The 3-Part Key to 5x-ing Your Writing Efficiency— 2K to 10K by Rachel Aaron

Writing fast isn’t everything.

Writing a lot isn’t everything, either.

But writing a lot, fast, is SOMETHING…if you truly aspire to be a serious (and well-compensated) writer of novels and other lengthy works.

So if someone told you that you could learn to write more, in less time, and with potentially much higher quality than whatever you’re managing now, that’s worth spending a bit of time considering their advice and experimenting with it in your own writing practice, wouldn’t you say?

When I first found Rachel Aaron’s 2K to 10K, that’s what I thought too. And despite its extravagant claim (2K to 10K? A 5x increase? EVERY day? Seriously?) and rather simple, straightforward cover design and composition, I was seriously impressed by the value of the information contained within.

So here’s a detailed book analysis on the book, where I’ll go over the ideas I found the most hopeful, and also include comments on the way the writer presented those ideas, to see what we can learn from her ideas AND her craftsmanship.

Some of the most important lessons I learned from this book:

• One of the most powerful ways to be a faster writer is NOT to increase your daily word count, but to eliminate non-writing days instead.
• The three keys to writing faster are to 1) know what you’re writing before you write it 2) understand how to make time work in your favor (length and part of the day), and 3) excitement (on your own part).
• If you want to be a professional writer, act like one. No baker ignores their stats. Writers shouldn’t either. Get friendly with a spreadsheet. Track your own progress. Figure out what works best for you.
• If you get stuck while plotting your story, dig into the history of your world/characters in “ludicrous detail” and particularly focus on what your villain is doing.

Who this book is for: Writers who are working on longer projects (at least dozens of thousands of words), including novels, of course, but also anything from “lyrical prose to technical writing.” Anyone who wants to write more, in less time, and with higher quality.

Scylighter rating: 5/6 ⭐s (explanation of ratings at the end)

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BOOK NOTES

Prologue. What’s This Book About?

In This Chapter

• How an unexpectedly popular blog post led to Aaron writing this book
• What this book is FOR and NOT FOR.

Author Rachel Aaron (henceforth referred to as “Aaron” for short) begins the book by explaining why she wrote this book in the first place.

As someone who 5x’d her writing production, she decided to write a blog post explaining how she did it.

The post grew legs and soon people were asking Aaron all kinds of writing-related questions, which she attempted to answer via blog posts until she realized “blogging wasn’t actually the best medium for what I was trying to do.”

So, at the urging of a friend, she decided to collect all of her answers into a logically ordered book instead. “A collection of writing advice arranged so that people who wanted to jump ahead to one part of the process could do so easily while others could start from the beginning.”

“This book, 2k to 10k, is designed to be a practical guide to writing efficiently based on the experience of a working author who doesn’t eat if she doesn’t produce good novels on a regular basis.”

(To be honest, I suspect the “doesn’t eat” part may be a slight exaggeration, but I think we get the gist ;D)

The techniques Aaron shares in the book aren’t just applicable to genre fiction, but can be applied to everything “from lyrical prose to technical nonfiction.”

To clarify, this book isn’t designed to teach you HOW to write, but to show you how to write FASTER, once you already know the how, and hopefully more easily and with “better end results.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: Once upon a time in the long ago summer of 2011, I wrote a blog post called “How I Went from Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day” cataloging how I went from writing 2000 words during my daily writing sessions to averaging over 10,000 words a day without increasing the hours I spent writing.

Closing: So whether you’re looking to speed through your tenth novel or trying to finish your first, I hope my tips and processes will help you reach and exceed your writing goals. Thank you and enjoy! — Rachel Aaron

OTHER COMMENTS

• I like how short, sweet, and to-the-point this introduction is. Nothing fancy. Just get in, say what you need to say, get out. Boom. Next part!

Disclaimer (or, How To Use This Book for Maximum Efficiency)

In This Chapter

• The two parts of this book and which is more general, which more specific.

There are two parts to this book:

1. The “daily process for achieving enormous word counts with examples.”
2. How to do the background work to make #1 possible.

Aaron states that Part 1 content is more universal/applicable to everyone, while Part 2 is more subjective.

Consider that Aaron is self-proclaimed “plotter” who thrives on “lists, systems, and knowledge” and also hates “waiting, wasted time or effort” and has “an obsession with efficiency.”

This means that her specific techniques shared in Part 2 work brilliantly for her, but mileage may vary for others.

(This is the stuff that I particularly appreciate, though, as a reader-writer. Of course everyone’s process is different, but it’s SUPER useful to see successful writers’ EXACT process, in detail, to see what you can borrow or adapt for your own purposes. Generalities like “read and write a lot!” aren’t even a tenth as helpful).

In other words, Aaron warns readers not to take anything in this book “as gospel” because there is no “One True Way in writing.”

This is what worked for her. Feel free to card-and-discard ideas as needed (;D)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: This book comes in two parts. The first lays out my actual daily process for achieving enormous word counts with examples while the second outlines how I do all the background work that makes those word counts possible.

Closing: Still with me? Okay! Let’s get writing.

OTHER COMMENTS

• I think this was a solid disclaimer. Again, Aaron doesn’t waste words. You can tell she really means it when she says she likes being efficient.
• It SHOULD go without saying that this is her personal experience and readers are free to take her advice or not, depending on their personal situations…but it doesn’t hurt to mention it, I guess, for those who are a little more “square” in personality?

PART I. Getting to 10K

How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000

In This Chapter

• The three sides to the 2K to 10K triangle

How did Aaron discover her 2K to 10K system?

The story goes: She was a young mother with a new baby, and was working on the fourth book in her series.

At this point she was already a professional writer, but she was struggling to hit her desired word count (4K per day).

She’d hired a sitter to help with child care, and before the baby she’d been hitting 2K a day “in the three hours before work” so now with six hours freed up thanks to the sitter and to quitting her day job, she thought she should be able to hit her 4K goal fairly easily.

That didn’t turn out to be the case.

