Cheating Your Way To A NaNo Win, Part 2

     The other day I wrote a post about how to cheat your way through NaNoWriMo.
     Keeping in mind that these things will not necessarily make you a good NaNo novel, or even a finished NaNo novel, just a longer NaNo novel, here's some more cheat codes!


6.  What is your character thinking?

     That long bit of narration and headwork that you know is bad writing, and if ever published would rival the likes of even Twilight?  You know the one.  Where your character goes off on a long rant about how pretty it is out, and how much he likes flowers, or whether he's really in love with Billy the Cheerleader or Mandy the Jock, or if he's going to risk buying some edibles from Cynthia and Harlan Mayweather, because yeah, obviously they make the best stuff in town, but their mother is sort of the evil overlord of earth and she has this really strict policy against drugs that Cynthia and Harlan probably only get away with because of nepotism....
     That one?  It goes nowhere, it's not entertaining, it contributes nothing, you could more concisely convey the same information in like two sentences tops?
     Slap that bad boy down as drawn-out and useless as you like, my friend.  First drafts are for play, final drafts are for serious work.  Treat it like a free-write, like I just did up there; just set your fingers to the keyboard and let 'em fly!  No one will know the difference.
     Except for you, you dirty, dirty cheater.

7.  Lavish description

     Explain to me what the set looks like in vivid detail, tell me the exact shade of every single hair on the hero's head, and name every solitary scent in the princess's perfume; leave nothing unsaid, and employ every single last sense, even the extra ones!  Come on, it'll be fun!
     .... for you.
     Look, description for the sake of description?  As a reader, not my cup of tea.  But because it's not my cup of tea, as a writer I tend to under-dress my sets, which is great for the stage, where creative directors want to have all the leeway they can get, but for novels that makes it difficult to keep the reader interested--you risk having talking heads and bland settings.
     It's just so damn easy to overdo it, though--so don't even worry about it.  Just overdo it right from the start, all the words you want, all the description you like.  Then deal with the merciless cutting and hacking later, like with everything else on this list.

8.  Long dialogue

     Now, it helps if your characters are witty.  I know my characters having humorous back-and-forths about innocuous things (at least, innocuous to them) had to have made up at least a third of my NaNo Novel last year--my characters were funny, and if they wanted to show it off, who was I to stop them?
     I also delivered a lot of exposition through dialogue, which can also boost word count depending on how it's done, but witty dialogue is probably the best for boosting word count--even if it's just the characters thinking that they're witty.  Sometimes the more so, even, because people thinking they're witty tend to stumble and need correcting more often than others.
     You can also employ speech patterns to your advantage--in one of my WIPs from a while back a few of my characters have a habit of saying one another's names as a method of establishing dominance in a conversation, and I've had a character or two who liked to loop themselves around in webs of metaphor or simile, or who just plain liked run-on sentences (for whatever weird, totally not based-on-a-real-person reasons).
     As long as you keep those characters talking, your word count will keep climbing.  BUT....

9.  Try to avoid floating heads, but don't bite yourself if you can't

     Talking heads are terrible for a whole host of reasons I'll probably get into at some other time, but for now just know that a talking head occurs in a story when a character, or several characters, talks for an extended length of time with very few or no dialogue or action tags--so for six pages on end, there's just talk talk talk blather blather blather.
     And I get why--I've certainly done it before, it's easy, it just keeps flowing and flowing and flowing, and once you hit that speech rhythm it's hard to stop!--but talking heads are secretly killing your word count.  For every three spoken words you could be piling up a fourth outside of the quotation marks, just hanging out, relaxing, maxing all cool and the like; having your character perform actions as they speak will not only make your scene a million times more relevant/interesting, but it will also make that word count skyrocket, and, my good man or woman or nonbinary or genderless individual, I do believe that is why you are here.
     And this one's not even a cheat!  Totally legal.

