Recipe for disaster

Eventually, someone in nanowrimo always does it - they become blocked and resort to writing nonsense. They might have characters tell each other knock-knock jokes for several pages, or discuss their favourite songs, while reciting the lyrics. I don't know if someone's had a character sit down and read the phone book from beginning to end, but it may have happened.

I remember reading a post from someone last year who had made a character recite a recipe to other characters - and then ask the listeners to receite them back, only mistakes were made, so the whole original recipe had to be recited again, and then repeated - and then passed on to other characters. I am not making this up.

People do this sort of thing because they are blocked and terrified of falling behind in their word count. As you may have noticed, I'm big on hitting daily targets and keeping up with your word count. But I beg you all to avoid resorting to silly stunts like these.

My problem is that with writing tripe like that won't unblock you. It might get your through one day's worth or words, but beyond that it will make things worse. You'll hate what you are doing, and that will stifle your creativity. You'll end up repeating the same sort of thing over and over again until the end of November. They won't generate new ideas and will make you hate you're book and characters to the point you don't want to write about them anymore.

You wouldn't want to read pages of people repeating the same recipe, so imagine how soul-destroying it would be to write it.

Everyone gets blocked, or can't think what to do next with their story. In the first case, when the fire's gone out, you need to find a way to spark interest again. In the second, you need to tread water - write some filler that won't damage you plot but will give you time to catch up again - without demoralizing yourself to the point you abandon the project.

Over the next few days, I'll develop some ideas that can be used. These are what I call 'diversions,' as their purpose is to distract you, your characters and your imaginary reader from the fact that not a lot is actually happening. Usually, they are simple scenes or encounters that give the narrative a quick jolt, maybe force me to re-examine my characters and their relationships. The situations are pretty universal - with just a little tweaking, you can probably fit them into any genre or storyline.

For each one, I'll explain what it is, and give you a real example of when I've used the diversion in my previous nano campaigns.