Am I the only one not resorting to cheating?

I've never cheated/helped things along at NaNo, and I hope that I never will. Normally, I'm not opposed to a little cheating, but for something like this it just doesn't seem right. Being that this is a challenge where a) you don't get anything for winning, b) it's on your personal honor as to whether you really won, and c) the only one you're hurting is yourself, it seems pretty stupid. I'm sure there are people who cheat (sometimes it's pretty easy to pick them out) but even though it's irritating, it's good to keep in mind that at least you're not.

Having said that, I know that different people have different versions of cheating. Like, someone else might not consider having an actual chapter title name cheating, or including the name of their title in their word count. Which is fine for small silly things like that, because most people don't reach 50k on the dot and just stop. They keep going for a couple hundred words, which makes up for it.

And just as an aside, I never understood not using contractions. That just seems so strange to me. Wouldn't that make your novel an absolute terror to edit later on? I understand that most people will never be editing their novels, but it would also make your writing seem so stiff... Gah, I think it'd drive me crazy. It's not even worth it.

NaNo 2006 = Cloudburst = 14k
NaNo 2007 = Redeeming Pandora's Curse - WINNER
NaNo 2008 = Borrowed Time - WINNER

My Writing Blog: Illuminated Words

Why would people produce extra long chapter titles to get the word count up? It isn't part of the actual story!

When George Lucas did the first rough cut of 'A New Hope' he used WW2 fighter footage to represent the battles. So I feel justified to copy a couple of documents off the internet because it is for the story!

http://www.mythichero.com/what_is_mythology.htm
http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html
http://www.apocprod.com/Pages/Hero/Take_the_Hero's_Journey.htm

I've never done any sort of cheating either. This is my first year and i really don't know how to do all of that stuff yet but it seems unethical to cheat considering this is a contest. I know that my sister though isn't using any sort of abbreviated words so it looks like she has more words than she actually does. Is that cheating cause it's sure working for her.

Word count hasn't been a problem for me, so I use no word padding tricks. Never needed them. I sometimes let the characters witter on at each other during a scene for longer than they probably need to, or let someone think about something for, like, ever! But that's what I do normally when writing anyway. Chuck it all in and see which bits I'll keep later.

I didn't have to cheat. I reached just over 50k with only the words I had in my head, and I didn't need anything else to help me. So no, I didn't resort to cheating.

NaNoWriMo '08 - Laughter is the Best Medicine - 50165 - Won!

Nope, I've never cheated or 'helped along' my NaNo; I don't think I could deal with myself if I did. I am, ah, well, very proud. There's no way my pride would let me stoop to doing something like that. And to be honest, it's not necessary. I've won NaNo every time since I started in 2004, and I fully intend to continue with the trend this year - with nothing but legitimate writing. No chapter titles (at all), no odd spacing, punctuation or section breaks, no dream sequences, no random ninja or zombie entrances, no smutty scenes, nothing but writing that, while not necessarily good (I'll be the first to admit it, I'm not that great of a writer), is readable and all relevant to the plot.

And while there [i]are[/i] people who do that, there are also tons of people who are determined to get through November without cheating. It's not so odd or unusual. ^^;

~toujours~la~douleur~
~je~suis~la~douleur~

It seems pretty ridiculous to cheat during NaNo, especially because NaNo is a challenge for your own personal benefit in the first place! If you're writing a novel to see if you can do it... why cheat??? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of things? When you come to the end with all kinds of extra spaces, no contractions, entire songs copied/pasted, haven't you just shot yourself in your own foot, since you didn't *really* write 50,000 words?

That's just my 2 cents.

Cheating? Hmmm...nice idea, just kidding, by cheating you're really cheating yourself. Mine so far has not resorted to extra long winded unecessary descriptions, no horrid digressions every 5 paragraphs, copying and pasting from wikipedia or extra long chapter names. Chapter 1, chapter 2 etc. thinking of chapter names wastes writing time for a start. The only 'cheating' thing I've included in my word count, if you can call it cheating is about 300 words of notes for when I return to edit or as things to include as I am writing - they will probably be deleted once I finish. The reason they're there is for my own reference.

