Validation and Motivation: How Gamifying the Writing Process Helps Me Work by Emma Boddy

 

Validation and Motivation: How Gamifying the Writing Process Helps Me Work 

written by Emma Boddy


If there is one thing I know about myself as a person--writer, I mean writer--it is that I love validation. Being told I am doing a good job and am making progress is objectively amazing and I live for those moments from my professors and advisors. But as I faced down the daunting task of writing my thesis, I knew that I wanted to set myself up for success; in other words, I wanted to figure out a way to find validation, motivation, and a way to keep track of my progress for myself. 


Enter: 4thewords, a roleplaying game/writing platform where you can battle monsters, complete quests, and explore a magical world by writing. 


The premise is pretty simple: there is a fantasy world where monsters have taken over and you are a new warrior learning to fight them. Your quests prompt you to battle different types of monsters, all of which can be defeated by hitting a certain number of words in a given time period.



For me, I see it as a way to hack my brain. Even if I want to do anything but write, I know that I’ll lose my daily streak if I don’t sit down and put some words on the page. And, when I am already feeling motivated, the extra rush that comes with seeing the “battle won” and “loot earned” notifications as my word count skyrockets push me to keep writing. I always feel like I am making progress and working toward a larger goal because the words I write translate into leveling up my character, completing quests, and exploring more of the world. As a graduate student, it can feel like the work is never-ending. This platform helps me gain the perspective that while there is always more to do, I can also step back and recognize the accomplishments I’ve made thus far. 4thewords makes your writing progress tangible and makes the writing process fun. 


I also love the community features. There is a forum with discussion threads about everything from questions about the gaming platform to tips for writing productively when you work from home to discussions about the latest AI writing software. Writing is always social, and on this platform, I really feel that writing truth. 


A few caveats: I do some online gaming so the premise and features seemed familiar to me but this might not be the case for everyone. I found the interface can be a little frustrating to navigate at first but quickly learned where everything was in the first couple of days. Some people will make files in the game but I’ve just been copying and pasting in. 


I think the main thing I want to say here is that writing is hard and sustaining motivation for a long-term, high-stakes project like a thesis can be difficult. However, there are tools and perspectives that we can incorporate into our processes to lighten the load, and this just happens to be a tool that works for me. If this is totally not your thing, then that’s fine! There is no one writing tool or platform that will work for everyone. But if you love checking things off a list and think this might scratch that kind of itch in your brain, then I encourage you to try 4thewords out. It has what I like to call graduate student-friendly pricing for $5 a month and you can do a trial month for free. The experience of writing can so often feel like we are battling our “monsters of doubt” but strangely, I’ve found that battling little digital monsters is a fun way to banish those doubts and get to the work that I am here for. 


*I promise this is not a sponsored post 


**And yes, I did use 4thewords to write this and got some great loot doing it. 

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