'Padding' word count - Any other ideas!

Even though we're so used to using contractions in informal writing, spell out the word -- wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't become would not, could not and should not.

My favorite: ellipses count as a word, so when you run shy of words, remember to use "..."

Awesome, thank you.

I'm quickly finding that it's like a fortune cookie joke, like ending a sentence with blah is akin to 'in bed'

Orangetunawriter

Someone last year (I forget who now; apologies!) mentioned putting in chapter titles. I did so last year and am doing it again this year. Plus, it's a great way to get a little humor into the novel.

2007: "Bread and Circuses"
2008: "The Mystery of the Venerable Chalice"
Blogging at www.triscribe.com

your characters should all have names that are least five words long and they must insist on all of them being used all of the time. sister mary clarence creedwater revival was a good one for this.

also, in addition to chapter titles, add descriptions after each title. i often do this if i find myself thinking up plot points that i'm not up to you that i don't want to skip to. i've had nanos where entire chapters were nothing but the chapter title and the three paragraph summation thereof, because november ended before i finished and i couldn't bear to wade through the crap to finish the story.

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

Cornbread,
I actually have a huge cramp in my side from laughing so hard, come on! You are so freakin' hilarious, but it acutally makes sense as well! Follow the Cornbread.

Orangetunawriter

whoot! thanks! we're gonna have to meet when i'm next in nyc, whenever that may be.

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

Have four characters perform the function of a Greek chorus. One of them is only able to communicate in Morse code (use a translator that adds spaces between letters), another serves as translator, but has a terrible stutter, the third is kinda slow and needs everything explained a few times, and the fourth suffers from echolalia.

"... - --- .--. / ... -.-. .-. . .-- .. -. --. / .- .-. --- ..- -. -.. / .-- .. - .... / .-- .- -.-- ... / - --- / --. .- -- . / -. .- -. --- / .- -. -.. / .--- ..- ... - / .-- .-. .. - . .-.-.- "
"H h h h h h h h he said, 'w w w w w w w write hard."
"Write hard? I don't get it. Can you explain that?"
"Explain that?"

Thats' 96 words right there.

That's really cool, thank you. :) I'm just starting to teach myself Morse Code, so this was a fun idea to see! :)

Orangetunawriter

like this?

"Chapter 4:
In which Jarvis Elliot Cliff Brooks Esquire discovers that Persephone Maria Eustacia Ellen Woods IV has, in fact, poisoned his coffee with an obscure Peruvian rain forest flower extract that will cause him to die slowly over the next thirty six hours unless he can secure the antidote. His research indicates that the only antidote stock in the tri state area is held in the research labs of Smith Jones Baker Harris Incorporated, where Persephone Maria Eustacia Ellen Woods IV is the head of their Obscure Peruvian Rain Forest Flowers research lab."

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

"Now I have a friend named Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla,
And I could say that "Rufus found a kangaroo
That followed Rufus home
And now that kangaroo belongs...
To Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla."
Whew! I could say that, but I don't have to!
Because I got pronouns, I can say,
"He found a kangaroo that followed him home
And now it is his."
You see, "he", "him" and "his" are pronouns
Replacing the noun "Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla",
A very proper noun,
And "it" is a pronoun replacing the noun "kangaroo"!

Now come on...

Now Rufus has a sister named Rafaella Gabriela Sarsaparilla,
If she found a kangaroo I'd say to you
"She found a kangaroo that followed her home
And now it is hers."
But I can't say that...
'Cause she found an aardvark
That fell in love with her and they're so happy.

And my name is Albert Andreas Armadillo
{No relation to the Sarsaparillas...}
Because of pronouns I can say
"I wish she would find a rhinoceros for me,
And we'd be happy."
You see, a pronoun was made to take the place of a noun.
'Cause saying all those nouns over and over
Can really wear you down."

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

Also, if you're writing high fantasy, remember to write out epic-length poorly-rhymed songs and poems with nothing resembling meter. It's required of the genre. And makes my eyes bleed.

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

Here's one I use sometimes... if you make a wrong-opening-letter typo (klike vthis), put a space in between the first letter and the rest of the word (k like v this). It may not make any sense, but one letter counts as a word no matter what it is, so abuse the system! ^_^

I swear most people don't even think before they speak. At all. Their mouths just go on auto-pilot and the most useless noise comes out.

