Easy ways to add words
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Copyright © 2012 The Office of Letters and Light :: All posted novel excerpts remain copyright their authors.
Easy ways to add words
Ok, for what it is worth, I just discovered (quite by accident) a very easy way to add to your word count: add a very enthusiastic waiter to your story. He doesn't have to be important plot-wise, but he can offer great customer service and provide the MCs with secials of the day information and prices. Pointless, but 'every word is a good word' this month.
Does anyone else have any other ways to add to our word counts?
Re: Easy ways to add words
Thank you so much for this! My story takes place in a restaurant so this is perfect for me!
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A chatty French person works as well... they just talk and talk and talk and you get to say stuff about their bubbly-ness and their cool accents!
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What a great thread! I'm lagging behind already, and have plenty to say, but don't know how to milk it for every word.
I've just written a couple of hundreds words of someone imagining something - there's a piece of music playing, so I've written a good 2/3 of a page about what image this creates for her. Completely irrelevant to the story, but easy, as you could just make something up. If you pick a song you like, then you can exaggerate even more and use your own imagination to create a good imaginative break! x
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I inserted a very chatty receptionist. It took her over 100 words to get my poor main character signed up for classes!
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Have someone at a busy place like a subway or something mistake one of the characters for someone they know, or have your character describe something someone else is doing (E.g. From her seat in the bus she could see clear across the aisle and a little bit furhter towards the back of the bus where she could see a girl asleep in a man's arms. She wondered if she would ever have arms to fall asleep in, to hold her tight, to keep her up when she is about to fall. She wondered because her arms were the only arms that chose to hold her tight. etc etc)
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Have a character that goes off-topic a LOT, and rants about random things, that have nothing to do with the story... My MC absolutely hates pop music and rambles about anything. Hello word count (that I desparetly need)
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My MC has troubles with "word vomiting", repeatedly states and apologizes for this (because he's writing a book) and repeatedly goes off on random tangents about things. So far I've accumulated ... a lot of BS.
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As a result of a mental illness, one of my characters can't help but parrell proccess. Except, instead of two parrallel processes, anywhere up to six. That is six completely seperate trains of thought at once. So, he goes off-topic alll the time. It is all he does. He cannot have a straight-forward conversation without accidentally scratching a masterpiece into the dirt or tapping out the 1812 overture with his fingers, etc. YAY FOR EXTRA WORD COUNT!
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Oh my goodness, the first thing I thought of after reading this was Melville. I never had to read the entirety of Moby Dick, but my AP English class did read Billy Budd, Sailor, and I would say only half of the words were about the plot. Thanks for putting a smile on my face. :)
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Have your characters listen to a song. Preferably, a long song. Insert all of the lyrics of the song into your story. Extra words, in five minutes or less.
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I went with the classic 'chatty narrator' myself. Not a trick I plan to reuse in the future, but it's working for this particular story.
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Meaningless description, explanations of workings of the universe (in brackets, scattered around text).
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Ranting characters! Letters!
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Pointless backstory! I just threw in a legend about a prince and a cat. I might later on make it have something to do with my plot, but currently my first chapter is entirely establishing the setting.
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Arguments are good, they drag out a bit!
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Arguments can not only drag things out they have the potential to actually be interesting, as well as hilarious. I will have characters add in so many insults to their reasonable grievances and outrages. Long, multi-adjective insults. "You stinking, idiot, pig man!" or something every freaking line it's awesome.
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Using Shakespearean insults is also fantastic ;D
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Speaking of Shakespeare, another trick is to add in a Mercutio-like character. That guy loved the sound of his own voice and went off on tangents that lasted for pages.
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I never thought of that - Mercutio was by far my favourite character from Romeo and Juliet, he'd be a lot of fun to write about :D
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Definitely! Just have your main character call someone a "lumpish, hell-hated deathtoken!" ;) IThat would be awesome. (I just re-read my comment, and realized I should probably clarify that I'm not being sarcastic.)
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Shakespearean insult provided by my brother:
"Thy breath stinketh with the odor of foul cheese."
Don't ask me, I didn't come up with that.
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My personal favorite brand of insult is the kind that goes in-depth into someone's geneology: "Your mother was a rabies-infested swine, and your father was a dodo with gout!"
