Word Padding for July Camp Or Anytime

It’s less than 48 hours to the deadline and you still have 5,000 words to write?

Don’t give in! This is still doable even if you don’t have much time to devote.

Here are some totally legal dirty tricks for adding words to any of your NaNo projects. Listen, learn, and put them into practice. There’s no shame in word padding for NaNo, it is, in fact, part of the game and might spark a new plot twist. 😀

A simple trick to get all of these in in a short amount of time will be at the end so keep reading.

1. Give your characters long names, at least three to five words long. So Aidan becomes Aidan Edward Vincent St. Thomas. Donna becomes Donna Margaret Esther Louise Franklin. Pretty simple way of increasing by a LOT of words.
2. Better still, add a title, Supreme Cat Carrier, Overpaid Overlord, Desk Jockey. So now, Freddie becomes Overpaid Desk Jockey Overlord Fredric Michael Benjamin Lane Peterson.
3. Deconstruct contractions. Every don’t becomes do not, every wouldn’t, would not, etc. Again, very simple with the trick below.
4. Lists of words using “and” rather than commas also works. Add a grocery list; bananas and potatoes and hamburger and hamburger helper and bacon and brie cheese and kumquats and pistachios and Bernsteins delicious ice cream treats of wonderment.
5. Long insults – Have you FMC hurl a lot of uncomplimentary words at the hero. Is she mad at him? She can call him a smelly pile of unwashed socks that sat too long in the bottom of the laundry basket in a summer rain on a hot day. That was 24 words right there. It’s a great way to get some of your own freewriting therapy and add a couple of handsful of words.
6. Add poetry, song lyrics, a short story within your story, description of your desk or your stuffed animal mascot, or favorite quotes. Have a character who loves to spout quotes and insert them at random points in the story. Do the characters ignore him or ponder the wisdom? More words!
7. Go for the Purple Prose. Add as much flowery description as possible. The morning sun didn’t just hit the fence, it caressed it with the passionate and loving touch of a Bond villain petting his Persian as he pondered. 

Some of these techniques have even sparked further plot. Don’t discount them as just a cheat. Freewriting in itself is invaluable for simply breaking through a writer’s block.

Now for that simple trick – Find and Replace. For the names, use Find and Replace make
every Freddie become Overpaid Desk Jockey Overlord Fredric Michael Benjamin Lane Peterson. So much easier than scrolling through. Use it for the deconstructed contractions too. Find won’t, replace with will not. Find and Replace does the tedious work and you’ve just doubled your word count. Okay, maybe not doubled but given it a good boost. You can do it with the insults too. Come up with a list for each expletive and use Find/Replace.

I think you get the idea and I’m betting that’ll add a good chunk to your project and get you to the Winner’s Circle, a.k.a. The Illustrious Winner’s Circle of Creative and Powerful Wordacity. 😉 

Happy writing and on to victory! 

Taps – CampNaNoWriMo July 2015

Another camp over.
We wrote, edited, plotted and outlined.
Words were added, others delete.
At times it was exhilarating, other times it was gruesome, still other times it was tedious.
It’s a process. That’s how it goes.
Glory in it!
Revel in it!
Embrace it.
It is what it is.
And what it is is the very best of you.
You ARE a writer.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

“As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.”

Translation: We’ll see you again next year!

Dance, dance, dance!

“…be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.”

You did it!  Whether you made our goal of 50,000 words or your goal of simply writing, you did it! Congratulations are due all around.  Go Celebrate!

…thanks for all the fish!

“Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in context, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”

It’s just a tiny blip…

“The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.”

Be ready for site slow-downs, word counts that are less when verified than your text file says, and massive pushes for word wars to boost counts.  Like the shirt says, “Keep calm and write on.”  You can do it!  You are so close!

Finally! It clicks!

“That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not.”

And thus ends the dreaded Week Three, with silenced agony and shouts of joy! Celebrate synchronicity and the move toward the end.

Change will come

“…for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid: and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.”

No giving up!

“If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe our this judgment now. But if anything in thy own disposition gives thee pain, who hinders thee from correcting thy opinion? and even if thou art pained because thou art not doing some particular thing which seems to thee to be right, why dost thou not rather act than complain?”

Yeah, what he ^ said.  No complaining, just do it! Sit down and type!

Just keep typing…typing…typing…

“How can our principles become dead, unless the impressions which correspond to them are extinguished? But it is in thy power continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame.”

In other words – Keep typing!