I can't believe no one's posted about this yet.

Mine are:
- Making my characters sing really long songs Usually something like "Mariner's Revenge Song" by the Decemberists. It's around 11 minutes long.
- My characters do a lot of nodding and moving around while talking. So there are a lot of unnecessary spaces an such.

And that's really all I can remember right now.
So what are your dirty tricks?

My characters never use contractions. It's amazing how often changing a "don't" to a "do not" will push you over to the next line.

My characters also do /very/ specific motions and intonations, and often wear super specific clothes or live in super specific settings that absolutely cannot be changed.

They love to sing and have pointless conversations and talk to one another like they're simple, so there are extra explanations. They also enjoy using really long insults and talking just for the sake of hearing their own voices. There are also lots of voice-overs, so I have to explain entire actions in scenes in addition to putting the lines in.

Lots of short one-liner arguments. Makes the dialogue snappy and the pages sparse. =)

haha, I like these. This is my first real attempt at Frenzy after an epic fail last year and, though I wanna be a clean and fair player, I'll probably be using these, haha.

transience: Mariner's Revenge Song is closer to 9 minutes. :)

I'm doing super-vivid descriptions of each panel - partly because I believe comic books should be art-dominant, partly because I don't know how much story I'm going to have ready to put to format when April Fools' Day rolls around.

This is going to be my first year, but in my NaNoWriMo experience, it's good to be really super descriptive with your characters. Describe sets and costumes really extraordinarily well and often.

I've never done one before, but if push come to shove I planned a scene where a character is going to buy a train ticket...I might just make her say a long list of cities before she gets to the one she wants to buy a ticket for.

Instead of the traditional "Name: Lines to be said" format you could use

Name:
Lines to be said

And if you wanted to play it even sneakier, you could use a larger font size for the names.

N_E_Star - If you're writing a screenplay, you have to write it as

NAME
Lines to be said....

I don't know about the rest of the scripts. But I think plays are formatted the same way as well.

Came up with another one:
- Fighting. Just bickering over the intended use of a word or a fight over what actor was in what movie. My favorite show, Psych, actually has characters fighting over things like this. It's hilarious.

I probably won't need to use any, because I've got the plots for the episodes I ant to do pretty much figured out. But I've got a couple of places where I could obsessively choreograph space battles for extra pages. :)

I usually go with the
really
short
lines
trick.
Bad for NaNo, good for Screnzy.

Last year, I had my characters randomly talk about topics that had nothing to do with anything. For example, when I was writing on the bus and really obnoxious rap music was playing, my characters spent a page talking about how much they hate rap. Who cares that they were in a fantasy world where there was no rap...

There are no words to express my love for your use of The Decemberists here. (And now I'm thinking of changing my signature back to the lines in "Engine Driver" about being a writer of fictions). Although I don't think it's physically possible to sing the whole of "The Mariner's Revenge Song" without someone stopping you with something along the lines of, "What are you talking about?" And, just because I'm a nerd like this, "The Island" is even longer, and if you sing all three parts of "The Crane Wife" you'll get a good fifteen minutes in.

I don't think I have all that many dirty tricks up my sleeve. Although, I have noticed that any time I write in script format, my characters have moments of silence. Moments that are noted in the action of the script, as are the times that someone uncomfortably breaks the silence.

I'm afraid I also abuse my parenthetical lines and action.

LEAH
Oh, yeah?

is so much shorter than

LEAH
(sarcastically)
Oh, yeah?
She stares Matt down, waiting for an answer.

The outline should be in place by then. The scenes are already trying to play themselves out in my head.

I'm just going to lay out my first draft as fast as I can and not worry about getting things just right. Once I hit 100 pages, I'll probably end up cutting a ton and dropping below that.

I use massive, intense monologues/soliloquies and a lot of short, snappy dialogue, and I format everything so it's separated into blocks. Like, the name is on the left and blocks of text are tabbed over to the right. It looks cleaner to me, and it pushes up the number of pages, heh. Also, lots of specific stage direction.

I love make conversations, because usually arguments are fighting each other in my head. So, by writing it in my script, I hope that I could keep them longer than forgeting it in instant (like what I used to do). But, by writing it, I might be more easier to forget it before I could done type it, or it'll gone from my head before I could open my computer! But, I could still use a lot of little notepad! See what I mean? there's a lot of "but" in my head and I guess it'll be very useful because many characters will say each arguments in different lines, in different explanation, in different way they have! :D

There's no such thing as dirty tricks in NaNo - we call it "word padding" :-)
You can find a ton of ideas if you look through the NaNo site, plus weird challenges to include obscure things in your writing - such as the "trebuchet club".

I included a compulsive liar in last years S.Frenzy.
This year will have an eccentric character that celebrates lots of world holidays plus ones I make up - "Talk Like a Parrot Day".

Throw in a geek character that uses lots of NASA acronyms - you could get a lot of mileage out of that. I'm trying it.

People discussing a character "Cliff Brooks died a horrible death (long description of an absurd way to go). Then "You mean Cliff Brooks, Senior?" "No, not the Cliff Brooks from Sunnyvale - Cliff Brooks from San Francisco." And so on.
Our NaNo group always kills off a character by that name. So, I have multiple "Cliff" characters.

Look at the dares and word padding at NaNo, then add your ideas here.

Other pading:

Discuss colors, debate colors. Look at the names of Crayola crayon colors.

Describe all the junk a character has in their yard or house. Maybe the character considers it "shabby chic" or has odd things in their yard and considers themself a "folk artist" no matter what other characters think.

I find writing dialogue pretty natural, but do find Script Frenzy more difficult than NaNo.