Aaron continued to only reach 2K a day, the same she did before she quit her job. She was discouraged:

“Here I was, a professional novelist with three books about to come out, and I couldn’t even beat the writing I’d done before I went pro.”

So, Aaron says, she “got scientific.”

She started experimenting on herself and “ended up boosting my word count to heights far beyond what I’d thought was possible without increasing the time I spent writing each day.”

(This brings me to a principle that has been showing up in multiple areas of life: Experimenting on yourself.

(Whether it’s trying to cure a mysterious illness, dealing with pain, losing weight, getting healthy, improving in a musical instrument or language, or writing a book, it turns out that the best way to figure out what’s best for you is to experiment on yourself.

(Keep track of what you’re doing, when, under what conditions, and see if you can spot patterns…at least, that seems to be a useful strategy for many people I’ve heard from anecdotally ;D)

When Aaron told her writing buddies at ConCarolinas about 5x-ing her word count from 2K to 10K, everyone wanted to know how she did it. So she wrote it down.

And this is what she wrote:

First, Aaron begins with a disclaimer — many writers think writing quickly is a “hack,” but she “firmly disagrees.” Her methods are designed to “remove the dross” from your daily writing time, not the time you spend “making plot decisions or word choices.” It’s about not wasting your time, in other words.

And then she says that increasing word count isn’t hard. It just takes “a shift in perspective and the ability to be honest with yourself (which is the hardest part.”

The answer lies in three core requirements:

1. Knowledge
2. Time
3. Enthusiasm

Any of these three can boost your word count, but all three together will set you on fire, so to speak.

Aaron visualizes these three core requirements as a triangle with three sides:

SIDE 1: Knowledge, or Know What You’re Writing Before You Write It

Aaron stumbled on the first side of her triangle on accident. She was struggling with a scene, spending three days without breakthrough, when she grew frustrated, closed her laptop, and grabbed a notebook.

She blocked out a truncated version of her scene by hand, on paper, without transitions, dialogue, or descriptions. And after five minutes and three pages of shorthand, she was ready to write the scene, which she finished in “record time.”

“Here I was, desperate for time, floundering in a scene, and yet I was doing the hardest work of writing (figuring out what needs to happen to move the story forward in the most dramatic and exciting fashion) in the most time-consuming way possible (ie., in the middle of the writing itself.)”

(This is a really interesting point. Writing isn’t really one thing. It’s at least two things —1) thinking, and then 2) writing down what you’re thinking. [There’s also editing, but that’s another issue]. Most people do both together, but Aaron’s idea of separating the two is actually pretty clever/wise.)

The point is, as Aaron says:

“If you want to write faster, the first step is to know what you’re writing before you write it.”

And by that, she means not merely knowing the broad strokes of what you’re going to write, but actually figuring out the details: “the back and forth exchanges of an argument between characters, blocking out fights, jotting down fast descriptions.”

Because:

“Writing this stuff out in words you actually want other people to read, especially if you’re making things up as you go, takes FOREVER. It’s horribly inefficient, and when you write yourself into a dead end, you end up trashing hundreds, sometimes thousands of words to get out.”

(This, again, is a REALLY, REALLY good point, and something I’d been learning through personal experience, until I stumbled on Aaron’s blog post/book here, and realized she hit the nail on the head.

(I was familiar with the idea of outlining, of having a broad sketch/outline of what you’re going to write before you write it, but I soon realized that wasn’t enough. Aaron’s Side 1 helped remind me of this.

(Actually, she wasn’t the only one. I don’t recall who I learned this from, but there was another writer who suggested “telling yourself the story” before you tell it to others — and no, I’m not talking about Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft” idea, it was someone else.

(The idea is to actually write out your story, not AS a story, but as “notes to self” in as much detail as you want. It’s kind of halfway between a standard outline* and a full draft. I use this process all the time nowadays, and I call it my TMTS draft “Telling Myself the Story.”

(*if you want an idea on how to do outlines, I suggest Blueprint for a Book’s Inside Outline or Story Genius’s Story Cards, I’ve found both super helpful)

Once Aaron figured out this trick, she started using it all the time. At the start of every writing session, she took 5+ minutes to jot down a quick description of what she was planning to write BEFORE she wrote it.

It could be a paragraph, or a list of “this, then that.” And this one change helped Aaron go from 2K/day to 5K/day without increasing her time spent. She considers it the most important side of her triangle.

(One variation I would add to this technique is to do it at the END of a writing session, not the beginning.

(As Ernest Hemingway advised: “Write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and…stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.”

(The point is to leave a little bit undone so that you’re eager to get back to your writing the next day. So I would say at the end of a writing session, if you spent 5–10 minutes sketching out what you’re going to write in tomorrow’s session, that would probably work best. At least, for me ;D)

SIDE 2: Time

After making her first breakthrough, Aaron wondered if there were more ways to increase her word count, and she started to realize that she knew “embarrassingly little about how [she] actually wrote.”

She kept no records and didn’t know how long it took her to write an entire novel, and realized this was no way to run a business.

After all, can you imagine a “bakery or a freelance designer working this way? Never tracking hours of keeping a record of how long it took them to actually produce the thing they were selling? Yeah, pretty stupid way to work.”

So Aaron began to keep records. She started a spreadsheet to keep track of when she started, when she stopped, how many words she wrote. (There’s an example of this spreadsheet at the end of her chapter)

(Aaron’s spreadsheet reminds me of another famous writer, Brandon Sanderson, who also uses a spreadsheet to keep track of how he writes. You can see a brief partial clip of his spreadsheet in this video:

…apparently he’d picked up spreadsheeting from his acocunting mother.

(There really IS something to the idea of success combining both right brain and left brain skills — creativity and scientific experimentation, “winging it” and “planning it,” etc.

