NaNoWriMo: 50,049 Words! I Have Tips & Tricks! Don't Give Up!

Woo hoo!  I made it!  I tell you, the moment I glanced down and saw my word count tick over 50,000 my shoulders slumped in relief.

I've crossed the finish line of my first marathon, and it feels so good!

Allow me a moment of gratuitous celebration - yessssssss!

Man, did I just sneak though or what?  3 days to go, and now I can spend some time editing, not that I have room to edit too much or my numerical barometer will dip back into the 49,000s.

If you're languishing just below the mark, here are a few tips and tricks to tip the balance in your favour.  I don't endorse all of them, I have used some of them myself, but at the end of the day, if you're running your first marathon it doesn't matter how you cross the line, as long as you do!  Don't give up!

1. Always spell out numbers (I try to do this)
2. Ask yourself ‘what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to your character right now?’ and then write it into the story (I've done this one too)
3. Digress – have your character think back to something which happened to them at school, or last week
4. Introduce a new character, or make a minor character into a bigger part (Yup, used this one)
5. Do you have a villain?  Or at least someone creating tension?  If not, introduce one. (two of my characters screw up along the way)
6. Write an epilogue or a prologue.
7. Use characters’ full names and make them long (only if you have to)
8. Kill off one of your characters so the remaining characters can reminisce about the good times they used to have and you can describe the grieving process (with lots of adjectives)
9. Never use hyphens
10. If you’re very desperate, expand your contractions (really only if you have to)
11. Spend time describing your surroundings, and do it precisely
12. Give your characters a voice – dialogue takes up space, and don’t forget to add who’s talking:  she said, she replied, she nodded (all my characters talk out loud)
13. Build in a dream sequence
14. Have your character listen to some music or sing karaoke – better yet, have a karaoke party!
15. Gratuitous adverb usage – these can really, wonderfully, truly and absolutely help increase your word count
16. Give your character a time out to think about things – describe what s/he is doing – for example, at work
17. Name your chapters, add a poem/quote at the beginning which suits the chapter
18. Create an echo (cave, empty room, haunted house)
19. Have your character keep a diary
20. Have a character with Alzheimer’s so things have to be explained several times
21. Have your characters speak another language that you have to translate
22. Give all your characters a back-story
23. Have a character with Alzheimer’s so things have to be explained several times
24. Take your characters out to dinner so you can describe the restaurant, the food, the wine… all in great detail, with lots of adjectives

There are still three days full of writing potential to go ("that is seventy two hours," she thought to herself longingly whilst scratching her head and thinking about when she might go to bed that night).  Turn on the music ("don't give up, you know it's true, gotta do what you've gotta do," she sang), decide which character is going to kill off the other, describe, elaborate, then give the killer amnesia.

And then they woke up!