10.  Include needless scenes if need be

     Much like those rambling headspace dealies, if there's a scene you know will never, ever make it into your finished novel, but you're running out of options?  Toss it in there.  Is it an AU fanfic of the story?  In fact, is it a fanfic of any type?  Did you write a poem or a short story?  Do you have less respect for the novel in and of itself than for the creativity upon which NaNo was founded?  Then toss it the fuck in, my friend!
     Tons of people do this--rather than attempt to write a novel this upcoming NaNo, a lot of people will attempt to slap down 50k in blog posts, in short stories, in poems, in paperwork, in scattered bits and pieces of whatever they can write in a month, because to a lot of people, NaNoWriMo is less about the novels than it is about the creativity and the community and the kinship you find within those thirty days.  NaNoWriMo is about more than writing novels, guys; it's about using the constraints of time to accomplish a creative goal, with an army of like-minded individuals to back you up.
     So maybe finishing your novel isn't going to be what's up this NaNo, but creativity will be, and part of creativity is knowing when to adapt your goals and the methods you use to get to them.
     Maybe that means using this list of technically-not-really-cheats to flesh out your word count for your novel; maybe that means writing at certain times of the day when you know you're at your creative peak.
     Or maybe it means deciding that a novel was never the real goal in the first place.

     Happy NaNoing my friends!  ... Even if it is February....

How to Cheat Your Way to a NaNoWriMo Win

     *GASP!*  Cheat on NaNoWriMo!?
     Now before I launch into this bad boy saddles a-burning, let me just say that the use of these tactics is not going to necessarily net you a good NaNo novel, or even a finished NaNo novel, but it will help you up your word count, and who knows, using some of these tactics might help you flesh out the story in your own mind, if nothing else.
     Just remember that once all is said and done and you have a finished novel in your hands, you're going to want to litter the cutting-room floor, probably in a pretty major way.
     SO, now that that's out of the way.....

1.  Adverbs and adjectives

     Adverbs are the little things that modify verbs, which everyone and her sister will tell you is Bad Writing™.  Usually they're words with "ly" at the end, like "clearly" or "slowly."  Adjectives are the same thing, but with nouns, and are usually referred to as descriptor words, ie, "beautiful," "deadly," "shiny," etc.
     Lots of writers will tell you that adverbs and adjectives (but mostly adverbs) are to be cut out of your writing at any and all costs; that's silly, of course.  But it's important not to overuse adverbs or adjectives in your writing, or things can get clunky.  Clunky is what first drafts are all about, though, so if you're looking to bump word count, these guys can help you out, at least temporarily.

2.  Use needlessly complicated sentences

     *sucks breath through teeth*  I really don't recommend this one, I mean... hhhhhh, there's no need to needlessly complicate things, but hey, if Occam's Razer isn't for you, who am I to judge?  Just make sure you simplify things down the road.  And that you do not don't not forget what it was that in the first place you were attempting to try to accomplish.
     (it's your funeral)

3.  Write parts that haven't happened yet

     This one I really do recommend--it's what I do.  When I have an idea for an upcoming scene, instead of risking its loss by waiting until the "appropriate" time to write it, I just type it up right in the document--usually at the top--then later I can copy and paste it into place no problem, and it's not even technically cheating since it was supposed to be in your story all along.


4.  Write parts that won't make it into the final cut

     This gets us back into the pseudo-cheat territory, but it's also something that I do so *applies the fuck-it adjustment* why not share it with the world.
     That scene where those two characters do nothing but banter and chat about stuff that has nothing to do with the story?  The one that you know, just know, even as you write it, is going to end up on the chopping block as soon as you go back to edit?
     Steer into the train crash my friend.  Play chicken with that sucker and watch from an out-of-body experience as you and your car are totally mangled by its twenty-ton onslaught.
     Okay, so that's a bit melodramatic; you aren't going to die.  Not from this, at least.  Probably.  I mean, I'm not a doctor or a lawyer or anything, so anything's possible.  Probably you'll just have some extra words to cut later--maybe a few extra darlings to murder.
     I know you're capable of it, though, you have big, strong arms, and what else would those garden shears be for, we're in the middle of LA for crying out loud!  I'm sure you've done it before.
     Wow, my metaphors are really just running away from me tonight.
     My point is, this is a harmless crime, and can in fact be helpful--sometimes the most telling moments we have are the ones that occur when nothing big or life-altering is happening, the little things we do in the dark that no one will ever know we did.  Sometimes the audience needs to see scenes like that, but a lot of the time it fucks with the pacing or doesn't move anything along, etc, etc, and will ultimately need to be cut; but if it's informed your work on the character, then even being cut out, it has served a very valuable purpose.

