Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

The stack test
Decide which way to go
Strengthen

It took me awhile to figure this one out. And, like all efficient solutions (including the FAST System itself), once it hit me, it seemed so painfully obvious.

I call it the Stack Test, and it’s remarkably simple.

All writing is communication.

All communication is the transfer of ideas.

Your job is to put your idea into your reader’s head.

And to do that, your writing needs to build logically in its own natural progression.

Do we agree on that so far? (Please say yes.)

The Stack Test, then, simply looks at everything you write, and asks whether this section/segment/chapter/act/paragraph/sentence/whatever stacks on top of what you’ve previously built.

Imagine the idea is a brick wall. Each section is a brick.

Does this brick stack on top of one before it, or not?

For example, as you read this book, you get to each chapter and feel like you “get it.” You have a better and better sense of what the FAST System is all about, right?

But then (if I’m doing my job right), you get into the chapter — into the meat of it — and discover a new piece of the puzzle. And when you do, the idea becomes even clearer. Right?

That’s because the book is about a whole idea.

But each chapter within the book is there to build that idea. If I spent a whole chapter on my visit to the Grand Canyon last year, it wouldn’t fit. It might be entertaining (ask me about it sometime), but it doesn’t build the idea of this book.

So it’s gotta go. (Re-Focus.)

Or be made relevant. (Research.)

Or blended in somewhere else. (Edit.)

Until it’s organic to the whole book. (Tweak.)

Make sense?