Your first free story

When you first open the Story Studio after setup, Stichos writes you a story right away, for free. It doesn’t count toward your daily or monthly stories.

What does the free story use?

You don’t need to do anything. Stichos writes it from your setup answers:

1. The language you’re learning and the level you picked (in setup, or in the try-it form).
2. A random topic. If you started on our website’s try-it form and picked a topic from its list, Stichos uses that topic, and the format you picked there.
3. No key words and no topic of your own. If you’re on Learner Plus and typed your own topic or key words in the try-it form, they stay in the form for a later story, which counts as usual.

It takes about half a minute. The card shows changing words and a timer with how long it has been, so you can see it’s working; past a minute it says it’s still working and taking a little longer than usual. The story opens in the reader, and like every story you make, it goes into Recent in your Library.

Example

Ana finishes setup with English, Croatian, and A1 · Beginner. The Story Studio opens, and half a minute later she’s reading a short Croatian A1 story on a random topic. Her Free plan still has all of this month’s stories.

Take the tour while it’s written

A welcome card offers a short tour: Let’s read your first story.

1. Choose Start. While the story is still being written, the card says Writing your first story…
2. When the story arrives, the tour shows you around it.
3. Don’t want to wait? Choose Show me a ready story instead. The tour opens a story from Discover now.
4. Your own story keeps being written. When it’s done, a message says “Your first story is ready in Recent.”

If you choose Skip tour, the story still opens when it’s ready.

Your first story waits in Recent while you read something else.

Who gets a free first story?

1. Every new learner, on any plan: Free, a free trial, or Learner Plus.
2. Once per account, and only if you haven’t made a story before.
3. Not Educator Studio accounts. Tutors get their own free story in the Educator Studio tour. See Getting started as a tutor.

My free story didn’t arrive.

Nothing was used up. Stichos tries again on a later visit to the Story Studio. You can also make a story yourself with Generate, but that one counts as usual.

How do I keep my first story?

Open it from Recent and choose the bookmark in the toolbar (Save this story to Library). Recent keeps only your most recent stories.

Related: Getting started as a learner · Make a story · Plans and limits · Library and Word Bank