Welcome to the final days of November. Time is almost up. But if you’re behind on your word count, don’t freak out, it’s not too late!
Me trying to hit that word count…
For all my WriMo’s out there, if you’re struggling to meet your daily word counts, don’t worry. Here are 10 of the easiest ways to increase your NaNoWriMo word count (without, you know, Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V).
Also, these are goofy techniques to help you win NaNoWriMo. They aren’t “good writing.” They probably won’t make it into your final draft. That’s okay.
Just try to hit that 50,000 word mark, baby!
1. Death
If you get to week four of November and you can’t get interested in a particular character… well, you know what to do.
Here are some options for permanently disposing of these characters:
- Stabbed by the villain
- Shot by friendly fire
- Bitten by a zombie
- Got food poisoning from eating raw chicken
- Beamed up into a UFO and whisked away, never to be seen again
After the character is dead, you have two options:
- Never mention them again and act like they never existed in the first place.
- Spend pages and pages writing about the flowers at their funeral, the pastor at the memorial service, and the casseroles from the well-meaning neighbors.
Your choice. Have fun with it.
2. Sudden Deafness
Another great way to boost your word count is to make a character suddenly go deaf.
This could be anything from a large earwax deposit to actually losing all their hearing. But once your character realizes they can’t hear anything, you could do several things:
- The other characters have to repeat everything they say, very slowly and clearly. The deafened character tries to read their lips and fails. (“We need to go!” “What?” “We! Need! To! Go!” “You want a horse?” “No! We need to go!”)
- The characters have no idea why they can’t hear anything. This makes them panic.
- Perhaps the deafness was intentional, like a magic spell or some other attack from the enemy.
The deafness could go away in the next chapter, or it could stay for the rest of the book.
3. Dream Big
Lots of people (myself included) say that it’s not good writing to include flashbacks through dreams, or prophetic dreams, or any other kind of dream in your story.
However, that rule is out the window for the month of November.
Dreams are some of the easiest scenes to write. They don’t have to make any sense, they can be cheap word count padding, and they can be a fun way to develop your characters.
Here are some ideas for including your character’s dreams in your novel:
- The main character has a nightmare that lasts at least 2,000 words and tells us exactly why they are afraid of the villain.
- The villain has a dream that lasts at least 650 words, where they are flying through the air on a purple pegasus and reciting all their evil plans to the clouds.
- The sidekick has a dream about cheese that lasts at least 800 words.
Again, usually I would say to steer clear of dreams in your story.
But now, when the word count needs a little boost, you have my permission to write all the dreams you want! Make them crazy. Make them weird. Just get them written down so you can add it to your word count.
4. Add Spaces After Hyphens
It might not be perfect grammar.
But that’s okay.
If you use a bunch of words with hyphens, go through your story with a find and replace tool and add a space after each hyphen.
After doing this, you might get a handful of words out of the deal, especially if one of your characters has a hyphenated name.
John-Paul becomes John- Paul, lily-livered becomes lily- livered.
If you REALLY need words fast, add another space before every hyphen. (John – Paul will count as three words.)
Is is cheating? I don’t think so! You wrote those words. Make sure the word processor counts them correctly.
5. Go Off on Tangents About the Local Wildlife, Local Restaurants, Local Botany…
Include as many tangents as humanly possible.
Now is the time to add some depth to your story that no one asked for. Info dump the entire nation’s history while your characters travel across town. Let them go to every restaurant in town. Take them bird-watching.
Personally, I’ve had a lot of success with writing tangents about food in my novel’s universe.
If I write just before dinner, I’ll end up writing a bunch of words about the food my character is eating, the way it looks, the ingredients, the smell, the textures…
For an easy word count boost, ask yourself what you would want to know about this story world if you were there.
(And if your story is set in your hometown, ask yourself, “If my friend from another state came to visit, what would I want them to know about?”)
Then start info-dumping to your heart’s content!
6. Refer to the Characters by First and Last Name
Does your character have a first and last name?
If times get desperate and you need a handful of extra words anywhere you can get them, start referring to every character by their first and last name.
You’ll be able to edit it out in the next draft. But for now, depending on how many characters you have, all those last names could add up quickly.
Bonus points if your character has multiple first names, or a hyphenated last name.
7. Flashbacks! Of All Kinds!
Good memories, bad memories, and everything in between.
It doesn’t even have to be plot relevant. What is the villain’s least favorite memory? What was a defining moment in the hero’s relationship with their cousins?
If you’re looking for a light-hearted flashback, might I suggest a memory with siblings. You can use any of my sibling writing prompts from this post HERE.
If you want to write a serious, trauma-related flashback, here is a good resource for learning to write a PTSD flashback: https://lisahallwilson.com/how-to-write-a-ptsd-flashback-in-deep-point-of-view/
The more serious flashbacks might require some sensitivity if you decide to keep them in the final draft. But you can write whatever flashbacks you feel like writing.
Again, in NaNoWriMo, the goal is not perfection. So write what you want to write.
8. Switch to a Different Point of View
Since writers tend to base their main characters off of themselves, after a while, you’ll probably feel like your main character is boring and dry.
Maybe you prefer the villain, or one of the sidekicks.
Maybe you don’t like any of your characters and you wish they could all die in a whirlpool.
First, kill your most boring characters.
Then, take whoever is left and choose a new point of view.
- Write from the villain’s POV.
- Write from the sidekick’s POV.
- Write from the POV of a rock by the side of the road and observe the shape of the clouds passing by for at least two pages.
You can switch back whenever you want. If you want to go back. Maybe the rock’s POV turns out to be super interesting.
9. Word Crawls
Until this November, I had never heard of a word crawl before.
A word crawl is a sort of story/ narrative/ choose your own adventure thing, where you complete different writing challenges along the way.
There are a bunch of these on the NaNoWriMo forums, which I highly recommend. But if you don’t want to sign up for the forums, you can also find a bunch of word crawls here: https://www.wikiwrimo.org/wiki/Word_crawl
I cannot recommend these highly enough. I love word crawls because they’re an entertaining challenge that helps you get a lot of writing done.
My personal favorite right now is the Mean Girls word crawl (https://www.wikiwrimo.org/wiki/Word_crawl/Mean_Girls_Crawl). It is so fetch!
And last but not least…
10. We Talks To Ourselves, Precious
Remember this guy?
When all else fails, remember the lesson we learned from Gollum…
It’s okay to talk to yourself.
Yes, it might not be fiction, strictly speaking. But if you’re genuinely stuck in your story, go ahead and talk to yourself, like Gollum talks to the precious.
Here’s a direct quote from my NaNoWriMo project last year:
[Augh precious what are we doing? What are we doing to the poor little hobbitses? We wants them to fall in love, precious? Nobody falls in love here. Nobody has happiness. Preciousssss. We make things too easy for them, precious. Way too easy. No, we don’t likes them being too happy. The hobbitses can’t get too comfortable. Not yet, precious. Not yet.]
~Lauryn’s NaNoWriMo project, 2020
Yes, it’s ridiculous. But that’s also 62 words that I counted with the rest of my word count.
Plus, it can also be a chance for you to plot the next chapter, debate if you should kill off a character, or just make funny noises until you feel like writing again.
Once you’ve gotten your Gollum-style rant out of the way, go ahead and get back to the story.
Now you don’t have to look at a blank page any more. And you will be haunted by your horrible written Gollum impression forever. You’re welcome.
There you have it– 10 stupidly easy ways to increase your NaNoWriMo word count this November.
How’s your word count faring? Do you have any word count boosting techniques that you use? Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back soon with a new post!