The Delusion Wing - 2008 A Psychological Dystopian Science-Fiction

Considering the massive length of my plot, no not using any word padding, that would just be dumb and not get me as far as I need to get.

I've gone so far as no chapter titles, not even "chapter 1" because I split into chapters with edits. I do have scene breaks, which would be a "-----" on its own line. Only spaces I use belong there unless I massively typo.

Only thing I have done that could be remotely considered cheating is that since I'm writing fanfiction, I copied a whole 1 line from the original canon script. That was 13 words, and honestly it wasn't exactly something I could reword, it had to be worded in a very specific way or else I would have to edit that anyhow, so not really cheating anyhow.

Of course, some count my writing fanfiction as cheating, I certainly don't, I have less leeway with the characters than someone writing original and have a lot less leeway in the plot. Like someone writing original, I'll have to do research on the canon like someone writing their characters in a place they don't live in. Yesterday I had to stop for a bit because I had to go look up a particular fact since I was writing a picky scene that required me having my stuff down right and the person who helps me edit wouldn't have caught that error.

Oh, and one could consider a second account because the green bar stripped me of motivation cheating, my wordcount is actually 50k above what it shows on this account.

No, not at all. It doesn't feel right to, say, copy-paste paragraphs from some sort of manual or lyrics etc. into my story since someone's actually going to read it and...yeah, I'm not going to put them through that xD

I don't actually think that I'm keeping myself from cheating, it's more like I couldn't come up with a decent way that wouldn't seem ridiculous or obvious.

Now that you mention it, I do have dreams in my story, but I don't really understand what you mean by dream sequences.
It is kind of neccesary, espcially since the title is 'Dream Walker'.
I think I'd feel cheated if there weren't any dreams in there.

[img]http://nowrists.com/n8.cfm/263605/Blue/n.png[/img]

Define "cheating"?

I have still a couple of things copied into the bottom of the novel that I wrote but that aren't quite part of the plot yet. They will be soon though, and I'm now only down to two things left to get put in. It's not finding a home for them because they fit and were written with the plot in mind.

My characters haven't started singing songs. They all speak correctly. They are deeply introspective characters. Prone to tangents, but that's part of their quirks.

So no, I don't think I'm cheating, because every word has been written by me. Just because it's dirty, doesn't mean it's cheating.

This is my second year in Nano, and I never ever cheated. I accepted my defeat at 21,000 words last year.

I just wouldn't feel right with it. I'd feel cheep and winning wouldn't really mean anything. In fact, I tend to become infuriated with those who cheat, or as you say, help things along. It's not fair that someone who pourred sweat and tears (maybe even blood in some cases ;) ) becomes outwon (is that even a word O_O lol) by someone who "helped things along" cheeply.

So no, you're not the only one who has never cheated. :)

And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one either. hahaha!

WriMi '08: Children Of Nibiru --/50K
WriMo '07: A.N.G.E.L. 21K/50K

Ahem... I was an English teacher for 41 years.

FLASHBACKS are *not* cheating. They provide a service to your reader. YOU know the back story of every character and situation in your story. Consciously or unconsciously, you have access to that material. WHEN it enhances plot or character development, USE a technique that fits smoothly into your story to impart that information to the reader.

A skillful novelist builds suspense, moves the plot/character arc along, and deepens the meaning of their work by skillful manipulation of when/how that information reaches the reader. Sometimes, details hidden in plain sight, but not emphasized at the time, allow the reader to fool him/herself and be caught by delicious surprise at the end.

Likewise, FORESHADOWING is *not* cheating. It has many of the same benefits as flashback.