5.  When you're stuck, skip ahead and come back later

     Tied into the two above is the age old, "Do It Later" approach.  Which, contrary to what you may suspect, especially since this article is supposed to be all about cheating, is a really solid method; sometimes something with the current portion of the plot or dialogue or what have you is tripping you up, and you just need a breather.  That's life!  Sometimes you just don't have the tools to deal with something in that moment.
     What do you do when that happens?  Well, if you had all the time in the world you might get up, go someplace new, do some research, have an adventure!  But since you're a Writer and are both slave to the written word and to the sacrificial blood oath you made upon avowing to write 50k in 30 days, you don't have time for that.  Probably not the energy, either.  Plus it's cold in November, and it's probably raining today, and all your good coats are still in storage because you don't really want to admit it's winter yet, and....
     You get the picture.
     So one of the best ways to shake it up is to just skip ahead.  Narrow down what's causing the issue and bypass it completely.  Maybe writing a little will shake that crud loose for later, and if not, you can write it during the editing phase, when taking long breaks to stare at your manuscript and scream is considered healthy and reasonable.
     Sometimes you just need to work on something else for a whi


     And then the dreaded corkscrew blunderbussss threw down its MIGHTY HAMMER, and...

Things Not To Do During Camp NaNoWriMo

     The first half of Camp NaNoWriMo ended nearly a month ago, and I lost by a little more than half my goal.  I'm not proud of this, but I'm going to call it a "Learning Experience" and use it to get a blog post in.  Here's a list of nine things you SHOULDN'T do when embarking on Camp NaNoWriMo.

1. Get sick
        I came down hard with a throat virus in early April that really sent me reeling.  I couldn't talk, I couldn't move, I couldn't do much of anything.  The one thing I COULD do was write--which I did a lot of!  I got something like twelve thousand words written in one business week.
        But then I had to go back to school, and this is where I died.  I had reading to make up, worksheets to fill out, MORE reading to make up, and everything went to hell.  I was still sick when I went back, too, which meant that in addition to scrambling trying to catch up with backwork, I was also exhausted just getting up in the mornings, and my favorite thing to do was come home and sleep, which meant foregoing my daily writing for days at a time.
        Don't get sick when you do NaNo, kids.
    
