Writing.Com 101

Random numbers play a part in many forms of writing. From the complexities of a role play game writing to the random choice of a year to begin a story, numbers can be a very important writing tool. These numbers are also quite useful when judging raffles or contests where the winner must be chose at random. Writing.Com's "Virtual Dice" allows you to roll for these random numbers.

How does it work?
From within your Writing Tools menu within the main navigation, you will find Virtual Dice  . This page gives you options to customize the numbers to suit your purpose. You may choose the number of dice you are throwing, the number of sides on each die, and how many times the system "rolls" the dice.

You can also tell the system that you do not want any repeat numbers when it rolls those die. This simulates drawing numbers from a hat. Once a number is drawn, it can not be drawn again. Using this option overrides the "Roll how many dice" setting, limiting you to 1 die. If the system rolls a repeat, it will try 100 times to avoid the repeat. If it fails, this will be noted in the output.

You also have the option to store your results to any item on Writing.Com with a title and notes. This works especially well for contests and raffles, as it makes it official for your entrants and gives them the trust that your winners were indeed pulled at random. Along those same lines, the Virtual Dice page allows anyone to input an item ID and view past dice rolls associated to that item.

Examples In Use

A Character's Age: Let's say that you wanted to use this as a writing prompt to choose a character's age. You could tell is to roll 1 die with sides numbered from 1 year old to 90 years old and only roll it once. The number that it gives you would be the age of the character you must write about! When I input these numbers in for the example, my character's age was 62. What age do you get?

Judge a Raffle: Perhaps you need to judge a raffle that has just ended. Let's say you have 350 raffle entries and need to choose 5 winners from those entries. You would tell the system that you have 1 die to roll with sides numbered from 1 to 350 and you would like the system to roll the die 5 times. You would also check the box telling the system that you do not want any repeat numbers. This guarantees that you will have 5 different winning numbers chosen. When I input these numbers in for the example, my winning numbers were 164, 215, 137, 55, and 61. These would be my winners of the prizes in the order the diced rolled.

The possibilities are as endless as the numbers that the system will give you. Have fun utilizing this unique Writing.Com tool!1