DIrty Ways to Reach 50K

Remove all contractions. (ie don't = do not, can't = can not)

Have a character sing a lot. Write down all the lyrics.

-Write in passive voice a lot. Yeah it's weak writing- but it really boosts word count:. "The street was crossed by me" has 50% more than "I crossed the street".

-When you have a bunch of characters doing stuff, mention each character's name (ie "Bob, Sally, Mary, and Joe") instead of using "they". Put the names on copy and paste if you use them a lot.

- Make characters daydream during boring speeches/whatever else in the plot. That gives you an excuse to ramble about anything you want for a long time.

-Don't use possessives. Say the "the mother of Suzie" instead of "Suzie's mother"

-Long chapter and title names

-Have characters reflect on the situations a lot.

-If a character writes an irrelevant essay/report/treatise/law/whatever include the full text of it in the story.

-Write about hypothetical situations of what "could have been" after any character dies.

Give your characters four or five, or even ten word long names.

Step 1: Grab cat around middle.
Step 2: With a vertical stroking motion, maneuver the cat's front paws across the keyboard, producing a barrage of characters.
Step 3: Take notes.
Step 4: After NaNoWriMo, write a book detailing your experiences. Title it _Why Cats Type_. Include artistic photos.

You made my day.

Roll around in the mud, and then start writing.

Hey, you said dirty!

Being serious, though... flashbacks. Copy and paste text/scenes from the novel, italicize, and then label it as character development.

Super sneaky!

Have a character sing "99 bottles of beer". Every single verse.

Dreams. Lots and lots of dreams. Gives you an excuse to ramble more or less incoherently for as long as you like.

And if all else fails - porn.

Introduce a hearing challenged character... and have lots of dialogue.

"The train will be here in five minutes."
"What?"
"I said the train will be here in five minutes."
"It isn't raining." etc.

I think I heard this one last year:

Have a (very chatty) character that only speaks a foreign language and translate everything he/she says. Or, to get even more words, have another character translate:

"Je voudrais un café," George announced.

"What did he say?"

"He wants a coffee," Mark translated.

"Avec sucre," George added.

Repeat.

And don't forget that George is going to want to know what everyone else is saying :)

Also, have the character eventually say something no one understands, which leads to a quest for a dictionary.

Description. LOTS of description. I mean every tree, every cloud. And don't stop with what your characters see: sounds, smells, tastes, and feels are words too! This trick combined with hefty amounts of porn can take over your whole novel if you let it.

-Sulwen, who in fact didn't find herself in need of any dirty tricks last year, but is preparing some just in case.

Meals.

Every time you don't know what else to do, have a character get something to eat. Describe what he's eating. If he's in a restaurant, describe that. List all the items on the menu he's deciding between. Tell what he puts on his hamburger. Describe the waitress. Describe the people at the other tables.

Or if he eats at home, then describe each step. Checking the fridge, deciding what to cook. Describe the process: He picks out a onion. He peels the onion. He slices the onion. He dices the slices..... on and on and on.

If you still don't know what to write, move on to describing him clearing off the table and washing the dishes. :D

Don't mention your MC's name(one of them if you have more).. This way you will have to go into difficulty making sure it will not be said in your novel. I did that in 2005, it was really funny!

I did the no contractions thingy last year, it didn't really help me. It made it kind of stiff.

I have six couples in this story, and every couple has their own song that will be heard everytime they meet. Even if they don't know it yet that they are a couple(the story is about 6 friends getting their true loves so..)

I'm totally for the description thing, that got me really far. And as I'm doing Romance this year I will be describing feelings too.

Insert random Bible verses between the text, wether you're religious or not, wether they're appropriate or not.

Make your characters burst out in song every now and then (new novel genre: the silent musical) and write down the lyrics. Steal them from other artists if you have to.

Make one character write endless Emo-poems about darkness, blackness, death and angst. Also very easy to rip off the internet.

Alternate each chapter with an exhaustive report of mud-wrestling scenes or darts matches ("one hundred and eighty").

Use stream-of-consciousness. Takes a little practice, sure, but it worked for Virginia Woolf.

Instead of hitting the space bar after every word, use it after every character. Use the return key to indicate the space between words.

Give three or more of your characters the same name.

"Where's John?"
"Last I saw him he was in the pub."
"No, not blond John. Ginger John."
"Ginger John with the buck teeth or ginger John with the limp?"
etc

Journal entries. As you have your character run across a journal entry....have them read it! Then they can reflect upon it, and then read it again for clarification if need be.....pieces of it anyway.