Overindulgence in any literary convention is a potential weakness... in a polished piece. BUT, these are rough drafts. It is not always obvious what plot strands are going to come to the fore. Throwing them out to see where they swim in a rough draft leads to more possibilities, more complications, more threads to pick up and weave in, richening the complexity of plot./characterization/theme. Also, discerning all of this PRIOR to writing is not the only way to work. For many, it would be an impossible way to work.

Serendipity is heady stuff and exciting to both reader and writer. NANO is a time to kick free and experiment. Don't stifle yourself with overly legalistic adherence to conventions, especially those that may not fit.

In FORMAL ENGLISH, abhor all contractions.

However, in a novel, formal English will read like a pompous bore.

If you have a character who is uneducated, IN HIS SPEECHES, inside the quotation marks, use contractions and other methods to give a reader with a decent ear a hint of how he/she will sound.

If your narrator is uneducated, or young, adjust their material accordingly. A gutter snipe's view of something as narrator should NOT be indistinguishable from a college professor's . Sentence structure, length, complexity, and size/rarity of use of individual vocabulary should all differ. One might rightfully say, "I ain't got no..." while the other may intone, "I have none." An average man on the street type would most likely say, "I don't have any..."

Far from cheating, those differences impart the nuance of characterization.

Sorry I got carried away. Class dismissed.

Blondbomb

Participles dangled while you wait.

Blondbomb

Participles dangled while you wait.

Don't worry, there's a difference between dreams that are important to the plot or character and just putting them in for the sake of getting a few hundred words of random nonsense.

I haven't cheated in any way shape or form. I have no chapter titles, no internet conversations, no dreams, no anything random to boost my word count. It's pure story that I have, which I'm really kind of proud of. I thought for sure that I'd have to do something to boost the word count, but my story played out quite nicely and made it so I didn't have to do that ^__^

My life is saved on the hard drive of my computer!

May I remind you of the Codes of Conduct?

Do ignore cheaters and trolls

Every year, we get dozens of posts accusing others of cheating at NaNoWriMo. Please—don't worry about cheaters. NaNoWriMo is an honor-system challenge; no one is cheating anyone but themselves if they don't write the novel they said they wrote.

If you see a post that you suspect is a troll (i.e. someone posting something deliberately inflammatory just to get a rise out of people), please do not engage them. Just let it go, they'll move along without any feedback.

--
Heather Dudley
Forums Moderator - Broke? You can still donate!
Couldn't verify your winning novel? Contact the general hotline for help.

I haven't been even using chapters, so I don't have to worry about long titles in the word count and cheating. I don't use a whole lot of contractions, though I tend to use them in dialogue, because otherwise it would sound awkward.

I know that I do use some funky spacing though. But that is not on purpose. Sometimes I just type too fast and accidentally hit the spacebar where no spacebar should be hit.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: The Thyme in the King's Castle
Total Word Count: 50,175
Today's Word Count: 0
Today's Goal: Attempt go delve further into normalcy.

none for me, either

----
2005: won!
2006: won!
2007: won!
2008: Lost Years quintet
http://kateness.wordpress.com

I haven't cheated, I don't think, although I did add a slightly unnecessary epilogue.

I'm not cheating on this one. I doing it on my own merits and I will get there. I type fast enough that I know I will reach 50,000 or more. This is my first year and I am determined to hit it.

It depends on how you define "cheating." There are definitely some unnecessary scenes in my novel, but they depict things that actually ARE happening behind the scenes. I don't think that really counts as cheating. It's more of a guideline so that I know what's happening in the parts that don't make the final cut, which helps make the story more cohesive. Does any of that make sense? I'm so burned out from writing, I can't even write a coherent post. :-p

"One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar." -- Oscar Wilde

No, I would never cheat. The only thing I do is I'll add a little bit more description than I would normally do for characters, but that I think is improving my writing since people always tell me I need to add more description. Oh, I had one character quote Rilke, that was about 10 words.

I am very honorable and so I try to avoid cheating, besides this is a challenge to myself.

