Exclusive Interview: Use this Hollywood screenwriter's unique 'FAST' method to write anything in record time. Published author Jeff Bollow shows you how to boost your writing skills by up to 10 times and tackle any size project without a problem.

Jeff Bollow is an award-winning filmmaker and acclaimed screenwriting teacher. He has appeared in moves such as... Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Lost Valley, Pink Lightning, and 6,000 Miles from Hollywood, as well as dozens of television shows, commercials 

1. Jeff, could you tell us a little bit about your background (what films you have been involved in, what work you do now, etc).

It's funny. The work I do now is about as far from what I SHOULD be doing as I ever thought I'd get! What I should be doing is making films. But I can't. Instead I'm teaching people how to write. Go figure.

See, the past four years have been a blur. I've been teaching screenwriting across Australia and New Zealand through my company, Embryo Films. All because I couldn't find any screenplays that were worth producing.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles -- movie central. And from the very beginning, that's all I ever wanted to do. I got into acting when I was about 12, with bit parts and supporting roles over the years on TV, in commercials, and in movies like "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead", and a "Columbo" movie of the week.

But I really fell in love with the movie-making side of things. I've worked every job I could, on all sides of the camera, to know this business inside out. I've written, directed and produced short films for myself (including one called "The Duel" which won the IFC New Filmmaker Award), and produced short films for other people that have shown in festivals around the world.

In 1996, I was presented with an opportunity to visit Australia, and I jumped at it. Little did I know I'd fall in love with the place, and decide to stay! But after I was here for a year, I realized there weren't many people writing screenplays... so advancing my independent filmmaking career was gonna be tricky.

I wrote a screenplay for a movie, a friend and I could self-produce, called "6,000 Miles from Hollywood". Once it was in the can, I started looking for follow-up projects. I read hundreds of screenplays, but couldn't find anything. So I started teaching people how to write commercially-viable screenplays.

2. How did you become involved in filmmaking/screenwriting?

Filmmaking: I honestly don't remember a time when I WASN'T involved in it. Even as a kid on my paper route in L.A., I was already dreaming about it, and tinkering with my dad's Super8 film camera. I bought a video camera before I bought a car.

Screenwriting: That's another story.

I got involved in screenwriting out of necessity -- first to create an acting gig for myself, and then secondly to show other people how to write material to feed my vision. See, I've got this vision in my head I just can't shake. I'm trying to build an independent feature film studio that produces 3 - 6 films per year. But that's a bit difficult when you can't even find ONE good screenplay!

The real irony here is that I hate writing. Well, that's not exactly true. More accurately, I USED TO hate writing. I've grown to see it for what it is -- a molehill people turn into a mountain.

Look, I've met so many writers, and seen so many people struggle with it, I discovered that people universally fear the writing process. The act of teaching it, has helped me see exactly WHY it has this power over people, and exactly
how to beat it.

But it all evolved out of a simple need for screenplays.

3. You've recently published a new book titled "Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed." How did you come up with the idea for this book?

I needed a way to get my students writing. And I mean REALLY writing. Every time I'd follow up with them, I'd get the same set of excuses. I'd ask, "Are you writing?" and they'd respond with, "I've been busy." Or, "I got halfway through, and got stuck." Or, "A screenplay is such a huge project, I don't think I'm ready for that yet."

Now, you've got to understand, my workshops consistently get a near-perfect recommend rate. I've had over 600 students in 6 cities across Australia and New Zealand, and nearly 100% of them RAVE about my workshops. They walk away with a real, practical knowledge of screenwriting. And they PROMISE me they're going to write!

And yet it turns out, less than 5% of them were actually APPLYING what they learned! When I sat down to figure out where I had gone wrong, I realized that I was filling their heads with INFORMATION... but I wasn't giving them a SYSTEMATIC approach for APPLYING that information.

So that became my new goal: To develop a systematic approach to the PROCESS of writing. To make SURE they could actually do it. And do it well!