When you have a hyphenated word, like self-esteem, use find-and-replace to find - (just a hyphen) and replace it with - (space hyphen space). The word counts as three words when you do that.

That last one has GOT to be the dirtiest way to up your wordcount for NaNo...

Personally this year I intend to have really long chapter titles (like run-on sentences) followed by a paragraph length explanation of what will happen in that chapter. So it looks like:
"(insert really long chapter title)
in which character A goes to N, does X, meets char B, who says R, then goes to Y, but forgets D and has to return to W . . . etc"

I read through my last year's novel and thought some of my attempts to boost my word count were very obvious. Some of them have already been listed, but here's my two favorites:

A character told a joke, which prompted another character to say, "Speaking of jokes, have you heard the one about the green ping pong ball?" and went on for several pages, being frequently interrupted by the listeners.

My other favorite was worked into the story quite well, imho. It was all about mercury, which is a subject I know quite a bit about. It included the characters discussing why they don't fish for food. It was a very intense discussion.

Well, let's see. I think I like to stick to the subtler ways, so I've done some pretty bad word padding, but it's all been on topic.

-Get extremely wordy. Overuse adjectives and adverbs.
-Meals. Meals are good, because then you can describe their food in depth.
-Clothes. Heh. I like to make sure my characters are all well-dressed.
-"Forgetting" to insert hyphons (well dressed vs. well-dressed).
-Long soliloquys analyzing the way your character is feeling at any particular point in time.

A character that's hard of hearing. Another character will say something to him, he won't hear it, and the other character will keep having to repeat it.

Have a character do an internet search. Copy and paste a rather longish Wikipedia article, doesn't have to be relevent.

Interject character's thoughts as stream of consciousness every ten words or so.

Also ad: "read along, squinting while reading, stretching before continuing to read, reading some more, can't stop reading", etc. - every time you return to the wikipedia text.

Much love.

Also - I so see some tortured soul doing this. The pictures would be of him all in black surrounded by tons ot strays. Messed up long hair is a must.

Ha ha!! 'Twould be a hilarious experiment, if only my felines weren't so skittish.

Have at least one character who is never referred to by just their first name. Always say Flora Littlejohn or Mr. Valentine. Or Mr. Jack Sidney-Blair (hyphen optional for maximum wordage). I haven't done this specifically to increase my word count since my third NaNo, although I did end up getting a few words this way last year when Neil Patrick Harris kept showing up in my novel, always referred to by his full name.

Your character needs to restock their kitchen! Include their full shopping list.

Contractions are for losers. So are hyphens.

Dream sequences are for winners.

Five adjectives are better than one.

Your character goes online and is reading some sort of forum and, oh look! It's your posts that you've made here!

I did all the above and more my first three years, but haven't for the past couple. Word padding is kind of more trouble than it's worth.

Well I should have used my dirty way last year, seeing as I lost, and I certainly plan on using it this year. I'm a student and

+) my characters shall write every paper that I write for classes.

That'll mean a 10 page monster on Dickens, and a short one from each of my Theology and Economics classes and perhaps multiple character analyzes for my Opera class.

I am not ashamed to admit that my word padding technique is to break up scenes with five stars * * * * * That's five extra words right there ;) use as many stars as you like.

Describe *everything*.

i.e., The hat was bushy and striped, it's big yellow eyes gleaming maliciously and intimidatingly, as it buried it's head into it's spiked, talon-like claws which seemed like they could puncture a rock.

As opposed to:

The cat buried it's face in it's claws.

Or, in a scene:

Her desk was big and cluttered, shoes of every imaginable color and style lined the bottom messily, scattered papers flew around her desk, uncompleted forms collected dust by the edges, piles of seemingly never-ending books were everywhere. A tacky bright pink lamp sat in the middle, surrounded by random erasers and unsharpened pencils with the erasers chewed off the ends, and miscillaneous rulers, scissors, and pens completed the scatter-brained picture.

Her spiky pink shoes seemed to be a fashion-don't paired with the striped blue and green V-neck sweater dress, cinched around the waist with a big black belt that could easily strangle anyone. Her huge, chunky necklaces clunked together as she walked, adding to the thumping of her stilletto heels. The mismatched braclets on her wrists drew attention to her body pale, bony arms, and purplish veins jutted out of the back of her hand scarily.

I whimpered, "Hi."

As opposed to:

I whimpered, "Hi," to the lady.

-Harini.<3

Long descriptions for characters.

E.g.: Before her name was introduced, one of my characters was "the beautiful red haired woman wearing a long white dress and a cloak". For pages and pages.