(P.S. A few astute viewers in the comments include their guesses on what each of the columns in Sanderson’s means, because he doesn’t say. The comment I found most likely to be accurate hypothesized that the columns included:

• A: Date
• B:Daily word count
• C: Monthly Cumulative Word Count
• D: Total Cumulative Word Count
• E: Number of days of writing left in the month
• F: Word left towards monthly goal

…a bit more than what Aaron has, but I can see why someone would want to know A, B, C, D, at least. OK, now back to the book.)

After doing this for two months, Aaron took a look at her data to search for patterns.

(Random note: This is something I’m personally not great at. I like collecting data, I don’t like REVIEWING the data. Something to change…)

She discovered a few things this way:

1. Where she wrote best (away from home, eg: a coffee shop without internet)
2. When she wrote best (in the afternoons, and not the mornings, as she previously thought)
3. How she wrote best (in longer chunks of time)

Re: #3 ~ For example, when Aaron only wrote an hour a day, she would only hit about 500 words per hour. But if she could write, undisturbed, for up to 5 hours, she could reach 1500 words per hour (!!)

In other words:

“The numbers were clear. The long I wrote, the faster I wrote, and, I believe, the better I wrote.”

She also noticed a definite drop-off after hour seven, when her brain was “too fried” to go on. Meaning that she was now up to 6–7K/day without adding any more hours to her writing time.

“All I had to do was discover what made good writing time for me and then make sure the good writing times were the ones I fought hardest to get.”

SIDE 3: Enthusiasm

By now, Aaron had gone from 2K/day to 7K/day, but she wanted to break 10K.

She was already starting to have a few 10K days, but they weren’t consistent. She noticed that on those 10K days, her words-per-hour were also extremely high. 1600–2000 words/hr instead of just 1500.

“the great thing about going fast [is] the novel starts to eat you, and you find yourself writing any time you can just for the pure joy of it.”

Aaron wanted to make this the norm rather than the exception, so she went back to her records, which she was now keeping “meticulously,” and realized that “the days when I broke 10k were the days when I was writing scenes I had been dying to write since I planned the book. They were the candy bar scenes, the ones I wrote all the other stuff to get to.”

(This reminds me of two things:

(One. While watching Brandon Sanderson writing lectures, one thing he said that stuck with me was that “every scene should be someone’s favorite.” In other words, no scene should be merely boring filler-bridge stuff. I’m not sure how doable that really is in real life, but theoretically, it sounds like really sound advice.

(Two. My old music teacher once said, about modern classical music — and I’m paraphrasing here — “sometimes there’s only a brief moment of truly beautiful music in a piece, and the rest of the piece is just waiting to get to that moment.” If that is true, [and I think it might be, when it comes to modern classical music], it’s no wonder that classical music is not popular. People generally don’t have the patience to wade through “meh” stuff to get to one or a few brief jewels.)

On the other hand, Aaron found that her slowest days (days when she could barely pass 5K) were the days when she had to write scenes she “wasn’t that crazy about.”

Which brought up a new problem: If there were scenes that she, the author, wasn’t excited to write, how would her readers take them?

“This was my novel, after all. If I didn’t love it, no one would.”

(Man. This book brings up SO many thoughts and ideas. This line, for example, reminds me of something I once heard about how important it is to love your work. Not because you made it, but because it’s actually good work. The ideal is to create something so awesome that you enjoy it for its own sake, and would enjoy it even if someone other than you made it.

(This is not easy, because we humans are self-centered by default, and it’s difficult to move out of that way of thinking.)

So Aaron took to “playing the scene through” her mind while she was doing her daily description-writing of the scenes, to try to get excited about it. She’d looke for “all the cool little hooks, the parts that interested me most” and “made the scene cool.”

If she couldn’t find any of these “hooks,” she’d either change the scene or scrap it.

“I decided then and there that, no matter how useful a scene might be for my plot, boring scenes had no place in my novels.”

The effect, Aaron says, was “amazing.” AND her word count increase because she was “always excited about [her] work.”

…

Now, with all 3 sides of her triangle in place, Aaron was writing 10K words per day as she finished her series, 2 months ahead of schedule. Her final book had taken less than half the time to write as her first in the series.

There was plenty of time for revision and she felt “on top of the world, utterly invincible and happier than I’ve ever been.”

Of course, keep in mind that Aaron is a professional writer who is able to write 6–7 hours a day, split into a 2-hour session in the morning, and 4–5 in the afternoon.

But if you try these ideas yourself, Aaron says that other writers have reported they’ve been able to “at least double” their word counts.

“Just like changing your lifestyle can help you lose a hundred pounds, changing the way you sit down to write can boost your words-per-hour in astonishing ways.”

And Aaron has one more piece of advice:

“Contrary to the myth of the tortured artist — a happy writer will always produce more and better than an unhappy one.”

To wrap up this section, Aaron includes a section on how she wrote a book in 12 days.

(Now this is REALLY giving me Brandon Sanderson vibes, considering how he hit it out of the park with his four Secret Projects Kickstarter project back in 2022–23. For those who don’t know, BrandoSando wrote four books secretly during the year of lockdowns, and released them via Kickstarter, earning around $42M).

Why did she write a book in 12 days?

Aaron wanted to see if her 3-part system really worked on its own, or if she was just doing especially well because she was writing a series that she’d been planning and working on and caring about for years. She knew the characters, the world, the ending, and wasn’t sure if these factors were affecting her efficiency.

So she started a brand new project to test her theories.

She plotted the entire story from July 17–20, then wrote from July 21-Aug 1. And in the book she includes a more detailed progress table from her spreadsheet, which tracks how many hours she spent per day, from what time to what time, how many total words, and her words per hour rate.

In total, she spent 62 hours and wrote 73722 words at a rate of 1189 wph.

And actually, she didn’t take the full 12 days to write. In between, she took a day off, and also took a day to rewrite a section because she was changing POVs from third to first person (which she counts as editing, not writing).

As Aaron points out, 62 hours is only a week and a half at a standard 40-hour-a-week job (!!)

Another reminder about timing:

“my words per hour are actually a curve with the first hour being the lowest, usually only about 500, reflecting the time it takes me to get settled into the writing mindset.”

