Like the look of it? You can activate it in ten seconds by heading over to your Settings page and toggling it on under the UI Customization header!

Next, I’m continuing to work on converting over the Planner feature from the spreadsheets — should be launching soon!

The post 2026-01-07: Blot After Dark appeared first on Blot.

It should be self-explanatory, but you can find the new Project Tags functionality at the top of the My Projects page. Here’s mine!

I’ve also added a ‘Hide Completed’ checkbox for easy filtering. Want your selection to remain permanent? Head to your Settings page and set a default!

Finally, I’ve made some slight aesthetic improvements to the page, to make it a tad less crammed. These aren’t actually in the screenshot above because it only occured to me to make them after I’d started writing this post… But you can check those out for yourself.

The post 2025-09-24: Project Tags appeared first on Blot.

Whenever you unlock a badge, you’ll be notified by a red highlight icon in your profile menu (the same as when you get a league invite or friend request!).

But you’ll also be able to see all the badges you’ve collected on your profile, and you’ll be able to see what other users have collected on their profiles too!

Don’t want these made public? All good — just change your settings on (you guessed it) the Settings page.

The post 2025-09-02: Badges appeared first on Blot.

• 3-act structure
• 4-act structure
• Save The Cat
• The Hero’s Journey

…but more will be coming soon!

Again, here’s an example of what that looks like (and no, I haven’t written much more, I’ve been building this!):

I’m a 4-act structure purist, so that’s what I’m working with, but all four options should work in the same way.

Remember, these automatic plot structures are guides only — if you have, for example, your Dark Night of the Soul a littler earlier or later (and your story demands it!) then that’s of course absolutely fine.

You’ll also find information about the plot structure as a whole when you click the ‘Structure Info’ button, and clicking on each plot element in the table will also display some information.

That’s the main change for today, but I’ve also:

• Retired the ability to set your own Act number at chapter level. I think with the Plot Structures page, it’s now redundant, and I want to keep chapter creation as simple as possible.
• Launched a load more Genres to choose from (let me know if you want me to add any more!)
• The Projects page now prompts you to click on a changed chapter status to save it.
• I’ve made it clearer that editing chapter word counts on the Project page doesn’t log new words — use the + Words button for this!

The post 2025-08-15: Another Huge Update: Plot Structures! appeared first on Blot.

The post 2025-08-14: Forgotten Passwords appeared first on Blot.

Page speed is hardly a glamorous change, but TAGS is. I’ve implemented a new feature suggested in the Discord server by AnAngryWeasel — you can now assign colourful tags to each of your chapters in a particular project.

Here’s an example from my latest project (yep, I know, I haven’t got very far yet):

If you click on the tag on the left-hand side, it’ll also highlight all relevant chapters. See? Glamorous.

The post 2025-08-13: Project Page Overhaul… And Tags! appeared first on Blot.

The post 2025-08-12: Speed Improvements appeared first on Blot.

Originally, I created a shared Google Sheet for members of my communities. This did the job, and combined with the server itself, we had a decent alternative to NaNoWrimo on our hands. But the spreadsheet was occasionally fiddly, and didn’t play well with mobile devices. That’s what inspired me to create Blot.

The Leagues section of Blot doesn’t replace your existing community, but works alongside it to offer a place where writers can track their word counts, race one another, and focus on meeting the month’s target. It also shows a leaderboard for each month, or even for a full year!

How To Get Started

Getting started on Blot is easy. If you’re a new user, head to the Sign-Up page to create an account. Already a member? Well, then it’s even easier. Head to the Leagues section to create your goals and leaderboards.

Create Your League

On your My Leagues page, click the ‘+ New League’ button in the top-right. You’ll see a popup like this:

Fill in this popup with your community’s details, including name, description, icon and link. This link will appear at the top of your league page, to send people back to your community in whatever form it takes — be that a Discord server, a forum, or anything else. This is particularly useful if you set your league to public, as that will allow writers to discover your community through the Blot platform!

On this popup, you’ll also set your monthly goal. A true alternative to NaNoWriMo would have this at 50,000, but you can set it at whatever number suits your community. Or, you can even allow members to set their own targets.

And that’s it, you have your league! Invite friends to join you, either by clicking the ‘Invite Friends’ button, or by simply copying and pasting the URL into your community.

But there are still a couple more ways to squeeze the most out of your new alternative to NaNoWriMo…

Review your leaderboards & goals

By default, the League page will show you the leaderboards for the current month. Change the month by using the dropdown, or switch to annual by clicking the toggle button. And if you want to see how each member is doing against their goal? Just click the ‘Show Goals’ button!

Join a team! (Optional)

And maybe you don’t just want to race alone. Maybe you want to race as a team. Join an existing team or create your own — these can be whatever you like! Maybe your community is divided into fantasy vs sci-fi writers. Perhaps it’s cat lovers vs dog lovers. Or maybe it’s even the Jets vs the Sharks. Whatever the deal, make the teams that suit you.

And with that, I wish you a happy WriMo!

I’m determined to make Blot as good an alternative to NaNoWriMo as I can. If you have any thoughts on how to improve it, please get in touch! You can find my contact details on (unsurprisingly) the Contact page.

The post Using Blot As A Great Alternative To NaNoWrimo appeared first on Blot.