2. Buy an iPad
        I've never owned an Apple product before, or even a cell phone more high tech than a basic Tracfone, but last month I decided to purchase a used iPad from my boss.  "This will be awesome," I said to myself.  "I'll be able to write my NaNo Novel anywhere I want and not have to worry about transcribing!"
        I did not, you will have inferred, understand how iPads work.
        My intentions were good, but one of the first things I did was go online and download a bunch of Apps that looked cool, and some of them actually were.  The one I wanted most to work properly, however--the word processor--was lackluster and comparatively difficult to figure out, and I ended up spending far more time trying to make my digi-self a rich famous moviestar in the coolest high school university EVER, which cost me precious hours in writing time.
        Since then I've chilled on the games (mostly), and I had a lot of fun but hindsight being 20/20 I know now that it was really a very bad idea right from the get go.  Maybe buying an iPad wasn't the problem in and of itself, but I'd say it's for the best if you not download really fun apps just before you start Camp NaNo.  Probably.
3. Start three plays
        I've never done more than one play at a time before, so I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to jump in and do three at the same time because easing your way in is apparently for chumps.  This, however, was ALSO a giant time suck on this, the month of my daughter's birth (my daughter being the manuscript, you see).  Three days a week since I've been out of the house essentially from eight in the morning to nine or ten at night, which cuts severely into the two-thousand-word-a-day goal I had set for myself.
        I don't regret this, since it's a lot of fun and also my career path, but NaNo was a bad month to START it--as I may have made clear by now, starting things is a hectic and exhausting business which leaves time for almost nothing else.  I had the same commitments this month as last, but this month it was far less taxing, simply because I'd already adjusted to it.
        Maybe just try to avoid starting pretty much ANYTHING, really, during NaNo months.
4. Get Sick
5. Get no sleep
        I have a lot of trouble sleeping most nights, but for some reason I had an especially hard time sleeping in April, which left me too lethargic and dry-minded to write much of anything at all.  Maybe it was because all of the above were tiring me out.  Because that's totally how normal biology works, right?  Yeah.
        It's really important that you get enough sleep to keep yourself healthy, especially on a NaNo month.  Writing fifty thousand words (or whatever your goal was this time around) is a terribly taxing task, and if you continually end up running on empty, your manuscript will suffer.  When your manuscript suffers, the writing gets hard to continue.  When the writing gets hard to continue, it's pretty easy to quit.  And when it's pretty easy to quit, you let the mouse in through the window and it sucks all your blood out through your palm.  And that, children, is why you never give a mouse a cookie.
        Can you tell that I'm tired as I'm writing this?
6. Get Sick
7. Get Sick
8. Get Sick
        Jesus Christ, please do not get sick on NaNo, you will regret it once you go back I promise you take care of yourself stay healthy stay hydrated sleep well don't lick peoples' noses, you don't deserve the loss of word count you are a good person you deserve a finished manuscript
9. Put it off until tomorrow
        When you have thirty days to write sixty thousand words, it's really easy to say "I'll just write four thousand tomorrow to make up for it!"  When you're tired and busy it gets even easier, and once you've pushed the deadline back once it's easier to do it again--and again, and again, and again.  Before you know it the month is up and you have almost nothing to show for it but a husk of an MS and some progress on a game you'll honestly probably delete in like a month.
        Sometimes it's unavoidable, and as I've said before, you don't need to beat yourself up about it--but you should do your best to avoid it.  When you dedicate yourself to a daily goal, do whatever is in your power to reach it as quickly as you can.  Write in the morning, write throughout the day, write when you get home from work, write, write, write, write, write.
        Because Write Is Right, and the only one you hurt by blowing off your goals is you.

Writing Game: Seven Minutes In (Writing) Heaven

     This is a little writing game designed to get your mind working and the juices flowing.  You can use it as a warm-up for before you start the brunt of the day's writing, or as a pass-time when you've got down-time and want to keep your writing skills sharp.  Whatever you want to use it for, here's how to play Seven Minutes In (Writing) Heaven.
   
Note:  Closet neither included nor required

What You'll Need:

3 containers of a reasonable size
Paper
At least one die
Writing materials
A stop watch or other time-telling device

Set-Up:

1.  Get all your things together in one place (always useful)
2.  Tear your pieces of paper into small slips
3.  Separate your slips into three piles
4.  Take the first pile; on these slips of paper, write the names of all the characters you might be using.  In the second pile, write down a number of locations, real, fictional, inside, outside--whatever you can think of.  In the third pile, write out a number of events or conflicts that you might want to use.
5.  Put each pile into a separate pile; shake and mix liberally

Game Play:

1.  Roll your dice.
2.  Whatever number you come up with, that's the number of characters to pick from the first container
3.  Pick one slip from each of the remaining containers
4.  Set your timer/observe the clock; you now have exactly seven minutes to write a short story using the criteria you've gathered.  With any luck, you'll produce something you can use either as a scene in a story, or at least learn a little bit more about your characters, their motivations, and relationships.