(The only thing I wonder about is how well this concept works when it comes to research. For example, if you’re writing historical fiction or nonfiction and have to do interviews, read primary sources, etc., I’m sure that would take a lot longer…but come to think of it, that’s probably a separate concern. When it comes to the drafting itself, the actual writing is probably helped by Aaron’s tips)

Of course, after those 12 days, Aaron still had to edit her book, but at least she did write the book in 12 days, and it was later sold and published as the first book in an action-romance-sci-fi trilogy.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: When I started writing The Spirit War (The Legend of Eli Monpress novel #4), I had a bit of a problem.

Closing: Even if you don’t have the free time to get to 10K a day, doubling your daily word count still feels like flying. It’s the most fun you can have on a page, guaranteed.

OTHER COMMENTS

• The important thing to remember is that Aaron is a professional writer who can spend 7 hours a day writing. Very few have this luxury (yet), but I have already put some of her ideas into practice, and based on the results, I’m fairly certain that if I did the same as her, I could possibly write an entire book in a few weeks. Maybe not 12 days, but close.
• There IS, however, a reason not to try to write a book in 12 days. For example, I spend a lot more than 3 days outlining a story, because I’ve found that if I give my mind some time to gnaw on the story, I can come up with better ideas over time than if I compressed all the brainstorming into a few days.
• Granted, I’m not a professional published author, and don’t have the time pressures she does, which is a kind of luxury in itself, and perhaps if I did I might actually find that there are benefits to planning a story in 3 days. But currently it sounds like more trouble than it’s worth 😉

If Writing Feels Like Pulling Teeth, You’re Doing it Wrong

In This Chapter

• The real reason why Aaron (and perhaps you) have “writer’s block” days

Now, Aaron addresses writer’s block.

Aaron herself faced times when she couldn’t bring herself to write, and ended up wasting hours feeling guilty about it.

“Sometimes…I wondered if I was even in the right profession, because while I loved having written, I didn’t actually seem to like writing, and that terrified me.”

And then she had a “paradigm shove.”

She realized that the times when she didn’t feel like writing was because there was something wrong with her book.

“At it’s core, writing is about entertainment. Good entertainment is interesting and engrossing at every stage. You’re creating something you want others to enjoy, but if you aren’t enjoying yourself while making it…Well, you can see the disconnect.”

(I would add to this — GREAT entertainment leaves you better than it found you. It grabs your attention and makes you think, changes your mind for good. The tricky thing is, though, that writers who try too hard to force readers’ minds to change in some specific way, tend to be heavy handed and NOT entertaining. Better to fill your own mind with the kinds of ideas that are — as objectively as possible — beneficial, and then let it come out, rather than try to force it)

Aaron found this idea relieving. She’d thought she was just “undisciplined” but realized that “maybe the reason I didn’t want to write was because I was writing something I didn’t like.”

(So true. The older I get the more I realize how much time is limited. If you’ve only got so much time to write — specifically, to write your own ideas, why use it writing something you dislike? It’s not like you have a boss paying you to write a certain way. If you did, that’s a different story. But if you’re a NOVELIST, especially, might as well write what really makes you light up)

Aaron started seeing her “bad writing days” as red flags. Instead of blaming herself for them, she started asking herself questions like “Why don’t you want to write? What’s wrong?”

And she found that although the answers were “never pleasant” (for example, realizing she messed up something and has to rewrite “a scene, or a chapter, or half a book), it helped her to make progress and get her story back on track.

Aaron’s advice?

“If you are not enjoying your writing, you’re doing it wrong.”

“If your goal is to become a faster writer, the single most efficient change you can make isn’t actually upping your daily word count, but eliminating the days where you are not writing.”

(This is a really interesting point. It makes me think of the idea of “negative space” in art. When you’re learning to draw, you want to learn not only to see the objects that you are trying to draw, but the space in between. Those can be a good reference point for understanding what you’re seeing, and translating that onto the page.

(Actually, a lot of problems can be approached this way. If trying to “achieve A” is not working, think about trying to “minimize or eliminate Anti-A, or B?” Like if you want to lose weight, and you’re having trouble trying to restrict calories, how about looking at the issue from another end and INCREASING exercise? And so on.)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: As much fun as life can be on 10K a day, I’d like to pause here, before we get into the nitty-gritties of plot and so forth, and spend a moment with that most dreaded writing subject of all: not writing.

Closing: Let your daily writing be a joy instead of a chore, and everything else becomes easy.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Note: Technically, this isn’t exactly a second chapter, but in the e-book version of this book that I’m using, the Table of Contents lists this as a separate unnumbered “chapter,” so I’m going with it.

PART II. Staying at 10K a Day

Chapter 1. How I Plot a Novel in 5 Easy Steps

In This Chapter

• One pro writer’s method for taking a novel idea from zero to draft-ready

For Aaron, planning a novel takes a few days to weeks, in stages.

She begins with one great idea, or several “simmering ideas suddenly coming together” or a character “finally finding a home” and jots them down in her Idea Bucket.

“The vast majority of these half-baked ideas never become full novels. My computer is littered with the husks of cast-off stories.”

(For some reason, Aaron is bringing up a lot of Sanderson mental comparisons for me. For example, this reminds me of the Writing Excuses podcast episode on boneyards — basically, a place where writers throw half-baked ideas)

This “idea pool” is “a vital part of being a novelist…the primordial ooze from which all books emerge,” as Aaron says. So here are her steps:

• Step 0: Decide what book to write
• Step 1: Get Down What You Already Know
• Step 2: The Basics
• Step 3: Filling in the Holes
• Step 4: Building a Firm Foundation
• Step 5: Start Writing!

Step 0: Decide what book to write

Here, 4 signs Aaron looks for are:

1. Can you not stop thinking about it? (Ie. “Your brain will simply not shut up”)
2. Does it write itself? (You don’t even really try and scenes come to you)
3. Can you see the finished product? (You can see the cover, where it’d be in the bookstore, even the reviews)
4. Can you easily explain why others would want to read it? (Remember, time is money. Your book better be worth reading, and you better believe in it yourself!)

