Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012
The objective of this phase
Sharpen the speed of the read
Tweak
“The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”
—Mark Twain
13 Sharpen the speed of the read
The irony of the FAST System is that it doesn’t start to come together until the very end. It’s a puzzle, whose true power can only be seen when the final piece snaps into place.
Here. In the Tweak Phase.
Over the next three chapters, you’ll get a ton of helpful, useful, practical information. And you’re gonna have one thought, the whole time:
Why didn’t you say this stuff sooner?!
Here’s why.
If you want to write fast, you cannot think. You cannot let your head get in the way. And the tools in this section are thinking tools. I don’t want you to use them until after your work is on the page.
(Unfortunately, I know how you are. You’ll read this before you ever actually apply it — despite my pleading. So just pretend you’ve done all the work the whole way through. If you can see these chapters as if you had just experienced the FAST System, you just might glimpse its power.)
So I’ll assume you’ve finished Strengthening your project.
And if you have — seriously — how amazing has the journey been?! You’ve astounded yourself! You never thought you’d write so much so quickly. You never thought you could let go like you have.
You’ve seen the raw power of writing at lightning speed.
Now, let’s let your reader tap into that same power.
The objective of this phase
If all writing is communication, and communication is the transfer of an idea from your head into the reader’s head, then it stands to reason that putting the idea into the reader’s head is the writer’s most important task.
There’s a problem, though. No reader’s gonna let you put your idea into their head unless they think you’ve got something valuable for them. Readers are suspicious. Readers are busy. Readers don’t have time for us.
So we’ve got to keep them interested. We’ve got to get inside their Idea Factory.
And there’s only one way in. Through the main entrance. Those grand double doors: the reader’s eyeballs.
To transfer your idea into your reader’s mind, you need to control those eyeballs. And that’s what this stage is all about.
T is for Tweak.
The Tweak phase is where you drive the reader’s eyes down your page, gobbling up your idea as they go.
Good writing reads fast. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter how fast you wrote it. All that matters is how well it reads. If it ain’t compelling, the idea won’t stick.
In this section, we’ll charge your writing with energy. We’ll see how to take what you’ve got, and juice it up, to keep your reader hanging on every word.
Think about the lightning bolt. That crack of the thunder as each new idea claps inside your mind. And when it does, you buzz with electricity.
Now, let’s take that image one step further.
Like a brooding storm, those bolts of lightning — your ideas — are raging around inside your head. You want your reader to grasp those ideas, right? How do you do that? Simple.
Get those bolts of lightning to leap off the page, and strike your reader in the eyes! Imagine a flash of energy zapping out of the words on the page, and shooting directly into your reader’s pupils! They go in through the double-doors and kick off a lightning storm inside your reader’s Idea Factory!
Ideas spark ideas.
Take you and me, right now. Our minds are connected. Right now, my lightning bolts are firing! I’m buzzing with electricity. And I pour these words onto the page.
As you read them, the sparks from my mind touch off the lightning bolts inside your own mind. And if you see what I see — if my picture is clear to you — you start buzzing, too!
That’s the power of the picture.
Can you see how a vivid image can transfer an idea?
That’s what we’ll do with your writing in the Tweak phase.