I'm writing a spoof, so already that makes it a bit easier for me.

But I'm trying to figure how to write it well without basicly rewriting the original.

I'm sticking with the same strategy that I do with NaNo

LOTS OF DESCRIPTION!

Best tip was already given - just type. Don't stop to edit or correct spelling - just skip a space and keep going. It's hard to do at first, especially if you took a typing class. With NaNo - you have to crank out the words and not self-edit in order to complete the challenge.

I'm doing multiple scripts and plan to turn them into a play. I thought about creating a RPG, although it might work better as a boardgame. My characters can get into arguments over the rules. It's based on "My Name is Earl" and other characters. It's just a sideline - not real fanfic or any plans to publish.

Middle names and ridiculus titles are good, too. Even if you forget and change it somewhat - helps a lot with word count.

I'm adapting my almost finished '07 NaNo novel, which makes it that much easier for me. Also, I have songs, mostly lame DisneyPop crap sung by Bad Company main girl Charlie and her replacement SuperStar -- on TV, not live. And then Charlie complains about them, not only that her doppelganger is lame and can't sing a lick, but that she herself was forced to sing such stupid bubblegum pop crap. She also whines about how she's unable to sing right now, that she's blocked, etc.

But mostly, I write fast. I write scripts so fast, I actually don't need to cheat.

Inserting songs has got to be the easiest cheat I've found for script frenzy. It's even better if the characters move around during the singing - you can describe where they go and what they do. If they stop and talk during it, you get even more lines.

The one thing I always remember is that the goal is to get to 100 pages - word count is not important here. Everytime a character speaks, you get two new lines: their character tag and their dialogue. Arguments, characters interrupting each other or trading off dialogue eat up lots of lines.

Death toll: 7 named, about 181 unnamed

Always have a character who's always out of it. In the middle of a scene they can say some stuff about platypi and cumquats and take up a few lines.

I just picked up the monthly program booklet for the "New Age" store. It's filled with meaningless terms and so on. If padding is needed, then a character can read from the booklet and another can make snide remarks.

Random word prompts help sometimes. Pick 3 words at random that you have to use in the next few paragraphs. Makes for odd situations.

I decided to have a character work on family history for a side theme.
I'm taking what we know/think we know about ancestors and embellishing it no end & adding fictional characters.

BTW - the older I get the better I am at throwing out a lot of b.s. to boost word count.

I hate typing on computers, so I'm writing on notebook paper. I'm counting each front and back as a separate page! (Evil, no?)

Having a parrot or an insane character that keeps repeating the same sentence. Then you can just copy and paste it all over your script. :)

This entire thread keeps reminding me of Treasure Island. The pirates always sing Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum, and the parrot always says, "Pieces of Eight."
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I've now fallen in love with Mariner's Revenge thanks to you guys.
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Other songs that you may like for filler:

*Country Death Song by Violent Femmes - fairly long
*You'll Never Beat the Irish (all 3 parts) by the Wolfetones. It's Irish history 1170-present day in 12 minutes. Perfect for a school setting.
*The Drunken Sailor. There are hundreds of verses that have cropped up over the years.
*Toor-i-ah, Air Fa La La Lo, Rare Old Mountain Dew, Whiskey in the Jar, and Galway Races - they all have nonsense choruses with lots of little words, great for bumping up both word and page count.
*Death and the Lady - it's a traditional song that goes on forever and a day
*Look at the Coffin - fairly long
*Seven Drunken Nights - seven verses, though typically only 5 were performed due to mature content, great for husband walking in on wife cheating
*Anything off of Green Day's American Idiot...two of the songs are over 9 mins. long
*Black Friday Rule by Flogging Molly - there are 3 versions. The Alive Behind the Green Door (live) version is 8:20; the Swagger (studio) version is 7:02; the Whiskey on a Sunday (live) version is 11:58.
*White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane - fairly long
*In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson - fairly long
*Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm by Crash Test Dummies - the chorus is all one letter over and over, and it happens to take up lots of space
*The Hedgehog Can Never be Buggered at all - this only works if you're doing a Discworld fanfiction. There are entire websites devoted to new verses for this song, and different versions can be downloaded free. One's 10:26 of continuous barber shop singing about how hedgehogs can never be buggered but other animals can
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If all else fails, you can just go back to one over and over in reprises. Think of Memory from Cats or Maybe from Annie.

Jewell A Pentagram, that could be a problem when you have to actually submit your script to check the page count... at least, I don't think there's a way to do it without typing it

SpiritFrog - Actually, when you submit your script you only have to create a PDF document of your script. The pages can be blank for all the computer cares.
Just saying.

It's worse... The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All is practically a field guide to animal sodomy.

I'm not really into including song lyrics or anything like that to pad my writing/scripts... copy-pasting feels like a cheat, and if I write them all out, then it takes about as much time to do a hundred words of lyrics as it would take to do three hundred words of internal monologue. Besides, I like to make my writing count - that way I have more to work with when the project is done.

I suppose the "cheatiest" thing I have planned this year is that 1: I'm writing multiple alternate storylines that take place at the same time, and 2: one of the characters will have a brief but rather chatty vocabulary, so she fires off one-liners on a fairly frequent basis.

You can always have your characters driving somewhere and singing '99 bottles of beer on the wall' that might take up just a little bitt of time, especially if you have a numeracy challenced character so the other ones keep on having to interrupt him with the correct number.

I never said that The Hedgehog Song was a particularly useful song or that it was at all appropriate. I just said it's useful for word count in Discworld-related situations, like, say, adaptation of any book that includes Nanny drinking.

If your computer can't make PDFs, what do you do?