Note that just because you CAN write a story doesn’t necessarily mean you SHOULD. You might not have enough interest in it to make it shine, for example. Writing takes time and you don’t want to waste time on a story that bores you.

As Aaron reminds you “you can’t afford to work for free.” So go ahead and abandon ideas that don’t work.

Step 1: Get Down What You Already Know

Jot down the rough ideas that excite you about your story. Sketch out your world, characters, and plot — just the basic framework so you can see what you have, and what you’re still missing.

Here, Aaron gives a shoutout to Scrivener, which is a software she uses for writing and plotting and organizing her stories.

(Something I noticed: Here, Aaron includes the link to the Scrivener site, and it’s not an affiliate link. So she’s probably just including it here just to be helpful to the reader and because she truly finds the software useful.

(Personally, I’ve tried it a little myself but prefer using something simple — a combination of Obsidian and Google docs. It’s not the most efficient, but it works for me.)

Step 2: The Basics

Figure out the “bare bones” of your story — character, plot, setting.

• Characters: Who are your main characters, antagonists, and power players (non-primary characters who are very important, like Dumbledore to Harry Potter). Jot down basics like name, motivation, “general sense as a character.” Not physical descriptions or histories yet. Just how they relate to the plot.
• Plot: The end, then the beginning, in that order. Then figure out your twists, climaxes, existing scenes.
  Figure out if you’re writing a standalone or series. If you’re writing a series, make sure the end of this book contributes to the larger plot. If it’s a standalone, avoid too many story threads because it will make it hard to resolve it all in time.
  Also figure out your primary genre. Is it adventure with romance, or romance with adventure, for example? That will determine your voice/tone.
• Setting: Know your magic system if you have one, the basic political system, “eneral feel of the places where the action will be happening.” For example: culture, technology level, who has power and why, and how the world got into this current state?

For “Plot,” Aaron states “figuring out the end of a book is my number one priority.”

(The older I get, the more I agree with this. There is a place for wandering, for pantsing things and seeing what happens, but when it comes to something like writing a satisfying story, you want to know what the ending is so you can take the reader there without wasting their time or disappointing them.)

Step 3: Filling in the Holes

Now it’s time for the “nitty-gritty of making everything work together.”

Aaron starts with the plot, for which she already has the beginning and end, and she looks at her world and character motivations and asks “what happens next” until she gets stuck.

And she always gets stuck. Which is the point at which she jumps “further down the line, either straight to the ending…or to one of the big scenes I was excited about back in step 2,” and then asks herself “How did this happen?” and work backwards from there.

But what if you get really, REALLY stuck?

Aaron says:

“There’s no such thing as an unfixable plot. Often, you don’t even have to figure out a clever solution, you just need to discover why something isn’t working and the solution will simply appear.”

What does that mean, exactly?

Aaron refers readers back to Part I of the book and Side One of her triangle: “knowledge is the grease that makes books go.”

If a plot isn’t working, “it’s almost always because there’s something I don’t know about the characters or the world or why this event is actually happening.”

(Now THIS reminds me of Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, in which she talks about how the past informs the present. If you get stuck, look into the story or character’s history.

(As Faulkner was known to have said: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” And this is one of the reasons why stories are so compelling to us humans. We are also trying to make sense of our own lives and memories, and the past — what we’ve been through, informs our narratives, massively)

So if you get really stuck, you can do what Aaron does and stop working on the plot for a while to work on other things, like the history of your world or characters.

“And if that still isn’t enough…I set down in ludicrous detail what’s going on in the world at the moment the plot is stuck.”

(This is another reason why Aaron is able to write so fast when she gets to the drafting stage. By that point, she already knows EXACTLY what’s going to happen in her story, to “ludicrous detail” in certain places.”)

Aaron focuses particularly on exactly what her villains are doing, and that by itself is often enough to get her back on track or even help her come up with something better than her old plot.

(This was actually really good advice I got from a writing group of mine while I was working on a project, that helped me with my plotting/writing. It makes sense, because villains tend to be the most active in most stories, even more than heroes.

(There’s are several quotes that explain why this is the case. For example: “Villains are much more pro-active than heroes. Heroes, by their nature, are purely reactionary forces. The villain is, in all ways, an agent of change. A catalyst.” — Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater)

On the other hand, Aaron warns, “there is such a thing as knowing too much.”

She relates her early writing years, when she tried to write a “sweeping epic fantasy” and caught world-builder’s disease, churning out elaborate details that had nothing to do with her story.

The point is, be careful not to take things too far.

Step 4: Building a Firm Foundation

How do you know when you’re ready for step 4? Aaron says, “when I can write out my whole plot, start to finish, with no blanks or skipped scenes.”

By this point, she should have developed detailed character sheets and notes on settings, a solid voice and a POV chosen (first or third, one or more viewpoint characters).

So for step 4, Aaron will:

1. Make a timeline: Not just for events of the novel, but important historical events that take place before the story, relative ages of all characters, and also “how long everyone’s known everyone else.”
   “Yes, it’s annoying and nitpicky, but time lines have saved my bacon many, many times over now, and I very, very much recommend making one. Trust me, you are not nearly as good at keeping track of things in your head as you think you are.”
2. Draw a map: This is more relevant if you have a world to build. (Although I suppose it doesn’t hurt if you’re doing nonfiction or historical too)
3. Write out who knows what, when: A quick list of the “flow of important information” to make sure you don’t have the main characters “making a decision using information they wouldn’t actually know yet.” This list is to be used as a “final double check” on plot.
4. Memorize character particulars: names, physical descriptions, and ages must be known by heart. Also “important places, relative distances, organizations, whatever else” you need to “avoid stupid mix-ups.”
5. Write out a scene list: Take your plot, break it down into scenes, then group scenes into chapters. Consider where to do chapter breaks to increase dramatic tension.
6. Word count estimation: Based on how many chapters and scenes, you can figure out how long word counts will probably be. Ideally between 80–100K, though fantasy can run to 120K.
7. Do a boredom check: Think through your plot (Aaron does it as if viewing a mental movie) and look for “slow spots, things that don’t make sense, or anywhere that seems to lag.” Basically, look at the story as a READER, not a writer, to see if anything bores you. You want to be excited about everything you write, after all.

