Using Crowdwork for Creative Writing

Note: Back in 2015 I was excited to be part of a community a bit like Steemit, a now defunct community known as Contributoria, allowed writers to pitch stories and their peers voted on which ones should be written. It was backed with money. And, more importantly, it was backed with a strong sense of community.

So I thought I'd share my story here. It's a rather simple one, I theorised that the creative potential of the micro-crowdworking Amazon Turks, who were anonymously tucked away behind their keyboards, was being underused. This prompted the idea to use the technology to create a short, flash fiction story. 

The creative writing project would be entirely piecemeal, with all of the elements being created incrementally through HITs, or Human Intelligence Tasks. On Amazon, I started out simply and posted a task: to develop the protagonist’s name. 

Seven minutes after listing the request I had a list of six potential names - some were good, some downright horrible. Brandice Odule: original but a bit complicated. Kyla Rose: seems a bit of a cliché. Abigail Rivers: now I was getting much warmer. 

But Priya Silverstein immediately caught my attention. I loved the cadence of it. And she only cost me a nickle.

Here's the story:

It was a long way home and the bus was gone. Priya Silverstein stood on the curb, nose filled with exhaust fumes, and dug through the pockets of her coat. Change jingled under the worn blue fabric as her fingers groped for her phone. 

After a few moments she touched the familiar rubbery case and pulled the phone from her pocket. Lint clung to it, like it always did. Priya shook her head and swore to herself that she’d get a new case tomorrow. She clicked to wake it up and checked where she was on battery. For once it wasn’t about to die, which was a relief. A few taps later and the soft purr of the ringer sounded in her ears.

“Priya?” Lucas’s voice was another relief from her nervousness. Earlier that morning she had run down to the library to grab another book for her dissertation and stood in line too long waiting to check it out.

“Hey Lucas,” Priya said. “Do you still live on Jefferson?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I missed my bus,” Priya sighed.

“Shouldn’t there be another one soon?” Lucas asked.

“No, it’s the last one of the day. It’s New Year, so they’re only running this morning.”

“So, do you need a lift? I could come get you,” Lucas offered.

Priya bounced on her heels a little. “That would be great! Just, please don’t judge me when you get here.”

Lucas’s laugh echoed down the line. 

“Stuck in your comfy clothes, eh? That sounds about right.”

She looked down at her battered grey sweats and sockless ankles. Lucas had seen her in worse when they were dating and she had hoped this wouldn’t surprise him. She giggled a little. 

“I just threw on what was around and put my hair up. It’s the bus, so I didn’t think anyone would care. Does this mean you’re ashamed to have me get in your car?”

“Nope.”

The text you’ve been reading in bold has been streaming in from Turks. I have no idea who they are, where they live, or their background. What I did realise is that what I was reading was good. Really good.I trod as lightly as I could on the narrative of the story. The first HIT was to simply provide three female names for a book character. Once I had Priya, I decided the opening of the story would be based on a single photograph. 

I created two HITs, so I could have more material to choose from, and uploaded a photo of a young woman sitting on the street kerb outside the entrance to a building. The HIT required the Turks to provide a 200-word narrative describing the girl, her surroundings and her emotional state. I posted it for 40 cents just to test how aggressive I could get with the pricing, not expecting any takers. 

However, 10 minutes later Priya had missed her bus and rekindled a crush on someone I’ve never met. 

His name they gave him was Lucas.

She could hear him smiling still. 

“I’ve got my coat on already and I’ll be there in twenty.” There was a long pause, and he sounded hesitant. “Maybe we could grab a movie, since you’re already in your pyjamas.”

“I’d like that,” Priya said with a smile. “I’m gonna go grab a sandwich and coffee from across the street. I’ll wait for you on the steps.” 

She hung up and stared at the phone for a second, then stuck it back in her pocket and headed across the street. Maybe today wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

The narrative I received from my worker was intriguing. For the 40 cent investment, I was looking at copy that could rival many young adult fiction novels. Of course, there were some spelling and grammar errors, but they were minimal and wouldn’t require much more of an editing session than a typical first draft. To keep the story moving forward, I found a creative commons licensed photo of a young woman at a coffee shop. I uploaded it to the Amazon platform and offered 80 cents each to three workers. 

Their task was to narratively move Priya across the street and have her worry about why Lucas was late.

Priya waited for the cars to pass before walking into the crossing. There weren’t many: a white van, a green Honda and grey Toyota. They were casually cruising the street. It was a perfect day; the sun was beaming down warmly and there was a slight breeze. 

She had plenty of time to cross, but she waited. She was in no rush. Feeling incredibly peaceful and hopeful about their date, she walked into the shop. She took off her sunglasses. The door closed on her long grey coat. She looked around. No one seemed to notice. She ordered her turkey sandwich and hazelnut coffee.

I based my choice on this next segment of the story because the prose best fit the existing narrative and had the least amount of grammatical errors. It was a bit Cinquainesque and infused with choppy sentences, but it fit and moved the story along. One contribution was perfectly acceptable, but was focused more on the restaurant instead of Priya. The third, and least playful, felt much like a forced restaurant review than it did 200 words of fiction. I decided on this text you’ve read above. I opted to approve and pay all three writers. 

Again, none of the Turks were aware of the others and just as incognisant that their words would end up being read here.The story was coming together. The writers were providing all the basic elements: action; dialogue; cliffhangers. It was being built at about an average of 0.003 cents per word. In the freelance writers market, the opening paragraph could have fetched the Turk a minimum of three cents per word. It was a rather substantial variance. It could be argued that the micro-workers are being exploited for their services along the lines of Ricardian socialist thinking. The Ricardians held the belief that exploitation was an inherent trait in a capitalist system.

But the economic argument is outside the scope of this project. It can be boiled down to the basic economic law of supply and demand: A Turk accepted the writing assignment based on the wages offered, which means that at that moment in time the wage was appropriately priced.Even with the low cost per word, attempting to wrangle multiple Turks with enough talent to create a long-form of fiction would become too costly. Mostly in the requester’s time. There would be too much waste in the form of unused narrative that needed to be paid for (in an ethical environment), which would be received yet not used. Plus, the system was not designed to be bent to such a far degree to meet the demands I was placing on it. 

On the other hand, as Priya has demonstrated, the Turks could provide efficient writing services. They can provide ideas to counter writer’s block, provide writing prompts, and provide basic research that would go into a story.

The story was concluding and I decided to contact one of the Turks who worked on this project. I asked a bit of basic information on their background, but not enough to violate Amazon’s terms of service regarding the prohibition of seeking personally identifying details. The response came from a stay-at-home father in his mid-30s living on the east coast. He’s won writing awards. He has been a member of numerous writing groups and developed his storytelling talents from family traditions and tabletop role-play.

Priya went outside, sat on the sidewalk and enjoyed her meal. Lucas had not yet arrived. It was 11:52, the time stamp of their call was 11:31. 

Hmm, he should have been here by now. 

Scenarios of possible delays went through her head. She ran her fingers through her bleached blonde hair. More time passed. 12:00. 

She texted him. Where are you? 

No answer. 

12:17. 

She started to become anxious. Something bad must have happened. 

She texted him again. 12:34. No answer. Her heart raced. 

Was he in an accident?