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Writing with Dice: How to Gamify Your Writing Session

April 22, 2024 | 5 min read

We've all been there — staring at a blank document, not knowing where or how to start. Ideas bounce around in my head all day long, but as soon as I sit down in front of my draft, they just won't come out because I can't decide on one of the many things in my head.

Embrace randomness as a creative partner and you'll find that, with the right approach and attitude, that uncertainty is an opportunity for exciting twists and fresh ideas in your writing.

I want to show you a tool that has helped me find a way out of these blocked situations and also improve as a writer. All you need are three six-sided dice and some paper. (Of course, if you’re on the move and don’t have any dice with you, any dice-rolling app on your phone will work.)

Writing with dice can help you make unexpected choices in your writing process that can take your creativity in new directions.

Remember, you don't have to write the perfect story in your first draft. It's about capturing ideas before they're gone. So let go of perfectionism and enjoy the creative process.

Meet The Oracle

This approach is based on the idea that we can ask an “oracle” our questions to steer our writing in interesting and inspiring directions. Just as our friends or partners sometimes offer to do when bribed with coffee and cake. In this instance, however, the oracle is the dice.

The dice take on the role of the oracle, answering our questions and relieving us of the burden of thinking too long about a decision.

“But what questions should I ask, and what do I gain from a generic yes/no answer?” you may ask.

The short answer is: it depends…

It depends on the context in which you ask the questions.

It could be anything from the genre, basic considerations about how you want to tell the story, the characters involved, or the tropes and ideas you want to incorporate. Maybe even the different storylines and how they develop.

All of this is the context in which we make narrative decisions. In this exercise, it’s what will inspire our questions.

When you want to know where the story might go based on what you already know, ask the oracle. Don’t overthink it. Instead, introduce chance and see what the oracle says. You never know when the story will take you in new directions.

How do I know what the oracle says…?

The general idea is quite simple: you formulate a question that can be answered yes or no, and roll the three six-sided dice. The oracle will answer with the results you see in the table below.

Add up the numbers on the dice and look up the oracle’s answer in the table.

In addition to clear yes/no answers, the Oracle can also give us more nuanced answers: a weakened form (10,11) and an intensified version (3-4, 17-18).

Furthermore, if you have extra context from the story to add to the question, apply the modifiers in the below table to the sum of your dice.

Confusing? Let’s see how it works in writing a scene:

My Question: Is it raining when Isabel leaves the café? (It’s unlikely, it’s a hot day in the story.)

Result: The three dice show: 4, 4, 3 to equal 11. I subtract 1 for “unlikely.” My final answer is 10. (No, but…)

This simple question alone created a better atmosphere in the scene — and it also gave me some ideas for a later scene in which the approaching summer storm influences the rest of the story.

Let's have a look at a longer example: how I use the oracle at the very start of drafting a story.

All I have prepared for this is the dice, my Freewrite, a stack of blank index cards, and a small hourglass.

I use the index cards for lists of things that are relevant to my ideas, sometimes prepared, sometimes made up as I write to let the dice make a decision. One of the lists I created before the first session was a collection of interesting genres that I liked for my next story.

I randomly drew three themes from that list: Victorian, Supernatural, and Soldier.

I already liked this combination, and the first ideas didn’t take long to come. I asked some oracle questions ("Is this set in Victorian times?”, “Is it a haunted house?”, etc.) to help me figure out the basic setting. What I learn is that we are not in Victorian times, but the story takes place in a Victorian villa that is said to be haunted. The villa has been converted into a hotel and has attracted many tourists since the bloody history of the house became known on the internet.

With a few more questions, I learn that the protagonists are guests at the hotel. One of the protagonists has been trying unsuccessfully for years to become famous as an influencer of supernatural phenomena — with little success. He has his best friend with him, who has just finished his studies and has been persuaded to go on a trip. He doesn't believe in ghosts.

That's enough information for me to work with for the setting. I take notes on an index card and ask the oracle where to start. Turns out the two friends have just arrived by train and are making their way through the old town to the villa.

I turn the hourglass and start to write.

The sand runs out as the two protagonists navigate through the hustle and bustle of the town and get lost in the maze of winding streets. The hourglass tells me it's time to interrupt my writing with a random event. I use a combination of oracle questions and spontaneous lists of possibilities that come to mind. Again, I let the dice decide which option to choose.

I find that my protagonists are approached by a merchant and lured into his shop. There, they discover an old object that seems to magically attract them. Cool! The scene has gained a bit more flavor thanks to this visit. I also wonder what the object has to do with anything. I turn the hourglass again and keep writing to find out.

The dance between predictability and spontaneity is fascinating, and I hope this has given you a small, helpful insight into the oracle approach.

My recommendation is to choose an existing project first and use the oracle at specific points in the writing process. The advantage to this is that you will already know more about the context, and it may be easier to make your first lists of ideas or to know when or how to ask the oracle questions.