(For some of my writer friends, who are also gamers and artists, mapping and timeline-making is probably the most fun part of the process for them. But I have to admit, I’m not huge into timelines and maps. Especially maps. Maybe I need to study a bit more geography/cartography and history.

(But I gotta admit Aaron has a point. While plotting my last two stories, I realized that at the very least a timeline and list of relative ages for the characters was SUPER helpful…still working on the map…)

Aaron warns that even with all this planning, your story will likely “change dramatically as you write.”

This is normal, and “part of being a successful plotter is knowing when to let go of your plans and just roll with things.” Because “no one has all their good ideas at once, so don’t be afraid to let go and just write.”

(Exactly what I was mentioning above).

Comments & Analysis

Opening: One of the most common questions in my email box is “How you do plot your novels?” [sic]

Closing: Writing is not a performance art, so don’t be afraid to let everything be a total broken mess for a while, if that’s what it takes to get your story right.

OTHER COMMENTS

• I like how Aaron lays out her entire process step by step, and explains each step. It’s clear, straightforward, easy to follow, and useful!

Chapter 2. Characters Who Write Their Own Stories

In This Chapter

• How to create characters that work

In this chapter, Aaron talks about why she doesn’t have a stage for developing her characters. That’s because she has the “grow up along with the world and the story as I put together the plot” so that she doesn’t create characters only to have to “wedge them into the plot” or “build the plot around them.”

The idea is for all of the factors — character, world, plot — work together organically.

“Characters are more than actors. In a good story, they are the engines, whose desires push the plot forward…a character’s story comes from their choices.”

In other words, “character agency” is vital. Even if the characters are thrown into a story (like Harry Potter who had wizardhood unexpectedly thrust on him), they have to “eventually get up front and start pulling or they’ll never be anything more than a point of view riding through their own book.”

(This is an interesting point, and for the most part, I agree. Although I’m not sure this is always the case. Take, for example, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. Scout and Nick — even Gatsby himself — don’t really DO all that much. They’re more like windows through whom we see the world they live in, or the real story going on in the background/adults’ lives)

Still. Aaron’s point is that characters “with proper agency” will “write their own stories.”

So when you’re ready to create a character, what to do?

Aaron recommends a basic Character Sheet including:

• Name
• Age
• Physical description
• Likes
• Dislikes
• Primary desire, aka “more than anything, I want…”

The first three items are “strictly for reference.” The last three are the ones that “determine who the character is.” You can tell a lot about a character’s personality from likes/dislikes (or hates), and as for the sixth thing? “Every character in a book, even the most minor, needs a motivation.”

You can do a simple want like fame, freedom, not dying, or something more complex.

Aaron usually nails down these basics for her most important characters and then wraps up plotting step 3 because “plot and character development should be so tightly intertwined that they can’t be separated.”

It’s like braiding. You want to end up with “a cast of agency-filled characters whose understandable and natural decisions drive your plot toward a thrilling and satisfying conclusion, with little to no meddling required from your end.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: Back in the chapter on plotting, you probably noticed that I don’t have a specific stage where I created my characters in detail. That wasn’t an oversight.

Closing: All you have to do is be there to write it down.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This chapter is actually called Chapter 2, although we are about halfway through the book, at this point, interestingly enough. Granted, this book was originally written as a series of blog posts, so I suppose that makes sense.

Chapter 3. The Story Architect

In This Chapter

• Why inspiration isn’t what you think it is.

Aaron explains why she hates the “tortured genius stereotype” — it makes you feel powerless. She disagrees with the idea that inspiration just “comes to you” or that some people are born with the “genius to write good books” or that you have to be “unhappy or emotionally compromised” to “make art.”

On the contrary, she observes she’s more productive when “happy, sober, and stable.”

Writing should be active, not passive. Aaron doesn’t wait for stories to come to her, like a “temperamental artist enslaved to the whims of her muse.”

Instead, she’s shifted from “whimsical artist to practical architect.”

And here, Aaron talks about the basic story structure she uses — it’s just the basic Three-Act structure:

1. Act I: put your characters in a tree.
2. Act II: light the tree on fire.
3. Act III: get characters out of tree.

Act I is your intro, Act II should be the longest and “best part of the story.” So don’t linger in setup with Act I. And of course Act III is the payoff.

This includes the denouement, or resolution, which is for “tension relief.” The tension from the climax has to be “released for a reader to feel satisfied that the book has, in fact, ended.”

(This is a really good point and reminds me of how certain books I’ve read end pretty much right on the climax and how unsatisfying that is not to have a bit of an epilogue to see where the characters land, how they’re faring after the events of the story have changed them, and so on)

The three-act structure doesn’t just exist over the course of an entire novel or story, however. Aaron says that you can see this rising action, climax, release repeating itself, fractal-like, on the chapter and even paragraph level…as well as on a series level.

(Not sure about paragraph level, but now I’m going to be keeping my eye out for this in future novels analyzed).

Why is any of this related to writing fast? (Remember, that’s the title and main theme of this book, after all)

Well, since the most important part of the “writing triangle” is “knowledge,” you need to “understand your story choices on a deeper level…you need to know why it works and how it works if you ever want to make it work for you.”

In other words, you have to learn the physics of storytelling, just like an architect learns physics to build structurally sound buildings regularly.

“Constantly learning new ways to be better is part of the enjoyment of mastering a skill.”

(No arguments there!)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: One of the things I’ve always disliked about telling people I’m an author is the amount of cultural baggage that comes with the name.

Closing: I’m still learning — hopefully, I always will be — but I get faster and better every day, and that is an incredible feeling.