I've been holding off adding in a doc I made that has scenes that I'm not up to yet, but go the idea for, I also have a doc with ideas for book 2 plus some scenes written out. I may add that in if it will get me over the line. If I can make 50K without adding these in, I'll feel better, but if I'm close to the finish, I don't feel it's cheating to add these things in which are relevant to the novel.

I also have paragraphs with notes to myself that I';ve left in, things I realized that I have to go back and change in the rewrite because of the way things went. And I have paragraphs about poems I need to write to fit into certain spots but don't have the time to write the poem, because poetry is even harder for me than prose. (Note to self--never write a novel with a main character bard who needs to be poetic throughout the story!)

And this reminds me, I didn't do a recount after my late night typing last night.

jezebellydancer

/me finds the tone of the opening post to be a little arrogant.... :/

I've got a story to tell (well, three this year). I don't have time for thinking about how to make them unnecessarily longer.

Nanos attempted and won: 4
JanNos attempted and won: 3
Collective word count: 547k
Ending or bust!

Well, my characters don't use contractions, but that's just the time period; I use them sometimes, but it's not realistic to stick too many in there. And I don't name my chapters or use weird spaces and junk.

This depends on what you mean by 'cheating.'
I began writing, got so caught up in my school work and my all state music for band and everything around me that I abandoned the story, sadly, with only 2,000 words. Terrible, I know.
But a few days ago I snapped back into gear and am determined to use Thanksgiving break to finish.
Nope, no long chapter titles, as mine isn't divided into chapters. Just the words that flow.
Although, I did have to write a few paragraphs for AP World Studies that I slid into my novel, but I still wrote them during November, by myself. And the topics were "She was afraid" which I had to show, not tell (mine ended up being three pages, ha, oops) and "They were in love" (which again, I accidentally wrote three pages). My teacher adores my writing, and actually said that I should write a novel. She was more impressed when I told her that I already am. Maybe that's what inspired me to keep working.

luck to all.

I've never been...adverse, to the idea of cheating, but I haven't had to employ it so far. It's almost been a point of honor for me...once I realized that my story was going to get me to 50k and beyond, I realized I didn't need to be sniffy about not hyphenating words or trivial stuff like that. It feels better that I genuinely wrote 50k, not less with a bunch of fluff.

Now, I have employed a few things that would be cheats to others, such as a few fake forum posts that my MC reads and two emails from my MC to her best friend. But they were utterly essential to the plot, and in the case of the letters, REDUCED words instead of gaining them, since I could fit a lot of exposition in one letter that would take me pages to elaborate otherwise.

So yeah. No cheating for me.

Spareoom.net

I've never cheated. I'm too neurotic for that. If I did cheat, I'd feel like the victory really wasn't my own and I'd done the whole thing for nothing.

On the other hand, I have toyed with the idea of someday doing two novels during November. One legitimate one, and one just for fun, where I purposefully use every dirty trick in the book, just to see how far I can get. That would be more of a personal experiment though, than actual cheating. And I would only do it after I had completed another legitimate novel first.

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NaNoWriMo 2006: The Loyalist and the Librarian (100k)
NaNoWriMo 2007: Moonlight Waltz (100k)
NaNoWriMo 2008: Howling at the Moon

I am not cheating. It only would hurt myself and invalidate my entire reason for doing this competition in the first place. Were I not to make 50K, I would be disappointed, but I would both get over it and use it as incentive to make 50K next year. Were I to cheat in order to make 50K, I would always know that I cheated. Moreover, I would always have the dishonor of knowing that i passed off a sham victory in front of people who worked very hard to earn theirs legitimately. No thanks.

BTW, congrats to the folks in this thread who have already passed 50K! I'm currently in a major last-week push and am on course to make the deadline, but it's encouraigng to see folks who have already reached the finish line. Well done!

"Just moments before a surface-to-air missile struck and destroyed the aging C-130, high above the wastelands of central Asia, Icarus Hemlock stood in the open rear hatch of the plane, preparing to jump and thinking that perhaps it was time for him to fin