If you prefer to start from scratch, take a writing prompt of your choice and brainstorm with the oracle to find a starting point for the first scene.

Happy writing!

Ben Westland is a freelance ghostwriter, editor, and author of interactive fiction, bringing a diverse background in computer science, product development, and organizational change. Ben holds a doctoral degree and has authored two scholarly works on knowledge management, as well as various interactive narratives that employ storytelling to enhance organizational training.

Ben is one of the editors of inspiration.garden, an inspirational creativity magazine, and has recently launched storyhaven.online to publish his serial fiction as he explores new narrative forms.

Having lived and researched in Spain and Japan, Ben now draws on his experience to create immersive stories and help others find their creative voice.

The Set Up

The 2024 study recruited 293 writers to write an eight-sentence “micro” story. The participants were split into three groups:

Writing by human brainpower only
The opportunity to get one AI-generated idea to inspire their writing
The opportunity to get up to five AI-generated ideas to inspire their writing

Then, 600 evaluators judged how creative these short stories were. The results confirmed a widely accepted idea but also offered a few surprising findings.

Prompts from AI Can Jumpstart the Creative Process

Right off the bat, the reviewers rated the AI-guided stories as being more original, better written, and more enjoyable to read. (Interesting to note that they did not find them funnier than the fully human-inspired stories.)

This actually isn’t that surprising. Most writers know the “blank page dread” at the beginning of a project. Even as I write this, I can’t help but wonder, “If I had been tasked with writing an eight-sentence story, what the heck would I have written about?”

Many writers share this sense of needing to pick the “right” story to tell. And that uniquely human concept of perfectionism can end up actually inhibiting our creative process.

A prompt, then, can help us quickly clear this mental hurdle. To test this, I’ll give you one, courtesy of ChatGPT: “Write a story about a teenager who discovers a mysterious journal that reveals hidden secrets about their town, leading them on an unexpected adventure to uncover the truth.”

Can you feel your creative juices flowing already?

Since its release, AI has been celebrated for its ability to assist in idea generation; and this study confirms how effective using artificial intelligence in this way can be for writers — some, it seems, more than others.

AI-Generated Ideas Helped Less Creative Writers More

It doesn’t feel great to judge a writer’s creative prowess, but for this study, researchers needed to do just that. Prior to writing their short stories, the writers took a test to measure their creativity.

Researchers found that those considered less creative did substantially better when given AI-generated ideas — to the point where getting the full five ideas from AI “effectively equalizes the creativity scores across less and more creative writers.”

This isn’t the case just for writing. Another study by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship WZ also found that AI tools most benefit employees with weaker skills.

So is AI leveling the playing field between okay and great writers? It seems it may be. But before we lament, there’s one more finding that proves using AI isn’t all perks.

AI-Aided Stories Were More Similar — And Needed to Be Credited

The researchers took a step back to look at all the AI-supported stories collectively. And what did they find?

The AI-assisted stories were more similar as a whole, compared to the fully human-written stories.

Additionally, when reviewers were told that a story was enhanced by an AI idea, they “imposed an ownership penalty of at least 25%,” even indicating that “the content creators, on which the models were based, should be compensated.”

This leads us to that all-important question about AI-assisted work: who owns the content?

According to Originality.AI, an AI and plagiarism detector, “When there’s a combination of AI and human-generated elements, the human elements may receive copyright protection if they meet the requirements.”

So right now, if a writer uses AI to generate ideas — but writes the content themselves — they retain rights to the work.

However, Originality.AI even admits that “the legal system is having a hard time keeping up” with the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence. Time will only tell what AI regulations will look like in a few years.

What Does an AI-Assisted Literary Future Look Like?

The researchers from the University of Exeter Business School study raise an interesting point about what the future landscape for writers may look like. If droves of authors begin using AI to come up with ideas, we may end up with a lot of well-written yet dime-a-dozen stories.

So will human beings choose the easier, but less diverse, path? Or will we stick to fighting through writer’s block armed with nothing but our own brain?

Or, a third option: can we somehow learn to harness AI to supercharge our writing process without sacrificing the wholly unique creativity that infuses human creation?

That’s one question that even ChatGPT can’t answer.

Editor's Note: Artificial intelligence may have already transformed writing, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be in control of your own words. Read Astrohaus Founder Adam Leeb's statement on AI and privacy.

Learn more

August 22, 2024 • 8 min read

Reimagining the Future of Storytelling in a World with AI

While AI has capabilities that range from coding to image generation, the model that excites — and terrifies — writers is the LLM. It won’t be long before we see the world’s first blockbuster novel, written entirely by an LLM. What does this mean for art, and writers in particular? Is it all doom and gloom? The answer is, of course, more complicated than yes or no.