Dirty Tricks... For NaNoWriMo!

These are just the fifty that I could think of off the top of my head - but trust me, there are many, many more!

 1. Not using contractions. Just do not use them, even if they should be placed - you should not diminish your word count.

2. Turning short sentences into lengthy and overly descriptive ones by using an abundance of wrods that you later repeat through synonyms and by writing out many, many words that you know will get edited out on the first edit, but you just want to keep writing because you know that if you don't, you will die - and even if the sentence stops making sense in the grammatical way and you know you should put a period here, you just keep going, knowing that you'd feel guilty if you continued this nonsense after such a decisive, defined and final punctuation mark. And then you start again...

3. Using the most formal language any kind sir and noble lady would find to be of the appropriate formality.

4. Titling charactes Lord, Lady, King of , Queen of and using the full titles when talking about them.

5. Adding scenes that ultimately do nothing to move the plot forward: laundry, cleaning, shopping, getting dressed, playing a board game, drinking juice.

6. Introducing a new character whenever the plot runs out of steam.

7. Introducing a character who doesn't know anything about the world he found himself in, so every even very basic object needs to be explained.

8. Introducing a character who contradicts everything - causing multiple pointless discussions throughout the novel.

9. Writing prologues, epilogues, prophecies and chapter notes or summaries.

10. Reflecting on the character's clothing choice.

11. Describing the setting in painfully detailed... Well, detail.

12. Making fun of something - especially if no one gets the joke and the character must explain it.

13. Inviting random relatives to a dinner party with a character present who doesn't know them - introductions!

14. Discussing favorites of any sort - or least favorites. Or just anything that cannot be agreed upon.

15. Completing a newspaper poll or survey.

16. Singing a song or performing a stage play.

17. I- Int- Introd- -duce a cha- cha- character wh- who st- stutters really, really b- bad.

18. Have someone hearing-impaired as to have to repeat things twice, with added ", he shouted, as to let grandma Marge, his mother's second cousin twice removed, but called grandma Marge for short, could hear".

19. Putting commas on either sides of hyphens in hyphenated words, turning seemingly one - word phrases into three. Or lose the hyphens, if you - like me - can't stand badly formatted text. And use "one word phrases" instead.

20. Take your characters out to dinner or generally out of the house for the evening.

21. Give your characters a bottle of wine (or three), get them a bit drunk and see what happens - some secrets will be revealed, some nonsense will happen, some stuttering will take place... And remembering what happened next day will add another paragraph or ten to the word count!

22. Make a character give a speech, as long and boring as possible, so people can comment on it and chat during it.

23. Write chapter titles at the top of every chapter.

24. Make someone recite a poem, read a story out loud or do something that involves telling things and being interrupted.

25. Give characters double names like Sarah Jane, Anna Marie, Peter Bob or Jean Pierre.

26. Dream sequences. Enough said. Same goes for hallucinations.

27. Back story on your characters, settings, the coat rack in the corner... Anything that's not freshly from the assembly line (and even those things have a story - the coal that was used to melt the iron ore from which this car is built came from the Appallachian Mountains, where it was created in the geological era of...)

28. Add quotes or definitions to every chapter. It can be a fun way to introduce comedy or can just serve as a form of foreshadowing, a very important dramatic device.

29. Having a character do something unusual so everyone asks about it and it can be explained at least three times. The goody-two-shoes can key a car. The workaholic can take a month off. Everyone's reaction also needs to be described!

30. Numbers. Not a googol (a one followed by one hundred zeroes), and certainly not a googolplex (a one followed by a googol zeroes), but saying "one hundred and eighty" instead of "180" not only looks better in print, but gives three extra words.
 
31. Long chapter titles can save your life (or add about two to three hundred words to your story, if chapters are short and many). So "Chapter 1: The Chapter In Which Our Protagonist (AKA, Me) Learns Of His Destiny And Ponders Upon The Ramifications Of Telling The Deities To Stuff It" instead of "Many Meetings" is a good alternative!
 
32. Get a character drunk or high or have him have a fever - or just go all out and have aliens abduct him, meddle with his brain and send him back to earth with a GPS tracker in his brain - and write about his strange behavior.
 
33. Everyone does something when talking: traces patterns on tablecloths, plays with the cell phone in their hands, shifts from one foot to the other... Don't forget that!
 
34. Did you know that a few sex scenes (kissing scenes, blowjob scenes, romantic lakeside date scenes, scenes...) can add as much as a whole novel to your novel? But a single scene like that can get up to five thousand words, if you include the events leading directly up to it, the scene itself and the characters' thoughts, feelings and reactions the morning after.
 
35. Have a character text or call people and ask them repeatedly if their message got through. Cue Umbridge from AVPS: "Did yah get mah text?" "Yes, I did, Umbridge, in fact, I-" "Then why didn't yah text me back?!"
 
36. Stick your characters in a car and make them go on a road trip. Through places they haven't visited -they get to sightsee, their GPS gets to give them directions, they get to argue over whether turning a map to have the car going "up" on the map makes sense ("if a map was meant to be read upside down, it would have been printed upside down!" and so on), get directions...
 
37. Throw in a kid who speaks kiddy-language or who asks "but why, mommy?" questions all the time.
 
38. Give a character a phrase they use all the time. Or just put in a good old hunter from the lodge. "m'boy" and "y'know?" will add to the word count - and I bet there are many more such expressions...
 
39. Quote battles. Have whole conversations in movie quotes as forms of challenges your characters are facing.
 
40. If you're modern, go for truth or dare. If you're grown up and too old for kiddie pary games, think of office dares. If you're in-between, spin the bottle is a good alternative. And if your Hero is a Medieval Knight who's Too Respected and Honorable to play silly games like that with the lowly ones like ourselves, how about giving him a Quest?
 
41. Niech ktoś mówi w obcym języku - which, in English, is "have someone speak a foreign language".
 
42. Theoretical discussions on the existence of God, the difference between violet and purple and whether a world of all women would be better than a world of all men. Or down-to-earth arguments over the prettier nail polish, the hotter girl at the bar or the winner of the beer pong tournament. As long as they talk. A lot.
 
43. Get into your character's head. Give us their thoughts, feelings, sensations, hunches, memories, regrets, joys, revenge plans... Anything that gives us more information on them while keeping the writing going.
 
44. The eyes aren't the only sense we have. Describe textures, smells, sounds, tastes... Everything we can take in from the surroundings.
 
45. Letters, emails, messages, online chat... Just try to make them at least in some way important to the plot. Or, you know, just add your Main Character to your class (as the new exchange student from Nicaragua or some other faraway country) and write your homework into your novel. Your teachers will be proud.
 
46. Add footnotes - your readers HAVE TO understand you, don't they? And if you add a word in a foreign language (like one that you invented, or even one that already exists) as mentioned in #41...
 
47. "One hundred bottles of ale hanging on the wall..."
 
48. If you're really behind, have a chapter entitled "Just Like The Chapter Before, But With Pirates!" adn re-write the events of the previous one, but insert pirates at will. "Arr, matey" will be a fun alternative to the usual Victorian-era formalities after eight days of NaNoing and their parrots can be the kind that repeat everything, or change a few details. Don't give the pirates names - instead, use descriptions: "the pirate with the peg leg", "the pirate with the hook on his left hand", "the pirate with the red bandana around his neck", "the pirate with an eyepatch over his right eye"...
 
49. Have a character participating in NaNo (or another insane quest) - it gives them reason to panic and it gives you a way to vent.
 
50. And if all else fails, kill off a character.