OTHER COMMENTS

• My long-time favorite quote about writing comes from Jack London: “You don’t wait for inspiration. You go after it with a club.”
• Even though I haven’t always followed London’s advice, something about that line has always rung true for me, from the first time I heard it. And it appears Aaron agrees.

Chapter 4. The Two Bird Minimum

In This Chapter

• 3 things that a scene needs to do
• 1 question to help you make the most of each scene

Here’s how Aaron defines a scene: by thinking about what it needs to do, namely three things…

1. Advance the story
2. Reveal new info
3. Pull the reader forward

And that’s it. Because every writer has his or her own idea of what a scene is, and Aaron wants to avoid hard-and-fast RULES, because sometimes you could even have a one-line scene.

The thing is, though, that since scenes function as steps toward the ending of your book, you need to make each one count. Because depending on the length of your scene (on average, 2–2.5K, Aaron assumes), you’ve only got 40–50 scenes “before you’re out of room.”

And if your plot is complicated, that’s not a whole lot of steps to work with.

So each scene has to do more. Which is why Aaron added a fourth question to her list of 3 things that a scene needs to do:

4. What else can this scene do?

Yes, this book is about increasing your word count, but you don’t want to do that at the expense of your story. Your goal is to put out tell a good story “as efficiently as possible.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: Now that we’ve talked about setup and characters and structure, it’s time to move on to the actual writing part of things.

Closing: Enjoy it, and never be afraid to do whatever it takes to make your novel as good as it possibly can be.

OTHER COMMENTS

• I really like the practicality of the three steps and one question, although I think it would have been nice if Aaron expanded this chapter and gave one or two examples of how scenes from her own book or from iconic novels address her three requirements and one question.

Chapter 5. Editing for People Who Hate Editing

In This Chapter

• How to polish your story once its written
• Tools you need to make to edit your story

Aaron begins this chapter by revealing how much she used to hate editing, dreading it “like a cat dreads a bath.”

But after publishing 13 books, and developing her new plotting process, she finds editing her favorite part of the process now.

“Editing is writing. If you like writing, you like editing.”

Editing, Aaron says, is a skill and you can practice and improve at it. And here’s how she does it:

1. Change the way you think about editing
2. Use editing tools
3. Actually edit
4. Activate your reader brain

Basically,

Change the way you think about editing

The “final destination” of editing is “reader experience.”

In editing, you are “getting ready to put on a production, to invite a reader into your world.”

Because you have to remember that your book is like a house that you built, but “once you invite people inside, it’s no longer yours alone.”

(Another Brandon Sanderson reference incoming. Ready? Here’s another tip I learned from one of his writing videos years ago — can’t remember which one specifically anymore — where he said that a story in part belongs to the reader, not just the writer, because stories don’t come to life until they are made a live in the mind of the reader).

Your invented world has to make sense to others, and not just make sense, but “delight and surprise and, most importantly, capture them.”

In editing, Aaron says, you’re not just asking “what happens next” but also “how can I prepare the reader for what happens next?” / “How can I make them love it?”

“It is your job to make sure your story decisions and world work not just within the context of the novel, but within the mind of the reader. Your job [is] to make sure your characters are engrossing, not just effective for moving your plot forward.”

(This is another really interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed while re-reading novels to analyze them from a writer’s perspective. Everything happens on two levels. In order to work well, an event or element in a story has to 1) make sense according to the in-world logic of the story, and also 2) serve some story-related purpose from a meta-perspective. If you don’t have both, that event / element won’t work so well)

Use editing tools

Aaron tends to like to edit her books write after she’s written them, although she acknowledges other writers like to wait and take some time. In the end, it’s up to you.

When you do get around to editing, though, you will need these tools:

• Your scene map: The quick jot down of “what happens in the book broken up by scene and chapter.” Basically, this is what you made during the plotting stage. At this point, you want to make a new scene map reflecting what REALLY happens in your story.
  Aaron likes to print out her scene map and use different colors to delineate plot lines (main plot, love story, secondary plot, etc).
  This is also a good time to check that your chapters are roughly the same length, if you want.
• Your time line: Similar to the above, you also did this during the plotting phase. Now you want to redo your timeline to “reflect what was actually written,” and also write in what your characters were doing when they were “not present for an event.”
• Your to-do list: Make a list of things that have to be addressed. Color code them so you have the most difficult things up front

“If a scene map is a visual guide to your book, a time line is a fault-finding device for your plot” because it can show you “information flow problems” (when characters are acting on info they shouldn’t have known yet, etc), and also “where the action is too loose or too tight.”

For example, Aaron often notices that her villains “spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing, which is dumb. Characters with enough motivation to be antagonists do not sit on their hands!”

(This is a really good point. Because while the author is focused on what the main character is doing, the villain is always behind the scenes working on something else, too, and we can’t forget that. Authors always have to know where their characters are at all times and what they’re doing)

Actually edit

Once you have your tools in hand, edit “from biggest problem to smallest, not from first page to last.”

In fact, Aaron says, the beginning of the book is the WORST place to start because fixing problems often has ripple effects, so the bigger problems you solve the bigger ripples there will be. It doesn’t make sense to try to solve issues chronologically when the ripples will affect many things upstream AND downstream…perhaps, you never know, after all)

And THIS is why you need a scene map and timeline. So you can jump around in your story fixing problems and also figure out at a glance every place in the story that is affected.

Using these tools and this method has allowed Aaron to feel like “the edit no longer rules me, it’s no longer overwhelming or stressful…”

“I’m free to enjoy the editing process, and as a result, I’ve gotten a lot better at it.”

(This is a general principle — usually we humans get better at things we genuinely like and are intrinsically motivated to do)

Next, Aaron says she does a read-through, time for a line edit to clean up the last few problems.

Activate your reader brain

And for the final test, Aaron goes through the story as if she was a reader. For this, she puts her book on her kindle and tries to read her story as a story, not a project.

Another note — Aaron doesn’t believe in using beta readers until post-editing. It’s more efficient to use beta readers for “problems you can’t find on your own” or else you’re wasting everyone’s time.

