Category: NaNoWriMo

Cheating your way to 50,000 words

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Now, I value integrity more than the average human being, but sometimes I think taking a few short cuts is completely fine. Don’t think hard, think smart.

Here are my top 3 cheats to boost your word count, in order of least desperate to most desperate. 

3. Get all that clunky writing out of your system

Don’t forget that NaNoWriMo serves as an outlet to get down your first draft. If you think that what comes out of NaNoWriMo is even close to publishing standards, either you are kidding yourself or you have a sad, sad idea of what is publishable these days.

First drafts are excrement. Remember that. Just get it all out of your system, and leave the clean-up for the revision stage.

What’s clunky writing? Wordiness. Adjectives and adverbs. Flowery description. Get it out now, and if you find an editor worth his or her salt (or if you know a thing about deadwood yourself), then try not to cry when 2/3rds of your manuscript seems to be crossed out in red ink after the editor gets her hands on it.

***Update: After reading my post, a friend of mine showed me this post on “The Best of NaNoWriMo”—a Tumblr page you can hope you don’t find yourself on. Please note that I recommend that yes, you get the wordiness out of your system—it comes naturally to writers. But I do NOT recommend making an effort to be overly wordy. You should never attempt to be a lousy writer. Practice makes perfect, so practice good writing, else you become a perfectly awful writer that no one wants to have lunch with.***

2. Commit the sins of dialogue tags.

“The truth is, if you have a dialogue tag,” Lara said, “It should serve two purposes.”

  1. It should be as invisible as possible, placed at the beginning or end of the sentence, or in the middle at a natural pause.
  2. It should tell the reader who is talking.

Here are the 3 sins of writing dialogue tags:

  1. Thinking your reader is stupid. If anybody with a brain can guess who is talking, leave the dialogue tag out.
  2. Thinking that zero dialogue tags = mysterious, artistic writing. It isn’t. It’s confusing and annoying. Establish who is talking as soon as the dialogue begins, and then only use dialogue tags when things get confusing or you introduce another character.
  3. Thinking that dialogues are a place to express your creativity and use vocabulary words. I have a huge amount of respect for educators. Yet I’d like to take a ruler to the knuckles of teachers who give their students worksheets like, “Other words to use instead of ‘said'” because they are instilling into those malleable minds that bad writing will give you better grades. (Hint: it often does)

Dialogue tags are punctuation. Some really wonderful writers forget that from time to time, including Ms. J.K. Rowling, who used extended dialogue tags in her earlier Harry Potter novels. You’ll notice, though, that the better her novels got, the more invisible her dialogue tags were.

“I like that hat you are wearing,” said John exuberantly.

“Thank you,” Cordelia squeaked with a blush, “for saying such nice things.”

Reading the above is pretty similar to reading something like this:

I LIKE THAT HAT YOU ARE WEARING!

THANK YOU! FOR SAYING SUCH THINGS!

Unnecessary and loud. And while such boring dialogue shouldn’t appear in your novel anyway, if it must, make it more like this:

“I like that hat you are wearing,” said John.

“Thank you for saying such nice things,” said Cordelia. She covered her cheek with her hand to hide the blush.

Still awful, but better. If you want good examples of dialogue writing, I’ll see if I can get some time this weekend to illustrate how to do it well, using examples from authors other than myself.

But if you need more words, commit those sins! Get them out! (And then murder the tags as you rewrite.)

1. Include your notes and free-writing in there, too.

NaNoWriMo is sort of like a marathon of free-writing. The point is the word count, not the quality of what you are writing. One way to boost your word count and get the “creative juices” flowing is to start off each writing session doing a free-writing exercise. It will get you over staring at the dreadful white page and make your brain and hands get ready.

Then include this all in the same document as your manuscript.

My manuscript is a complete mess. It isn’t linear, I write different scenes from different parts of my novel at different times. I don’t have a lot of my notes included in the manuscript (yet), but I have some. (Most of my notes I typed on a typewriter and keep in a 3-ring binder.) I’ll write three versions of a scene because all of them are in my head at once. Keep it all, and count it all in your word count. When you get to the revising stage, then you can rearrange all the scenes into a logical order and decide which words to toss, recycle, or keep.

I’m hoping to get more writing done this week. I have a lot of new ideas for scenes, but they currently reside on sticky notes and hotel notepads that I have around the house. I’m not really trying to hit the magic 50,000 words this month—I’d rather go slowly building  a solid plan than a 70,000 word manuscript that doesn’t work—but once I hit 20,000 I’ll take a break to write a post on good dialogue.

Unless I hit a burn out before 20,000 words and need a break. But my breaks have mostly consisted of me trying to obtain work. Which reminds me—insert shameless plug—if you are interested in getting custom business cards designed for yourself, for writing conferences or whatever, I’ll give you a discount for being a fan on my Facebook page. Become a fan on there, and I’ll give more details this weekend.

Let me know how you are progressing, and if you’ve committed any of the sins or cheats yourself!

Plotting: Relationship Arcs

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I generally find it bad taste to summarize someone else’s words on my own blog, especially if I have less experience in the matter and have nothing to add. So head on over to Bestsellerology and read “Building a Plot, One Step at a Time” by Suzanne Johnson.

