Today I want to talk about word count. Specifically, word count goals. Even more specifically, how to achieve your word count goals by writing more words, faster and easier. Some days the words come more easily than others. Some days it’s like pulling teeth from a hibernating bear. (I don’t know that anyone have ever tried to do that, but I bet it’s excruciating). For the days when the words won’t flow or you have limited time in which to get them, I thought I’d share some ways (in no particular order) that help me get more words on the page.
10 Ways to Write More Words
- Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Everything — There are countless distractions everywhere, and nothing ruins the writing flow more than an email notification, an action movie in the background, or a puppy begging to go out. As much as possible, try to remove distractions and focus only on writing. Turn off the TV, put your phone on silent mode, lock the puppy out of the room, and narrow you focus to your keyboard and your story.
- Break It Up — Don’t feel like you have to get your entire daily word count in one session. Depending on your writing speed, that could be a block of 2 or 3 or more hours. By the end of that time, your brain will be mush. Breaking the blocks up into smaller bursts with breaks (short or long) in-between means you’ll be able to write more faster. Over the course of a day, those smaller numbers add up to big word counts.
- Try a Sprint — I wrote about this extensively in Word Sprints: The Writer’s Secret Weapon. Building on the previous trick, a sprint adds a little zest to your flow by adding a ticking time clock to the process. When you’re trying to get as many words as possible in the given time (even if that time is as short as a TV commercial break) you’ll be amazed by how many words you can pump out.
- Speech to Text — No matter how fast you type, chances are that you talk much, much faster. While it can feel weird to speak your words instead of typing them, dictation can be a way to shift your writing speed into high gear. If you have a smartphone, it probably has a dictation feature built in. Your computer might also. Or you could try an online service, like dictation.io or speechnotes.co. Or you can always go old school and record your words (while you’re walking your puppy, maybe) and then transcribe them later.
- Just 10 More Words — Sometimes the thought of how many words you have left to write is so daunting that your muse (or your motivation) runs and hides. Instead of focusing on how many words you need to write, think, “I’ll write just 10 more words.” That’s maybe 1-2 sentences. Not only will those words add up (eventually) they will help you overcome the not-writing inertia and might spark a much longer writing session. Because, really, how can you stop at just 10 words?
- First and Last — Try to fit in a short writing session first thing in the morning, maybe before you’ve even gotten out of bed. Even if you only get a hundred words, you’ll be that much ahead of the game when you sit down for the real writing sessions later. Similarly, add one last little writing session at night, right before (or just after) you get in bed. Not only will you pad your word count a little more, you will also prompt your subconscious to be thinking about your story overnight. Especially if you stop mid-sentence or mid-scene. Maybe you’ll even dream up the solution to a plot problem you’ve been trying to fix. At the very least, you’ll be raring to go in the morning.
- Change POV — If you’re really hurting for ways to add words to your day, try rewriting a scene that you’ve already written from a different character’s point of view. (Keeping both versions of the scene in your draft, obvi.) This is a bit of a sly trick because you might not actually keep these words in your final book. But in addition to getting some much-needed words, you might get valuable insights into your story that will help your book in the long run.
- Break the 4th Wall — Have a character pause the action to speak directly to the reader, a la House of Cards. They can share their internal thoughts, what they really think about the other characters, or what they’d rather be doing right now. Like the words you write in the Change POV technique, you might not keep this section in the final novel, but you’ll probably get some awesome insights into your character.
- Write in Layers — This method is inspired by Scott Westerfeld’s Dialogue Spine. First, you start by writing only the dialogue of a scene. Dialogue is easy, right? It’s just what the characters are saying. Then you go back to the start and add in all of the action. Not so hard. You’re just writing what the characters are doing. Then you go back again and layer in the description, which, I’ll admit, is probably the hardest layer. But by now you have the scene mostly written and you’re just finding nooks and crannies to sneak in the description. You’ll be amazed at how easily you get your words with this technique.
- Reward — Who doesn’t love a good reward? A nice carrot for reaching your goal! Promise yourself something nice if you reach your daily word count. Like chocolate or flowers or permission to play Fortnite for a night (just me?). Take it one step further and promise yourself something you really want if you win NaNo. My reward
ifwhen I finish my 50,000 word draft? AirPods Pro!!! Big goal. Big reward. Let’s do this!
So that’s it. Ten ways to help you write more words, faster and easier, to make this whole NaNoWriMo thing a breeze.
We will all be soaring through our word count goals with time (and days) to spare!
If you try any of these tricks, let me know how well they worked for you. And, as always, if you have any favorite tricks that I haven’t listed, please share.
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