(I don’t necessarily agree with this, fully, although I think it depends on her definition of beta reader…)

One warning — don’t get caught up in editing so much that you never finish your manuscript. At some point you have to say it’s enough.

Oh, and a few tips to leave with writers:

1. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
2. Trust your instincts. (If you hate a scene and don’t know why, don’t ignore that feeling)
3. No problem is unfixable.

“You can change anything, which means there is no corner you can paint yourself into that you cannot get out of…you might not get the right solution on the first try, but it will come.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: Now that we’ve plotted our novel and (hopefully) written it at double time with only a few minor false trails, it’s time to enter the dark and terrifying forest that lurks at the end of all writing journeys. I’m talking, of course, about editing.

Closing: You might need to cut off someone’s arm to get there, but you will always reach “The End” if you are willing to open your mind, embrace your limited divinity, and think beyond the plot.

OTHER COMMENTS

• To be honest, I haven’t really gone through the full editing process myself, so I can only assess this chapter theoretically. That said, it sounds pretty solid, especially the idea of using a timeline and scene map as your navigator through the story.

Chapter 6. “What Advice Do You Have for New Writers?”

In This Chapter

• How Aaron answers the most-commonly-asked question during Q&As

Aaron’s favorite writing advice for new writers is:

“There are no writing police”

In other words “nothing is off limits unless you do it badly.” Just tell your story the way it wants to be told.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: As a professional writer who also writes about writing, I do a lot of interviews.

Closing: There are no writing police. This is your story, no one else’s. Tell it like you want to.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This chapter is so short I am not sure it even should exactly be a chapter all on its own (in general, the formatting of this book is a tad confusing). However, it’s interesting that she includes this advice here, at the end of the book.
• I agree that there may not be universal “rules” but there ARE principles that make certain stories objectively better than others. And those are the things you want to internalize so you can make your own personal writing rules for your own sake if you want, and others can do the same.

And Then We Came to the End

In This Chapter

• How to find Aaron’s work or get in contact

This chapter-that-is-probably-not-exactly-a-chapter is where Aaron includes all of her contact information.

(This is interesting to see, because more and more people are aware of and using their books as marketing tools, and the key to that is including websites, links, social media handles, and the like)

Aaron includes her website, twitter handle, blog, and mailing list.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: And with that rant about Internet forums out of the way, we have come to the end of the book.

Closing: Thank you for reading, and good luck with everything you do.

OTHER COMMENTS

• General wisdom states that it’s better to have fewer links for people to click, and the most important link here is, I would say, his mailing list. That’s the only platform that other people can’t really take from you, at least not now.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Why I Rated This Book 5 Stars

I use this criteria to rate every book (out of 6 points per category):

Star ratings:
1 star = Basically, trash. Or worse.
2 stars = Only worth it if you really like the topic.
3 stars = Average.
4 stars = Quite Good.
5 stars = Worth re-reading more than once.
6 stars = Life-changing.

3. Craft ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍

Is this work is well-written, and are the ideas clearly and skillfully presented?

Overall, the book is written like several blog posts sewn together, which makes sense, because that is what it is.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, though.

As a writer, you always want the format to match the content, and the content in this case isn’t something that requires deep philosophical thinking, so personally I don’t mind the blog-post style of the book at all.

It might not be the absolute most “tight” nonfiction craft how-to writing there is out there, but it does its job effectively and efficiently, and considering the value of the information conveyed, I’m grateful enough the author didn’t add fluff just to make it fancier.

That said, the formatting has issues, for example, when she gives an example of the spreadsheet she used to track her writing hours, it ended up being lists of numbers with backslashes in between, rather than an actual table.

But then again, this book was published (self-published, I believe) years ago, and back then it might have been hard to replicate a full-on table very well without professional help.

The book also hasn’t been perfectly copyedited. There are a few areas where that is noticeable, although a minor issues. Aaron makes up for that by providing super helpful information in a non-flowery, useful and straightforward way.

The organization of the book is interesting as well. For this analysis, I added part and chapter numbers/titles because it helped me, but they don’t exist in the original book.

That said, the cover is interesting. It has a good hook for the subtitle. The overall design seems a bit simple, but that actually works for this type of book, as does the yellow text on red. I wonder if the author had split tested or allowed her audience to vote on covers?

2. Concept 📖📖📖📖📖

Is this an interesting concept, well-executed? (Are implicit and explicit promises paid off?)

LMA/LDB: This is a DOING book.

This book is hands-on about the craft of writing. There are a few background/philosophical concepts, but relatively little compared to the main task of giving hearty, practical advice that really works.

And that’s the main issue.

The important thing is that Aaron delivers on her promise, without any fluff.

By the time you finish this book, you WILL have learned 3 powerful methods for boosting your word count significantly (if you follow them), plus more useful bonus material on plotting and drafting and editing your novel.

So does the book overall fulfill its promises (implied or explicit)? I would say yes.

1. Core ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Are the worldview, themes, and arguments of this work true, edifying, and worth learning?

Aaron’s book on writing embodies my favorite writing quote, Jack London’s “don’t wait for inspiration. Go after it with a stick,” and I’m here for it.

The underlying message or worldview that this book espouses is that anyone can write, and write a lot, and write well, if they want to and they spend some time learning and honing their craft.

No one is excluded from this club of writers if they want to be a part of it. And no one (or at least very few) are born with any real natural talent in writing. For the most part, everyone has to work for it, and that evens out the playing field.

LED Assessment

How did this book Lighten, Enlighten, or Delight the reader (that would be moi, in this case, since I’m writing this review ^^)?

Writing Tips & Practical Application

Because learning doesn’t happen until you change something you do…

• Track your writing habit: Use a spreadsheet or journal to track when, how, how much you write for the next couple months. Then look back for patterns to when you are most productive.
• Make a scene list: Tell yourself your own story, and then go through, fill in the holes, and turn it into a scene list and timeline like Aaron describes.

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