I hope y’all are getting in more words than I have been. Let’s get motivated, brainstorm little rewards after so many words written (one of mine is painting my toenails, another is eating OREO-topped pudding), turn off distractions, and write now.

NaNoWriMo—Motivation?

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(If you are reading this and aren’t participating in NaNoWriMo, but could still use motivation to get writing, read on anyway!)

It’s the first Monday of NaNoWriMo. Are you needing some motivation? Are you online when you should be writing? Hmmmmm?

I added a secret little page to my graphic design website a few years back and made it my browser homepage. You know, in case I need a little guilt trip to motivate me to GET OFF THE INTERNET.

Because let’s face it, what is more distracting than the entire online universe?

Well, here’s the webpage. I’m not sure what browser you use, so I’m not going to give you instructions on how to make it your home page. But I do suggest considering making it your homepage if you consistently find yourself online when you should be writing.

Of course, the better plan would be to turn off your internet for a few hours every day when you have your writing time. Turn off your wireless, disconnect the router, or…if you are really ambitious and live with someone with a twisted hunger for power, you can have someone randomly change the password for your wireless every day, every week, or every couple of hours.

Do your research in chunks, when you aren’t writing. If you need to look something up, write that on a sticky note or in a different document on your computer, and then KEEP WRITING. Look up all that stuff later (if it’s absolutely necessary), or else leave it as a few gibberish words in all caps and bright red, and fix it during your revision time.

NaNoWriMo is not for revising, it’s for writing. Write as much as you can. Turn off the internal editor for the rest of 2012—visualize its demise, and then resurrect it in January. If your internal editor just WILL NOT SHUT UP (like mine), do what I do.

Also, to mix a few metaphors, you need to let your cake cool before you can frost it, so give your novel a month or two to cool off before you come at it with a scalpel of revision.

Write now, dear ones! Write NOW!

My NaNoWriMo Writing Methods

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Today: My Writing Space, Plot-driven Versus Character-driven Stories, Manuscript Format, and Shutting Up the Internal Editor.

So, yesterday was Day One of NaNoWriMo. I didn’t make it to 2,500 words because, well, I took a nap. And 1,788 lent itself to a good stopping point.

I thought it might be fun to share what my writing space looks like. Not the interior of my house, because I write all over the place. Also my desk is a mess.

You can tell already this will be a frenzied post, can’t you?

So here’s what the space looks like:

As you can see, I cover nearly every pixel of my screen. On the upper left is my beat sheet, written in Evernote.

On the lower left is a summary I wrote for the novel. It helps me to get the broader picture of what I think will happen.

A note about planning plots

Though I do plan plot (as you can tell from my series on plot), I also make sure that what I am writing is character-driven. THESE ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. You can write character-driven stories and still have an idea of where you are going. There’s a difference between a plot-driven novel and a plot planned one.

Let’s say you are planning a road trip across country. You plan your route ahead of time, and you have a rough idea of where you are going. But your route takes you to a road with a closed bridge. If you adhered to the plan without faltering, you’d blast through the “ROAD CLOSED” barriers and traffic cones and gun it, hoping that your tiny sedan can make the jump and land on the other side. This is what happens when a story is plot driven. It might have a lot of excitement, but it usually doesn’t end well for everyone involved, and along the way, you’ll make somebody say, “What the heck just happened?” and not in a good way.

But, it you come up to that closed bridge and you take a detour, you change direction. Maybe you even change your destination, having an existential moment where the sun breaks through the clouds and you realize, It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. That’s the way a person writes something character-driven. It’s fluid and organic, not rigid and contrived.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan to begin with. In my opinion, you’ll have fewer projects that die by your hand if you make an effort to think towards a possible ending before you even start. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve written that didn’t work. My current novel has already been scrapped and started over a few times. Here’s to hoping I’m heading in the right direction this time, because I truly love these characters.

Related: Outlining for Pantsers

Back to my writing space

Here it is again.

In the middle is my manuscript. I really hate writing in Times New Roman, but I decided to format my novel in the standard Manuscript format from the get-go. Some people want you to use Courier, others Times New Roman. This is how you format your novel manuscript. Remember, though, to check and see if an editor or agent has specific requirements before submitting.

On the right, I have another document that is specifically for my internal editor. I don’t have success completely gagging my internal editor, whose name is Melvin and looks like George Costanza.

Some people have semi-sadist daydreams about their internal editor, and what it takes to shut him/her/it up. With an internal editor like mine, if you fill his mouth with cotton balls, he’ll just start humming “It’s a Small World, After All” until you let him go. So I’ve found it works best to throw him into a cellar and let him shout out a couple of things now and again through the air vents. That document is a collection of his nags and pointers. I’ve found it’s best to acknowledge the internal editor, but rather than make the fixes, write the problems down on a sort of “Honey-do” list I’ll address during rewrites. Then I can keep writing quickly.

My next post is already scheduled for Motivational Monday! Follow me on Twitter @LaraEdits for NaNoWriMo updates and even more tips.