count, and one of two types:

Date range — words written within a set start and end date, measured against your target. This is the type to use for a "write 50,000 words in November" challenge.
Story — a single story's total word count against your target. The card shows a progress bar linked straight to the story.

For a date-range goal you also choose a count metric:

Net words — additions minus anything you cut. This suits a goal about growing a manuscript to a target length, where cutting 200 words is genuinely not progress.
Words added — words written, ignoring anything cut. This suits a "write N words" challenge, where a heavy revision day should still count.

Story goals always use the story's live word count, so they have no metric to choose.

The progress graph

A date-range goal draws an inline cumulative line graph: your running total climbing day by day, a dashed pace line rising evenly from zero to your target, and a marker for today. The line stops at your last day of writing rather than flat-lining to the end date, so you can see at a glance where you stand against pace. A story goal shows a simple progress bar instead.

Managing goals

Each card offers:

Edit — change any of its settings.
Archive / Unarchive — move a finished or paused goal into a collapsible Archived section, out of your active list, without deleting it.
Move up / Move down — reorder your active goals.
Delete — remove a goal permanently. This cannot be undone. If the goal came from joining a challenge, deleting it also leaves that challenge.

Exporting a goal

Every goal card has an Export CSV button. For a date-range goal the file lists each calendar day with the words written that day and the running cumulative total, and a header line records which metric (net or words added) it used, so the numbers stand on their own. For a story goal the CSV is a one-line summary (story name, total words, target, percentage), because daily counts are tracked per account rather than per story. There is also an Export PNG button that renders the goal card as an image in your browser.

Achievements

Milestones you reach while writing earn badges — word-count and streak ladders, plus special event badges — shown on your public profile.