Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

Twist it all into shape
Meet the FAST system
The setup

After you’ve got the words on the page (which, at this point, you’ve done up to ten times as fast as you used to), you move onto the next phase of the process.

The third phase: S, for Strengthen.

You’ve been writing fast. You’re getting your words on the page without judging them. Without thinking them to death. You’ve silenced the Movie Critic during the Apply phase.

Now it’s time to let him out.

See, while you’re writing, it’s physically impossible to judge the quality of your work. You always try, even though it’s impossible to do. And so you keep tripping yourself up.

But by applying Talktation, and getting your words onto the page with lightning speed, you’ve given yourself the freedom to judge your work when it’s ready to be judged.

And that’s now.

That’s what the Strengthen phase is all about. Inspecting what you’ve got, intentionally looking for every flaw you can find, and then deciding what to do about it.

You’ll use several techniques to decide what you’ve got and where to go with it, but the main one I’ve devised is called the Stack Test.

The Stack Test assumes your writing has a core idea you’re trying to express (which you captured in the Focus phase). And in order for that idea to work, every single thing you write must build to it.

So you’ll go through every paragraph you’ve written, and ask yourself if it belongs in the Stack. Is it building to the central idea? Or is it waste? Every section, every chapter, every paragraph, every sentence. Every last one of them must stack on top of each other to build to this point.

You’ll have some decisions to make.

Maybe you’ll decide whole sections must be re-designed. Or whole chapters need to be cut. Or sentences are useless.

Depending on what you’ve got, you’ll either return to the Focus phase (where you’ll Re-Focus, and start again), or you’ll fill in holes in your knowledge (by Researching your details), or you’ll rewrite, shift, cut and blend your work (a deliberate step I call the Edit grade), until your idea is clear.

Or you’ll decide your work is building as it should, and it’s time to Tweak this puppy.