WRITEWRITEWRITE
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WRITEWRITEWRITE is a made-up venture — for now…
Many of us find writing difficult, yet it’s integral to everyday life — communication, work, school, and so on.
There are even those who write for pleasure, but being interested in the craft doesn’t make it any easier. Anyone who “likes” writing isn’t just blessed with James Patterson’s ability to churn out novel after novel…
In fact, it’s often the opposite — a constant struggle to put words on the page, and to actually find satisfaction in whatever is making its way on there.
Sometimes, it might just be a case of not knowing what to write about.
It could be insecurities or doubts. Is my writing even any good? What makes me qualified to write about this?
Then it becomes an issue of motivation. One can get frustrated with their (lack of) progress, or when they become convinced that they won’t live up to expectations — self-imposed, more often than not.
I have this grand idea in my head, for example — a romance which sparks between two workers from rival bakeries. I’m scared that I won’t be able to make it work, and so I barely work on it at all.
We’re all different and there’s no magical formula. Having said that though, one piece of advice always seems to rise above the others — you need to write more to become better at writing, no matter how painful it might be.
WRITEWRITEWRITE was designed to support exactly this.
HOW IT WORKS
The platform leverages smartphone and mobile technology to make writing as convenient as possible — the less barriers there are, the better.
Users are expected to commit around 40 minutes per day, as often as their schedule permits. Consistency is key…
SET UP A PROFILE
Upon signing up, users are asked to indicate their interests. This data is used to determine what kinds of prompts they are assigned.
DAILY WRITING PROMPT
Every 24 hours, a new writing prompt is assigned to the user.
These are simple prompts, and fairly narrow in scope — the idea is that an adequate response can be drafted in 20 minutes. Once this window passes, whatever is written will be sent to someone else for review (anonymously).
DAILY FEEDBACK
In another 20-minute window, users must read and review someone else’s work. Obviously, they’ll receive ongoing feedback for their own writing too.
To maintain quality and accountability within the community, each user is designated a “Reviewer Score”.
System algorithms will also detect and track issues related to grammar, spelling, and even structure.
THE “TAKE HOME”
At the start of every month, users are encouraged to look back and further develop a response they worked on in the previous month for submission.
The community votes for the top stories, and these will be featured on the WRITEWRITEWRITE platform. Users are also free to host as many pieces as they want on their own profile pages too.
CREATE OR VOTE FOR A NEW WRITING PROMPT (OPTIONAL)
As an optional activity, users can also submit and vote for new writing prompts to be delivered to others on the platform.
MARKET
To be completely honest, the WRITEWRITEWRITE platform was definitely designed with the success of Duolingo in mind.
The key inspiration was putting learning into the hands — literally — of users themselves. WRITEWRITEWRITE works on any web browser, but it’s also designed to work seamlessly on the smartphones and mobile devices we can’t seem to stop staring at.
Target users include (1) students within higher education, (2) young professionals, (3) more mature professionals, and (4) aspiring writers. Everyone has room for improvement when it comes to writing, but this particular group is more likely to have (1) access to smartphones / mobile devices and (2) reasons or needs to actively pursue growth.
The focus will be on the Anglophone market initially, but there’s no reason to think that the platform wouldn’t work for users writing in other languages either.
COMPETITION
There’s certainly a lot out there, but the world of writing tech seems a bit saturated with standalone solutions which do not entirely immerse users into a complete experience.
These can be categorized into 3 main groups:
WRITING TOOLS
Think of these as add-ons or plugins…
Hemingway and Grammarly are among the most popular — software which scans writing to assess where improvements can be made.
Others such as iA Writer or FocusWriter represent a niche of word processing platforms built to be as simple and minimalistic as possible — to cut down on distractions, of course.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Solutions like Ulysses, Scrivener, Storyist, and even Evernote take it a step further.
These aren’t just word processors, but more content management systems for users to organize all their thoughts and ideas — texts, notes, quotes, media, and anything else they might use.
ONLINE COMMUNITIES
Absolute Write Water Cooler and Writers Helping Writers, and Critique Circle are examples of more general writing networks.
More specific ones might be based on genre (i.e. Chronicles for sci-fi / fantasy) or goals (i.e. AgentQuery for those wanting to publish).
WRITEWRITEWRITE
So let’s take a step back and look at what WRITEWRITEWRITE offers as a platform:
- facilitates daily writing exercises
- creates anonymous feedback loops between users
- analyzes and identifies issues with writing
- features user work
It’s this very combination that gives WRITEWRITEWRITE great potential to break into the market.
Here’s an interesting line from Scrivener’s website:
Scrivener won’t tell you how to write — it simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing.
While many solutions currently available have the ability to create ideal writing environments for the user, the responsibility to actually engage in writing itself — a big one — remains on the individual.
WRITEWRITEWRITE represents an effort to bring all of this together — to create meaningful opportunities for writers to practice consistently, to deliver both peer and systems-driven feedback, and to build a community for writers accessible from any device.
REFLECTION (ADDED AUGUST 7, 2021)
Like many of my classmates, I saw this assignment as an opportunity to imagine a solution which might help me — and others — pursue a passion.
In this case, it was writing.
I found a lot of inspiration in Duolingo. Obviously, the way it leverages mobile technology to facilitate learning was a big one — anytime, and anywhere.
It’s romantic to think about writing as a craft — something that you have to sit down for and really concentrate on. Many writers actually get stuck before they even start, afraid to commit or unable to focus.
My hope is to remove the barriers and formalities so that users have one less excuse to NOT write. I want users to just open WRITEWRITEWRITE and get right into it, with no formatting to worry about and no foreign interfaces to learn. They’ll use their smartphone’s native keyboard — perhaps one of the most familiar things in their everyday lives.
In my humble opinion, Duolingo also focuses on the “right” things…
If you’re learning French for example, you can get away with missing an accent mark or an apostrophe if your answer is close enough. While some might see this as a risk for bad habits, I think it’s nice that users aren’t always punished for less-than-perfect spelling.
WRITEWRITEWRITE would ideally provide automated spell checking and simple review, but the mission is to foster ideas — not necessarily textbook grammar.
It made sense in my head to go with a written format to introduce WRITEWRITEWRITE, and you’ll notice that the elevator pitch is text-based as well. A classmate suggested that the content was a bit wordy. I agree, but there’s a part of me that believes this “format” would actually be appealing to those with an interest in writing — my target users.
WRITEWRITEWRITE has a built-in peer review component because I think it’s very important for writers to (1) have an audience, and (2) become accustomed to receiving and actually making use of feedback.
Assigning a “reviewer score” to each user was my idea of ensuring some sort of accountability in the community, but in all honesty I really don’t know what “good feedback” would actually look like.
Another classmate suggested providing more structure to the peer review process by actually teaching and training users to give effective feedback. In this case, we would need to carefully establish a balance between providing guidelines and setting firmer expectations. The last thing I’d want is to stifle reviewer creativity or autonomy…
There was also an idea to offer a premium version, where professionals are the ones providing the reviews. I think it’d be great to have a professional presence on the platform, and I wouldn’t mind generating some revenue in that space either.
Someting else I received makes a lot of sense too — setting up an “internal achievement system” to provide rewards alongside the peer feedback system. There’s a lot that can be done here, especially in the gamification sense — incentives for daily streaks, contribution and productivity scores, and so on.
