Be the Change

NaNo Day 21

Today's topic - dirty tricks. I suppose most of us use them in some way or another. We have little tricks to up our word count. Mine tend to be dream sequences or trips to psychics (where they do a long tarot reading, so I can describe each card and its meaning). Lengthy descriptions, pointless dialogue, repetition, etc. All good ploys to get more words.

But when does it go too far?

Some I've seen in the NaNo forums include having characters recite Wikipedia articles, sing entire songs (with lyrics not written by the NaNo author), the entire song "99 bottles of beer on the wall" which is apprently about 3k words, and even including a completely unrelated short story.

For me, most of those are going too far. Last year, I included excerpts from a text book and I still feel bad about it!

I'm happy that I'm using hardly any tricks this year! I've had no dream sequences, no pointless sex scenes (how dull, right?), and only one tarot reading (though it was important to the plot... at least I think it was...).

I reached 42k yesterday, and so far today I've written just over 600 words. I'm hoping to finish by Sunday.