What's the worst 'cheat' you used to get this far?

I think we all know what I'm talking about.

I'm 25,000 words behind, and I'm currently pulling out all the stops in order to make that word count, because the concept of this novel is something I'd rather not lose.

Some of my worst has been inserting school work into novels, haha.

My worst has probably been having my character write and re-write a letter four times to correct for mistakes. Each time, I typed the letter in full with revisions. So... yeah.

Hmm.... not sure it counts as a cheat, but one of my characters speaks in a sing-song tone and has a tendency to repeat part of his sentences, that he does...

Recount a series of dreams that a character had the night before as part of a coffee time conversation.

I was watching a movie with some friends the other night... and one of my characters was watching the same movie, providing commentary. In my defense, it was one of his most favorite movies that we were watching, and his commentary was more relating the movie back to his own current circumstances. But some of it was also "Man, I love this part!"

My MC went to his old neighbour house and there they improvised a theme song to MC and then there was a old man with very bad hearing...

I have sitated diffent articles (and translated them) and written other stuff that I have put into my NaNo as someone's writing. Many thousand words with these.

And many moments of rnadom craziness... Good times.

My main character thinks a lot to be honest. It wasn't intentional at first, but when i had her think a lot about what was happening around her and how she felt, the word count flowed brilliantly xD

30 years writing experience.

Well, it seems like a cheat.

Oh.. and I write nano's in first person, of course. Extra cheat.

My MC is writing goodbye letters to family. So far, each letter in it's full text is around 1K words. I have four of them written and a few more to go in case I run out of steam in my final push.

Lots and lots of padding. Padding upon padding upon padding. Pad the descriptions, the dialogue, pad the fourth wall breakages, pad the redundancies to make them EXTRA SUPER Redundant, and then pad the already padded redundancies. So about twenty layers of word padding.

I've shockingly not used a single cheat this year, which is a first. For my first ever win I inserted random sex scenes, and last year I both kept my outlining in the body of the novel and typed two big random short stories right there when I got distracted.

My main character doesn't use contractions when she speaks. That's an extra two words for each one that it could have been.

I'm inserting another 1750 words that I wrote in non-Official-NaNo-project fiction this month. BUT IT'S ONLY TO GET IT PAST THE VALIDATOR! (the validator is probably going to eat about 1k of the novel...)

I wrote 5000 words of dream sequences :3

Well 'cheats' I used were having my characters tell and interpret dreams
And having them tell stories. All of the stories and dreams were made up by me on the spot, though.

and in the second story I use first person... She thinks a lot xD

Long parenthetical inserts of my thoughts and dilemmas. Like: [[After this I have to get Komori to the other side of the forest, and I have no idea how, but maybe...]] I did that several times. Also I wrote the final scene out as a comedy, and I got such a laugh out of it that I left it in even tho I went ahead and wrote the real version later.

My favorite is that there is a fairly major character in my novel that I didn't give a name. She was just always "the woman in burgundy" which gave me four words for one every time her name would have been used, which was a lot.

Giving a speech to give to the two warring vampire covens so that they can shut up and stop fighting. I plan to have it come to around 700 words, but there may be more :D

I started NaNo last year but had to quit after a few days due to starting a new job. I was so disappointed. I just inserted 3K from last year's attempt into this year's document. (It's the same novel--I'm writing the novel this year that I wanted to write last year but couldn't). This bit of "cheating" will actually enable me to finish on Wednesday.

I hesitate to think of it as cheating, because I have *not* word-padded or done outrageous things to this novel just to get a word count. Most of what I have written over the past month is quality, useable work. Yes, it will need major revisions, but it is not junk.

So I think my 3K worth of cheating is equal to what some people do just to get word count.