Ken Dee (thanks for letting me quote this! ^_^

Any thing
Some times
maybe could sort of work
if you are really, really, really going to try to pad those words
and really, why wouldn't you?
if you just think about it, then you will find all sorts of ways that you all ready know all about
Like rep- repeat- repeating those words.
And being sure to use small words because they are fun and slippery and need lots of explaining (slippery like an eel but far less shocking) while big words are more firm, less wet and wriggly. (Metaphors are fun! So ... is ... punctuation.)

O K (never, ever, never okay. Why waste a word, right?), back to the salt mines.

Teresa
Queens, NY Municipal Liaison
Email: NYCNaNoML@gmail.com
AIM: TeresaNaNo

I needed a book for one character to give another and thought I would use a real one and quote from it, so i picked a poetry book and used a big fat poem. it fits the story perfectly and it is past the copyright thing.
also i made refertence to an old news item earlier on, then I thought I should look it up for the exact facts, then I figured, I could just cut and paste the whole story. ---now if that is legal...anyway.
those two things took up a few hundred words.

About taking out hyphens...is "sixty six," the same as "sixty-six?" I mean is it wrong the first way if you want to write out, "66"?

How does what I did sound? I wont do it anymore, but i enjoyed doing it the two times i have. I can just rewrite the article, to be in my own words later, so i think it is okay that I put it in that way.
I have to rewrite a lot of what I am doing anyway.

addie B)

"Socrates was an idiot.."
---Friedrich Nietchze

Worry about respecting other people's copyrights in December. November's just about getting the words on the page.

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

Silea--thank you. I do have to remind myself sometimes. mostly I am pretty good though. B)

"Forget it, you'll fix it in December!' is the best thing I ever heard that is not from Vince Lombardi.

addie

"Socrates was an idiot.."
---Friedrich Nietchze

Or... simply defy NaNoWriMo rules and write the word "maybe" 50,505 times. Then call your experimental novel "Perhaps Palindrome" and get critical acclaim as the Andy Warhol of literature.

Orwell missed by twenty years.

It took me the better part of three days, almost four, but I finally finished going through a copy of my entire manuscript adding all of the fun Blah suggestions.

The total 'padding' number was a whopping 19,699 difference! I say again, the total, with all of the BLAH and such fun padding was a whopping 19,699!

For those who don't care(and even for those who do care), that is a stellar difference when you are struggling, yes?!

Now I'm back to my original manuscript, trudge on everyone, to each his and her own.

Good-luck and stay as sane as possible as you still have a goodly amount of time available to acheive your goals, whatever they may be! :)

Orangetunawriter

The AP writing style for magazine writing is that any number over 10 is usually written out. In fiction we tend to use words for everything. so it would be sixty-six. Using a hyphen.

The rule of thumb is to use a hyphen between the tens and units number all the way up until ninety-nine.
If it goes over One hundred you would write it out as One hundred and sixty-six. (hyphen between tens and units only)

*** I just asked my husband who is a copy editor and author and he agrees. He also told me about this a link that might help.

http://www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp

Happy Writing

Louise Fury
www.louisefury.blogspot.com

The AP writing style for magazine writing is that any number over 10 is usually written out. In fiction we tend to use words for everything. so it would be sixty-six. Using a hyphen.

The rule of thumb is to use a hyphen between the tens and units number all the way up until ninety-nine.
If it goes over One hundred you would write it out as One hundred and sixty-six. (hyphen between tens and units only)

*** I just asked my husband who is a copy editor and author and he agrees. He also told me about this a link that might help.

http://www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp

Happy Writing

Louise Fury
www.louisefury.blogspot.com

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

As the writers' group can probably confirm, my characters say a lot of "well," "you know," "I don't know," "OK," "it's just that," and "...". So many words, no additional content required!

I understand the desperate feeling for more words,especially during nanowrimo, but the editing is easier if you write as best you can with hyphens and the likes of "and" so that the search and edit wont be as hard. We are writers. We need to grow with our craft and laving out a hyphen so we can gain a word is not writing, its math!

