How to write faster
Should you write faster?
For most writers, the answer is a resounding “duh.”
But it’s not always that simple, because speed is almost always paid for in quality. So how do some writers draft ridiculously fast and still turn out good books?
They manage the quality loss on the way. A very tight outline, so the plot stays effective even when nobody’s stopping to check it. Style guidelines, so the line edits keep the voice consistent even when the draft was rushed. The speed doesn’t come free. They’ve just decided in advance where the cost goes.
If you’re newer, you might still be learning the craft, and that’s worth more than words per hour right now. Speed will come later, and it’ll come easier.
So how do you know you’re ready?
- Most of your time goes into drafting, and editing is fairly mechanical.
- You’re not learning a ton about the craft every day anymore.
- You know what your story and your voice should be, or your process is tight enough that you can predict how much you’ll have to edit or rewrite.
If that sounds like you, read on.
OK, but I want to. So how?
Let’s look at brains!
No, seriously. Gloria Mark, who studies attention at UC Irvine, followed office workers through their day and found that once they were pulled off a task, it took them over twenty minutes on average to get back to it. And even once you’re back, you’re not all the way back: the psychologist Sophie Leroy calls it attention residue. Part of your head is still on the thing you just left.
Writing is the same. Every time you leave the scene, you pay to get back in. So the first rule of writing faster is: stop leaving the scene.
Here’s what usually pulls you out:
- Small edits. Going back to fix a sentence three paragraphs up.
- Research. Just checking how long it takes to ride a horse from Paris to Lyon.
- Plotting on the fly. Stopping in the middle of a scene to figure out what happens next.
- Your phone.
- A notification on your computer.
Each has a fix.
Edit after you’re done drafting, not during. Leave yourself a note in
brackets and keep going: [CHECK HORSE SPEED]. Same for research. (And if
the draft that comes out the other end is far longer than you meant, here’s
what to do with a 500k-word manuscript.)
Plot before you draft, or after if you’re a pantser, but not in the middle of a sentence. If you’re in the middle of a book and suddenly don’t know where the plot goes, step away from the computer. Have a drink, plot, then come back. Thinking on your feet gets you a worse plot, and you lose the time to task switching anyway.
Put the phone in another room, turn off notifications, and if the screen itself is the distraction, write on paper. With Ghostkey you can photograph the page and it comes back as text, straight into your chapter. A notebook has no notifications.
Speed of thought vs. speed of hands
The second bottleneck is getting the words out of your head. If you think faster than you type, your hands are the limit.
- Not a fast typist? Try dictation. Most people speak three or four times faster than they type. It feels strange for a week, then it doesn’t. Ghostkey’s dictation writes straight into your chapter.
- Don’t want to dictate? Learn to touch type. It’s a boring few weeks of practice, and then it pays off for the rest of your life.
- Skip the mechanics. Don’t bother with capital letters or commas in the first draft. Let a proofreading pass put them back. Apparition’s Proofread fixes that kind of thing without touching your words.
Consistency beats speed
Here’s the thing about speed, though: consistency matters more. Three days at half speed is still more words than one amazing day.
So make the barrier to writing super, super low. If you like scribbling in the morning over coffee, or on the train to work, that’s totally valid. Writing on your phone is slower than writing on your laptop. Writing on your phone every day is faster than writing on your laptop on weekends.
And consistency is also about what happens when you get stuck, and how fast you get unstuck. Here are a few tips if you’re struggling with that particular problem: what to do when you’re stuck.
Writing faster is about protecting your focus, getting your hands out of the way, and showing up. If you want a place to draft where your notebook, your voice and your keyboard all end up in the same chapter, Ghostkey is free to start.