Originally, I was creating a home-study screenwriting system called "FASTscreenplay", which is essentially going to be a whole package, with all my screenwriting knowledge combined with this new approach to writing, I call "the FAST System".

But as I was developing it, I realized that the FAST System applies to ANY kind of writing. In fact, I was USING the FAST System to create FASTscreenplay!

So I decided to take a step back, and develop a more general-use book -- something that could be used by anyone... to write anything. Because the more people out there that discover how ENJOYABLE writing can be (even if you start out hating it), the more people are likely to try their hand at screenwriting.

4. As a membership site publisher your title interested me, as we're required to have a continual production of content, articles, cases studies, etc. Your book is based on what you call the 'FAST' system. Can you explain the basics behind this system and provide a breakdown of the acronym?

The FAST System is a simple, step-by-step approach to the process of writing. What I discovered as I was teaching this stuff is that writers -- even those that had been writing for a long time -- consistently wrote in a way that was almost
DESTINED to get them stuck. FAST is about writing fast. Getting it written -- and written well -- as quickly as you can. I believe you'll actually write better... by writing faster... because I've seen it time and again.

The "FAST" acronym stands for Focus, Apply, Strengthen, Tweak. And what we do, basically, is break down any writing project into four distinct phases:

- First, you FOCUS your idea into a plan. You turn that vague idea into a specific, detailed roadmap that allows you to swiftly fly through your writing.

- Second, you APPLY that plan with speed-writing techniques. You get the words on the page considerably faster than ever before.

- Third, you STRENGTHEN your writing. When you use the FAST System, your writing is pretty solid by this stage. But here you'll quickly lift it up a notch, and make it really work.

- Lastly, you TWEAK your project and control the speed of the read. One of the biggest mistakes writers make is that they try to Tweak it while they're in the other phases. With the FAST System, each phase builds on the previous one, making the entire writing process easier.

What's really great about this system, is that it fuels itself. The more you use it, the faster you get, and the better you become. In "Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed", each of these phases is broken down into three basic movements, and each movement has five easy steps.

5. How does someone prepare to "write fast"?

Well, frankly, I think that's the problem right there. I'd suggest that you DON'T prepare. In fact, preparing is what slows us down in the first place. Rather, I'd say we need to "let go" to write fast.

Perhaps a better way to answer the question is to look at why people write "slow". We write slowly when we're unsure. When we don't have all the information. When we're not confident about what we're saying. Basically, we slow down when we judge ourselves -- by thinking too much!

So writers do exactly the WRONG thing! Either they just leap into their project before they're ready (and then they get stuck halfway through)... or they spend SO much time preparing every little thing, that they get suffocated by the
details. Both mistakes lead to the same thing: SLOW WRITING.

Think back to a time when you wrote quickly. When, without even worrying about it, the words seemed to be flying out of your fingers and onto the page. You were in the zone. Your head was overflowing with ideas, and it was all you could do
to just dump them onto the page before they disappeared.

Well, "Writing FAST" is about systematically creating that scenario EVERY time you sit down to write. It's about conquering the writing process itself, so that you do it FAST automatically... without even thinking about it.

The best way to "prepare" to write fast, is to tackle your project systematically, starting with the Focus phase.

6. Do you suggest any exercises or special preparation before you sit down to write something? For example some writers draw pictures before they write. Others do physical exercise or some just literally put on their writing cap.

I've met over a thousand writers so far, through the workshops, the assessments, the submissions and so on... and every one of them is different. The first thing to
acknowledge is that you're unique. So if any of those gimmicky things work for you, don't let somebody like me tell you not to.

However, I don't think you need any of that stuff. That type of preparation only serves to make the writing process more formidable. You're telling yourself writing is this big, bad, mean, ugly challenge you have to somehow "conquer". It gives it too much weight. Too much power.

Make it easy on yourself. Just write. Let words pour out onto the page instead. When you approach writing the right way, the words come automatically. They're not always perfect, but that's why writing is a PROCESS and not an activity. Typing is an activity. Writing is a process.