I am guilty of many a badly crafted sentence, many times I repeat myself and my characters seem to do the same. I get that, but I am trying hard not to just vomit out words so that I make the word count. I would love to hear New York's thoughts and suggestions on how to keep the writing authentic without adding or subtracting important content so that the wordcount is met.

Do you think it is more important to meet the word count or to stay true to the writing and the content?

Louise Fury
www.louisefury.blogspot.com

That's probably a subject for another thread, Louise. This thread is about padding, and sometimes it's fun to relax a little and know that if it comes down to it, there are things that you can do to take the pressure off of you if you're worried about wordcount. I think certain tricks are fine because they're very easy to correct in editing with a simple find and replace (such as putting spaces around the hyphens, creating very long names, etc.) For some people, knowing that there's a way to make one's wordcount grow specifically without having to resort to characters doing the same thing and repeating oneself over and over can be helpful. Some people, I for one, find it much easier to edit for little nano tricks, like not using contractions, than editing for the rambling stuff that I write during word sprints. I still do the word sprints because even if I'm vomiting out words, *for me* pushing through the story is the important part, and word count plays a role in that.

Tricks like these are probably not something that most people will want to use, but I don't think that putting them out there is a bad thing for those people who find them helpful, and I don't look down on anyone who might want to use them at some point.

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

Another idea I just thought of for people who are a bit stuck would be to pull out your Snapple Bottle tops and see if you can get any ideas from them!

So funny, but when I've looked at mine since I was a babe in the past , all kinds of scenarios popped in, just fun, random thoughts.

You can kind of read yourself into whatever the cap is saying and take it from there, maybe like role playing? Who knows but fun to try atleast.

Good-luck everyone :)

Orangetunawriter

So true about my comment being for another thread.
I guess I find it harder to think about words when I am writing, which is why for some crazy reason, I seem to be writing slower than normal this month. this is my first nanowrimo and the pressure to write 50,000 words might just be so overwhelming to me. One thing I have taken from this thread, is that it is better to get words down than stare at a blank page.

So my recent development, thanks to you guys on this loop, is to do paragraphs pertaining to descriptions. What my characters are wearing, what their surroundings look like, where they are etc. I have found it surprisingly important in my world building as well as word count.
So here is to me letting go of the formality of writing and getting words onto my page.

Louise Fury
www.louisefury.blogspot.com

Yay for description!

Seriously (even though lol, probably for another thread), think of all the words you're writing as creating a giant pumpkin, and then, when you go back, it's judicious editing that makes a jack-o-lantern (exploring negative space, for all you Castle fans). So if you're describing something down to the minutest detail, or your characters want to repeat themselves because they have to try out three different ways of saying something - all that is building the canvas for your story. Then in the second pass, you can decide what parts to show the reader that makes your story compelling. But if it's not in there in the first place (three times, buried under word vomit, badly hyphenated just because it was easier to think of any words than the right words) you can't carve around it and expose it in the edit. (Well, you can add when you're editing, of course, but a lot of times adding is something you don't realize you needed to do until you see the gaping hole in the midst of all the babbling)

November's motto is Just. Keep. Writing!

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

I was all over that site, I love the free interactive quizzes, which show me what areas of grammar I'm a tad rusty in. Comes in handy for when I need a break from writing my novel. Usually I just veg out watching tv or playing mahjong online.

Thanks for posting it!

btw, to revisit the hyphenation issue, I haven't been (purposely) leaving out hyphens, but last night when I went through the process to scramble the text before submitting it to the site, I just replaced hyphens with spaces, and suddenly my unofficially validated word count was very close to the word count in scrivener. So don't give up those hyphens! Just make sure to replace them with spaces when you scramble.

Livvy, but you can call me Weebles

Manhattan co-ML
NaNoWrimo Haiku: 30 days of noveling, 17 syllables at a time

I have no idea if this is a good idea, but in the other thread, there was the question of making dialog realistic, and so it occurred to me that real speech includes things like "umm" and "uhhhh..." and "like" "like' and "like" - so perhaps adding those little flourishes in certain characters' dialog would help with the word count (while making speech irritatingly real). And, the ellipses get counted by the word validator for word count for whatever reason, I believe, so that could help too. (words like "perhaps," "maybe" and "kind of" might also help).

2007: "Bread and Circuses"
2008: "The Mystery of the Venerable Chalice"
Blogging at www.triscribe.com