Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

Control the ride
Sharpen the speed of the read
Tweak

Imagine you were designing a rollercoaster. You wanted it to be the biggest, scariest, most lunch-revisiting ride thrill seekers ever dared to strap into.

You’d sketch it out. You’d create that enormous first hill that takes seventeen minutes to get up. Yeah. That would create panic in those faint hearts. You’d twist that first drop to get their little heads shaking around unnaturally. Uh-huh. That blast of terror would be palpable. You’d bend the tracks and spin them upside down and plunge them into a vertical drop, and then twirl them into curly-kews...

And then you’d look back over what you’ve done.

If getting them from the drop to the loop meant a long, straight, boring track, you’d tweak it. You might add a dip, for a quick stomach-drop. But if there was too much shaking and rattling and rolling — if there were no breathers to let lunch settle back down for a moment — you’d have to take out a few of the cliff-plunges, right?

With your writing, you’re doing the same thing. And the first step is sharpening the “speed of the read.” That doesn’t always mean speeding it up! It might also mean slowing it down, so the reader can catch his breath.

To adjust that speed, we need to look at your writing a lot more closely. We need to look at each stretch of the track.

And create a Speed Plan — a plan to control the speed.

In the Strengthen section, you focused on the idea, and making sure it was getting across effectively.

Now, you’re looking at your words. Your Speed Plan is focused on the language you’re using.