If you really feel the need to do an exercise before you write, here's what I'd suggest: 

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Turn on the computer. Open up your word processor to a blank page. And give yourself three minutes to write as many words as you possibly can. Do it every day, and try to beat yesterday's word count.

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The more comfortable you are throwing crap onto the page, the faster (and better) your writing will become.

7. How does writing fast make you a better writer than writing how we're taught in school?

School is a mixed blessing. We're taught the elements of good writing, yes. Things like sentence structure and grammar and classic prose style. And to some degree, we need that awareness. But the rules that were beaten into you by Mrs Crabapple were also tremendously crippling. It puts the cart before the horse.

The problem with the way we're taught in school is that it over-emphasizes literary and grammatical correctness. Too often it's at the expense of your own unique voice. And the internet has changed the vernacular. Writing is different today than it was twenty years ago. It's gotta be lighter.

Writing FAST (both the system *and* the speed) gets you in touch with your own style. Your own voice. We keep the cart behind the horse, and we get that horse galloping. We don't ignore any of the stuff you learned in school... we just don't
worry about it until the Strengthen and Tweak phases.

It's one of the most important lessons of the whole book: If you keep all your attention on the "rules", you'll get in your own way. Break the process down into steps -- into phases -- and look at the rules when you reach that phase. By doing so, you give your writing speed a chance to take off.

8. Most people are intimidated when it comes to writing big projects. What's the best way to tackle a large project, say a book, report or even a screenplay?

Why, the FAST System, of course!

Seriously, the FAST System was developed for large projects. I realized that my screenwriting students were daunted by the scope of a two-hour movie, and I needed to give them a way to simply and easily break it down -- a way that didn't force them to write formulaic stories!

When I realized that it applied to ANY kind of writing, I used the FAST System to write the book -- my first. It was really the first chance I got to see the system in practice, and I've gotta say, it surprised even me. Every time I slowed down -- every
time without fail! -- it was because I was ignoring the principles of the FAST System. All I had to do was stop, get back on the FAST System, and I'd zip right through it.

But I think you're looking for a specific tip, here, so I'll say this...when you want to tackle a big project, the very first thing you've got to do, is to break it down into bite-sized chunks. I call it "Chunking" your project. I can't explain the whole thing
here, but in a nutshell, you need to realize that a large project simply cannot be completed in a day. The first step to tackling it, is planning the project around how much you CAN do in a day.

You might think writing is all about the words, or the ideas, or how good your sentences are. But TIME is an equally important factor. It takes TIME to write. And it takes MORE time to write a bigger project. If you don't deliberately decide
to write FAST, it will automatically take more time. And if you haven't anticipated that, you'll slow down, get stuck, get frustrated, and quit.

The solution is to get your head around the FAST System, and then apply it, every single time you write.

9. What can be done when you feel you are running out of ideas or inspiration for a project?

Well, for starters, if that happens, you're not using the FAST System. And I'm serious about that. Because if you're using the FAST System, you'll actually have more ideas than you know what to do with, and you'll never get stuck halfway through.

You run out of ideas, or out of inspiration, when you leap into a project before you know where you're going. In other words, you haven't FOCUSED your project yet. The very act of Focusing your project will show you exactly where the holes
are before you ever start writing.

And when you do that, you're very deliberately setting yourself up to SPARK ideas during the writing phase (the Apply phase). You're basically putting yourself in a position where you TRIGGER ideas at exactly the moment you need them most... and then you blast through them.

When you put yourself in that position, you have exactly the opposite problem -- keeping yourself on the right track when you've got too MANY ideas in your head. But the FAST System even incorporates techniques to harness those ideas, and use them later.

Most people approach writing completely the wrong way around. And that's why they run out of steam. If you take it in phases, you'll write so quickly, you won't have TIME to run out of inspiration, and your mind is moving so fast, the ideas keep
generating themselves.

10. Can you explain your proprietary technique called Talktation? Can you give an example of how you might use it?

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