Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

What’s in store for you in this book
Why write FAST?
The setup

_“Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge._”

—H.G. Wells

1 Why write FAST?

The written word started out as a picture.

Way back in prehistoric times, life was slow. People would hunt and gather all day, and then come home to the cave and grunt at each other around the campfire. There wasn’t a whole lot of reading and writing going on — fast or otherwise.

But one day (and I’m taking a little “creative license” here), some guy named Ooga saw a mammoth for the first time. It scared the crap out of him. He ran back to the cave to warn his friends (let’s call them Booga and Shooga), but they just scratched their heads. Booga and Shooga had never seen a mammoth before, so Ooga’s frantic grunting wasn’t making any sense. (Maybe they should take him out back, and club him for awhile?) But Ooga was serious. That hairy, oversized elephant was huge. With tusks and everything. It could kill them! He needed his friends to understand. But he didn’t have the right grunt to describe it. So he grabbed a piece of tree bark, and drew a picture of the mammoth on the wall.

After Booga freaked out (grunting angrily about vandalism and such), Shooga grabbed his arm. She sat him down and made him stare at Ooga’s crude drawing. And, gradually, the image of the mammoth filled their minds. They understood.

And written communication was born.

Today, some thirty-five thousand years later, we communicate with different kinds of pictures. Our pictures are drawn with words. With words, we can create images of incredible subtlety and complexity. For example, I just painted the image of some cavemen, their cave drawings, and even a glimpse of their social structure, without any graphics at all.

And, just like Booga and Shooga, you saw that scene in your mind’s eye. You saw the mammoth.

Writing is communicating your idea with the written word.

And writing FAST is doing it quickly and effectively.

What’s in store for you in this book

This book will teach you how to write fast.

Not just speed writing techniques (although there are some whoppers in here). But also techniques for nailing your idea. Figuring out exactly what you’re trying to say, and then giving you a razor-sharp plan to get there.

This book will give you a system. One that works for any kind of writing. It’s a system that — when you fully understand it — will make writing simple. You’ll even have a two-minute checklist to immediately break down even the most complex writing projects. And an easy acronym to remember it by.

This book is not about me. Writing is never about the author. This book is about you. I want you to understand this system. I want you to see how it works. And I want you to be able to use it. To apply it. Immediately.

If you’ve looked at the Table of Contents, you already know the “big picture.” But we’re about to go way deeper.

With FAST, you can break down any complex writing job — from thousand-page novels and screenplays to simple letters and emails — and write them faster than you ever imagined possible.

This book will go beyond just the four-part process of writing. We’ll look at specific tips, techniques and methods to make sure you not only write faster than ever before, but better, as well.

We’ll look at things like “chunking,” which simplifies the huge task of long-form writing. I’ll introduce you to Talktation, my brand new technique for speed writing. You’ll discover the Stack Test, and watch it lift the quality of your work. And you’ll find dozens of ways to “speed up” your writing, so your reader hangs on every word, and can’t turn away.

If I do my job right, you’ll breeze through this book. It should be a quick and easy read. And with any luck, ideas will be popping into your head on every page.

To make it easy, this book is broken down into six sections.

First is The Setup. Every word you write falls into one of two categories — Setup or Payoff — so I’ve included them as sections, to remind you. All ideas need a context, or they won’t be understood. The setup gives us that context. (In the caveman story, the “Way back...” paragraph is the setup.)

Next are sections for each of the four parts of the FAST System itself: F(ocus), A(pply), S(trengthen), T(weak). That’s the meat of the system. You’ll spend varying amounts of time on each part of the process, as you need to. But do each part in that order. You only struggle when you jump around.

The final section shows you how to apply it: The Payoff. The payoff is where an idea becomes clear and usable. It’s when you go “Ah!” The payoff is what all writing is really about. (See if you can identify the Payoff in the caveman story, and I’ll tell you if you’re right a little later.)