How to get AI writing to sound like you

--> and why you shouldn't do what "experts" normally advise

A quick caveat before we start: I’m not saying you should suddenly replace yourself and get AI to do all your writing for you. I’ll be coming back to the topic of when it’s best to use AI later.

But even if you’re just using AI to come up with a first draft or helpful ideas, it makes things a lot easier and massively reduces editing time if it starts out sounding a bit like you.

I’m going to begin by telling you what not to do - because this is advice you’ll hear a lot and it just doesn’t work. For example…

The idea being that in future you prompt your AI to write in whatever tone of voice it told you your writing had.

The problem with that is it’s like taking an HD image, shrinking it to a few pixels wide, then blowing up that tiny image back to full size and expecting it to look anything like the original.

What you get is a pixelated mess. When you shrink down the image you lose all the depth and detail.

It’s the same with your writing. If it tells you your writing is engaging, punchy and humourous you might nod and agree. But a dozen or so descriptors like that don’t allow it to reproduce your writing style.

Instead what you’re going to do is feed it a full sample of your writing every time. You’re going to ask it to analyse that writing - but you’re going to get it to base what it writes on the full sample - not on the condensed analysis.

Here’s the prompt I use with Claude:

I'd like you to analyse my writing style in detail. I'll provide several samples of newsletters I have recently written. Please examine these carefully and identify key characteristics of my writing, including: 1. Tone and voice 2. Sentence structure and length 3. Vocabulary choices 4. Use of rhetorical devices 5. Paragraph organisation 6. Common themes or topics 7. Any unique quirks or patterns. After your analysis, please summarise the key elements of my writing style and provide examples from the text. Don't write anything yet - I will tell you what to write after you've done the analysis.

If I’m analysing emails/newsletters I’ll also add:

Also analyse the email subject lines and pre-headers and give me a summary of them as I would like you to use similar ones for any newsletters you write for me.

Then when it comes to writing the first draft I’ll ask it:

Please write a [type of email] style email newsletter using this information and in my writing style as you analysed earlier based on the samples I provided.

Write at a level suitable for consultants, coaches and trainers. Use my style and ensure you use British English with British Spelling (ie “behaviour” not “behavior”, “colour”, not “color”, “centre” not “center”, “organise” not organize”). Avoid hyperbolic phrases like “game-changing” and “transformative”.

Write clearly and informally at Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 10-12, Flesch Reading Ease:50-60. Gunning Fog Index: 12-14. SMOG Index: 13-15.

All of these prompts are done in the same conversation with your AI (Claude in my case) so that it remembers the earlier bits of the conversation. In particular it has access to the full set of samples to base its writing on - not just a handful of descriptors.

Some notes…

The sample I give it has 15 of my most recent newsletters that I feel are typical of my writing style. 15 is enough for it to pick out patterns, but not so many that I fill up its working memory making it unable to analyse or write much more.

By asking it to look at tone and voice, sentence structure and length etc I’m giving it a framework to pick out the key elements that define my writing.

Normally you wouldn’t actually ask for a summary but it’s nice to get one the first time. It’s usually pretty complementary too :)

When it comes to writing “using this information” is the answers I’ve just provided to base the content on based on this prompting.

In addition to writing like me, I ask it to write at a level suitable for my audience, using British English (and I spell out what that means) and I give various readability index guides which are suitable for my audience.

And the results?

Typically I’ll get something that’s between 50%-90% usable as is.

It might just be the samples I gave it, but it often feels like it’s 110% me - a bit too quirky. A few too many asides.

So it does need editing.

But using AI for the first draft saves me 30 minutes+ per email. And I’m a very fast, experienced writer.

If you’ve written less than the thousands of emails I’ve written, it could save you hours. Or more importantly - get you to write and send an email when previously you might have got stuck and never got to pressing send.

Next time I’ll show you how I edit the draft to turn an AI draft into my own writing. And we’ll have some fun with it :)

- Ian