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Absurdly long descriptions for people and objects that have little relevance to the actual work. For example, I took an autumn leaf, added a royal helping of ridiculous description, and suddenly (two pages later) it wasn't a leaf anymore, but a dancer in a skeleton orchestra.
Of course, it's completely pointless. (Unless you need a laugh; then just reread those ten pages you wrote describing the intricacies and complexities of a hatbox.)
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I had a character go in a long train of thought that had almost no relevance to anything that just happened. It also doubled as world building.
I think.
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I framed my narrative. So I started in the present in first person then skipped back and did a flashback in 3rd person during which there was another flashback. There are also stupidly long descriptions of characters I don't even know if I'm going to use, and long philosophical ramblings....
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Oh thank God I'm not the only person who is doing that :D
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:D Glad I'm not either!
Best tip ever and it’s considered 'literary'.
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My poor MC just had to listen to the school news, where they named every single one of the National Merit Scholars, Finalists, Semifinalists, and Commended, not to mention all the valedictorians and salutatorians. I'm pretty sure I burned at least fifty words on names alone. And then I made her walk past the college-bound signs on her school's lawn (the signs that have the names of graduates and the colleges they're going to. I basically just went to Google Earth, searched for all the colleges and universities in her area, and put every single one of them (plus a few) into the story. Easy fifty-plus words right there :) (It works with the story, too, so I'm not really cheating.)
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Each of my chapters begins with a Bible verse. In Esperanto. Which of course requires me to repeat the Esperanto Bible verse at the end of the chapter, and add to it two English translations--- one from my favorite Catholic Bible translation, and one from a Protestant translation.
So that way I add a batch of 'free' words to each chapter to get my motor running. Hey, I'm up to chapter 3 already!
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Begin each chapter with a quote from an in-universe historical work, along the lines of the Dune novels.
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Or like the beginning of every episode of Andromeda.
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I loved Dune - I'd considered doing that, it would really fit with the whole idea of my story.
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At the moment, I'm having my characters tell and discuss their dreams xD.
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Ooh, like that! People in real life talking about their dreams always takes forever, gotta fill a few pages! x
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I got from 7k to 10k in 2.5 hours doing that... Still not finished MUHAHAHAH ... Done for now though, time to sleep =P. If I can get myself off the boards...
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Awesome, and I love your synopsis too!
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My novel's set during the Victorian Era, so I'm going to town giving people elaborately long names and lists of titles. Her Majesty Queen-Empress Victoria is helping quite a bit.
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That is just perfect for my next chapter which has to cover approximatly 300 years of an immortal's love life (his friends and companions are all mortal)
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Oh my. Well, you can always give people ridiculous numbers of middle names, too. Makes them sound old-fashioned AND ups the word count! :D
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Instead of my character saying God he says 'non-descript deity called God'. I will justify this by saying that he doesn't believe in said deity but doesn't see the point in saying his name.
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One way I've discovered, is when writing in the first person, allow your character to go off on tangent and describe thing to the reader. Like fear. Or their idea about buildings having personalities. Not only does it help flesh out the character, it can add one to two hundred words per tangent!
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Yeah, my FMC spent some time describing how the canvas talks to her (she's a painter).
Re: Easy ways to add words
One way I've discovered, is when writing in the first person, allow your character to go off on tangent and describe thing to the reader. Like fear. Or their idea about buildings having personalities. Not only does it help flesh out the character, it can add one to two hundred words per tangent!
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Have a story within a story.
...honestly, if you can get away with a character retelling a bedtime story, flashbacks, or something like that, go for it. I know I am.
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Ha, I'm doing this. One of my characters is a writer, so I wrote a synopsis and extract for one of his books and put that in. XD
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This!
My MC is writing a novel, so excerpts from her work are littered throughout mine
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My characters keep having flashbacks where their woodshop teacher tells them a story that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, or a moral that relates to the plot but they just brush it off. This gets especially interesting when it turns out they all have the same woodshop teacher, despite drastic age difference, different schools, and the fact that at least half of my characters are elves and pirates. Guess he just gets around.
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Describe their dreams :-)
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About half of my novel so far is dream sequences. Luckily, even they absolutely crazy and random dreams are technically plot relevant! (Hooray for monsters with psychic abilities)
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Add a random book/song/movie info. Soooooo indie~! [wat]
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Instead of your character taking a nap or sleeping, make them stay up all night and read a book or simply think!