“under the bridge” by devi laskar

NaNoTIP: Don’t write excessively long, winding, meandering sentences or phrases or paragraphs full to bursting, redolant with, literally stuffed with redundant, repetitive, overly-used adjectives, adverbs, coordinate or otherwise.

Remember, you want your messy, shitty first draft to be useful to you later.

Need to ramp up your word count? Don’t run in circles around your images and moments.

Instead try these approaches:

1) Reach for another detail, an image or action or gesture. Give us more about the scene rather than wrapping a single image in thick language.

2) Write too much dialog–being prepared later to cut off the fat and make it lean by selecting the very best line–one you might not have gotten to if you’d stopped earlier.

3) Write another scene. Ask yourself: what would make things worse? And then make that happen.

4) Ask yourself: what would be the most surprising thing that could happen here (growing out the logic of the characters and the world)? Make that happen.

5) Ask yourself: What am I afraid of? What am I avoiding? Write that.

6) Get out of the mind of your character and make things happen between characters. Have them insult, assault, need, threaten, betray, seduce, trick, trap, confide in, lie to, imprison, rescue, endanger, defend or hurt each other.

7) Ask yourself: what happens next?