There's a specific fear that runs through the writing community about AI, and it's not the one people talk about publicly.
The public conversation is about jobs and authenticity. The private fear is more personal: what if I use this and my writing starts to sound like everyone else's?
That fear is legitimate. Unconstrained, most AI writing has a texture to it — a certain rhythm, a default vocabulary, a way of structuring sentences that announces its origins. You've read it. You know it when you see it.
But that's a prompting problem, not an AI problem. The model isn't locked into that style. It defaulted to it because nobody told it to do otherwise. Tell it to do otherwise, and things get a lot more interesting.
Why Writers Get Bad Results from AI
Before talking about solutions, it's worth being honest about the failure mode.
Most writers open ChatGPT or Claude, type "write me a blog post about X in my style," and get back something that reads like a press release. They conclude AI is useless for their kind of work, which is the wrong conclusion.
The problem is "in my style" is one of the most useless instructions you can give a model. It can't infer your style from nothing. Style is specific — it lives in sentence length, word choice, punctuation habits, the way you open paragraphs, what you cut versus what you keep, how much you trust the reader. "In my style" covers none of that.
The fix is teaching it your style explicitly. Which takes some effort upfront but pays off massively.
Step 1: Write a Style Document
Before you can prompt for your voice, you need to be able to describe it. This is harder than it sounds — most writers have never articulated their own style explicitly because they've never needed to.
Here's a framework for thinking it through:
Sentence rhythm: Do you write long sentences with dependent clauses, or short punchy ones? Both? How do you mix them?
Vocabulary register: Formal or casual? Do you use slang? Technical terms? Contractions?
Structural habits: Do you open with a hook? A scene? A statement? How long are your paragraphs?
What you don't do: This is often more useful than what you do. Do you hate adverbs? Do you never use passive voice? Do you avoid metaphors?
Your "tics": Every writer has them — phrases they overuse, punctuation quirks, ways of transitioning that feel distinctly theirs.
Write a page on this. It doesn't need to be polished. It's a reference document, not an essay.
Step 2: Give the Model Samples
The best way to teach a model your style is to show it examples of your actual writing. Three to five samples — ideally from different pieces so it can pick up the common threads — is usually enough.
The prompt structure looks something like this:
I'm a writer and I want you to help me write in my voice.
Here's my style, as I understand it:
[paste your style document — even rough notes work]
Here are three samples of my writing:
Sample 1 (title/context):
[paste]
Sample 2 (title/context):
[paste]
Sample 3 (title/context):
[paste]
Based on these samples, describe what you think defines my writing style. Then I'll give you a task.
That last sentence — asking the model to reflect back what it observed — is important. It tells you what it picked up (and what it missed), and you can correct its understanding before it writes anything.
You might get back something like: "Your writing is characterized by short declarative sentences, conversational asides, and a tendency to open sections with a counterintuitive claim before explaining it." Now you can say "Yes, exactly" or "Close, but you missed that I almost never use metaphors" and refine from there.
Step 3: Give It a Writing Task With Tight Constraints
Once the model understands your style, give it work — but don't just say "write me an essay." Give it the raw material and let it shape the form.
Here's a template I've found effective:
Write a [type of piece — blog post, essay, newsletter, etc.] about [topic].
Angle: [your specific take — not just the topic but what you want to argue or explore]
Audience: [who reads your work]
Length: [approximate word count]
Structure: [how you want it to flow, if you have a preference]
Use the style we established above. Key reminders:
- [2–3 of your most important style rules]
Here's a rough outline / these are the main points I want to hit:
[optional: bullet list of ideas you want included]
The "key reminders" section matters because models can drift from instructions over long generations. Repeating your two or three most critical style rules keeps them front of mind for the model.
Using AI as a Thought Partner, Not a Ghostwriter
Here's a distinction that changed how I think about this: AI as a thought partner versus AI as a ghostwriter.
Ghostwriting means the AI produces finished text you pass off as your own. That's one use case, and it works better now than it used to.
But for most writers, the more interesting use is thinking partnership — using AI to develop ideas, not to write them.
Some examples:
Outlining: "Here's the angle I want to take on this topic. What structure could work for a 1500-word piece? Give me three different approaches."
Stress-testing arguments: "Here's my main argument: [paste]. What are the strongest objections a skeptical reader would raise?"
Finding what's missing: "Here's my draft. What's the most important thing I haven't said that I probably should have?"
Breaking writer's block: "Here's the first paragraph I've written. Give me five different ways this piece could continue from here."
In these uses, you're still doing the writing. The AI is helping you think.
The Editing Use Case
This is where AI genuinely shines for writers, and it's underused.
Editing prompts work better than writing prompts for most people, because you stay in control. You write, then you bring in AI to react.
Some editing prompts that actually work:
Read this draft. Don't rewrite it. Tell me:
1. Where does it lose momentum?
2. Which sentences are doing the least work and could be cut?
3. Is the argument clear? What's the one thing a reader might be confused about?
Edit this for tightness. Remove every word that isn't earning its place. Don't change my meaning or voice — just cut the fat.
Read this piece as a hostile reader. What would they find unconvincing? What would make them click away?
Find every sentence in passive voice and suggest an active alternative. Show me both versions so I can decide.
The editing workflow keeps your voice intact because you wrote the raw material. AI is just reacting to it.
One Thing to Be Careful About
Over time, if you use AI heavily in your writing process, you might start to notice your first drafts becoming lazier. The reasoning is insidious: "I'll just clean this up with AI later." Don't let that happen.
AI is a terrible substitute for actually developing the thought. It can polish language. It can't manufacture ideas, genuine observations, or a distinctive way of seeing. Those come from you putting in the work of thinking.
Use AI to sharpen what you've actually thought, not to paper over the thinking you didn't do. The readers who make your work worth writing can usually tell the difference.
If you want to go further with controlling AI output at a technical level — style constraints, structured generation, and how to reliably enforce tone — the Intermediate Track covers the techniques that make the difference between AI output you have to rewrite and AI output you actually want.