Today is day 21 of National Novel Writing Month—the month where passionate writers the world over take the challenge to write a 50,000-word novel in a month.
If you’re a bit short or behind in your word count or wondering how you can possibly meet your goal, below are a few tips to help you increase your word count:
1. Write what’s hot. Don’t worry about writing your scenes in order. If you want to write that hot sex scene that comes after the climax of your book (pun intended), then go for it. Write the scene you’re passionate about now.
2. Flesh out earlier scenes. Review some of your earlier scenes. Does one lack details about the setting? Is one mostly dialogue with little sensory detail or description? Fill in the holes in some of your earlier scenes (as long as it doesn’t slow you down).
3. Step back and brainstorm. Halfway through my current project, I got stuck. I didn’t know where the story was going. So I stopped writing scenes and started writing notes for my “outline” (which is basically a 3-ring binder with various scribblings): character motivations, goals, setting detail, backstory ideas, etc. I brainstormed on paper and wrote a few thousand words that will end up in my novel.
4. Research. Pick something in your novel that needs a bit of research and spend half an hour to an hour reading about it. This time researching is bound to inspire more ideas to add to your word count.
For more great tips for increasing your word count, see Carly’s post, “NaNoWriMo or not, boost your word count.”
Also, check out my post from last year, “Five tips for increasing your NaNoWriMo word count.”
Tagged: Camp NaNoWriMo, Nanowrimo, word count, writing tips
