The Most Dangerous Writing App is a free service that is designed to force you to write without stopping for a preset amount of time. You can set your writing timer for as few as three minutes or as many as many as sixty minutes. If you stop writing before the minimum time has been reached, all of your writing is deleted. Once you have reached the minimum time you can keep writing or you can download your writing as a plain text file.
The Most Dangerous Writing App can also be used with a minimum word count. The same concept as the timer mode applies to the word count mode. If you stop writing before your word count is reached, your work disappears.
While you are writing on the The Most Dangerous Writing App you will see a progress meter across the top of the screen. If you stop writing for more than a few seconds you will see the screen start to turn red. When you have stopped writing for six seconds you’ll see a “you failed” message and your work is erased.
Applications for Education
The Most Dangerous Writing App doesn’t require any kind of registration. In fact, you can’t register on the site. Simply go to the site, set a timer, and start writing. That ease of use makes it a good service for students to use to free-write for three, five, ten, or more minutes.
I can see having students use The Most Dangerous Writing App to jumpstart the brainstorming process for creative writing. You might give students some suggested topics to help them get start and then tell them to write for three minutes about one of those topics. Or challenge your students to include a handful of vocabulary words in their three minute writing blocks.
Your students can share the plain text files that The Most Dangerous Writing App generates for them via email, Google Classroom, OneNote, Google Drive, or any number of other file sharing services. If you and your students use G Suite for Education, have them upload their plain text files to Google Drive to have them automatically converted into Google Docs format to utilize the editing tools in Google Docs.
