1. Start with who you’re writing for — one person, not a demographic

“Write for small business owners” is not a brief. It’s a census category. The tool reads that and produces the tone it associates with “small business owner” — which is every LinkedIn post you’ve ever scrolled past.

Brief one actual person instead. “Write for Maya, who runs a two-person bakery and is trying to work out whether email is worth her time.” That’s a brief with a pulse. The tool now has a reader with a name, a job, and a problem. The sentences get shorter. The jargon drops away. Maya would never read a sentence starting “In today’s competitive landscape,” so the draft stops producing them.

If you don’t have a real Maya, invent one from your last three real readers. What did they actually ask you? What did they misunderstand? Put that in the brief. One named reader beats ten audience bullet points every time.

2. Tell it what you sound like — with evidence, not adjectives

“Write in a friendly, professional tone” is the most useless instruction in writing. Friendly and professional mean everything and nothing. The tool hears “friendly professional” and produces the same warm-corporate mush everyone else gets.

Give it evidence instead. Paste in two or three paragraphs of something you actually wrote — an email you’re proud of, the opening of a post that got real replies. Then say: “Write like this. Same sentence length, same level of directness, same habit of starting with the point.”

This one change is worth more than every prompt-engineering trick combined. I tested it on the same topic twice — once with adjectives, once with a sample of my own writing. The adjectives version needed 45 minutes of editing. The sample version needed 15. The difference wasn’t subtle. One sounded like a brochure; the other sounded like me on a good Tuesday.

Keep a small file of your best paragraphs — call it your voice file. Paste from it every time you brief a tool. Two minutes of setup, hours saved forever.

3. Give it the opinion before it writes a word

AI tools hedge by default. If your brief has no position in it, the draft will have no position either. You’ll get “on the one hand, on the other hand,” and a conclusion that says “it depends on your needs.” That’s not writing. That’s a shrug.

So put your opinion in the brief, in plain language. “My view: most people over-edit their first draft and under-edit their structure.” “I think email beats social media for small businesses, and here’s why.” “Don’t recommend the expensive tool — the free one does the job.”

This is the step most people skip because it feels like extra work. It isn’t. It’s the work that makes the rest of the process fast. When the draft comes back carrying your opinion, your editing pass becomes a polish instead of a rescue mission. You’re fixing sentences, not inventing a point of view after the fact.

4. Specify the shape, not just the subject

“Write a guide to better prompts” could be 300 words or 3,000. The tool has to guess, and its guess will be the most generic shape it knows: intro, three headings, a summary. Every time.

Tell it the shape you want. “Eight sections, each with one example and one fix. No introduction longer than two sentences. End with a three-item checklist, not a summary paragraph.” Now the tool is filling a structure you designed instead of reaching for its default. The draft comes back looking like your article, not its article.

I keep a handful of shapes I reuse: the checklist guide, the before-and-after teardown, the “I tested it so you don’t have to” review. When I brief a tool, I name the shape first. It cuts the editing time in half because the draft’s skeleton is already mine.

5. Ban the phrases you never use

Every writer has words they never say out loud. Mine include “delve,” “elevate,” “crucial,” and “in today’s fast-paced world.” Yours will be different. Write them down — ten of them, maximum — and put them in the brief as a ban list: “Never use these words or phrases.”

It sounds fussy. It works. The tool has a small set of favourite words it reaches for when it’s unsure, and banning them forces it to find real wording instead. The draft gets less smooth, which is the point. Smooth is what everyone sounds like. A little friction is what you sound like.

Revisit the list every few weeks. New tics creep in. When you catch yourself deleting the same word for the third time, add it to the ban list and stop paying that tax.

6. Brief the ending too

Most briefs stop at the topic. The tool writes, reaches the end, and defaults to the worst sentence in writing: “In conclusion, by following these steps, you can achieve better results.” You then delete it and write a real ending yourself — which is fine, but you could have avoided the step entirely.

Tell the tool how to end. “End with one sentence that states the main point as an opinion.” “End with the one thing I’d tell a friend over coffee.” “End with a question for the reader, not a summary.”

An ending with instructions lands. An ending without instructions is filler, and filler trains your reader to stop reading early. One line in the brief saves you a rewrite at the end.

The brief I actually use

Here’s the shape I’ve settled on after a year of this. Five lines, every time:

• Reader: one named person with a real problem.
• Voice: two paragraphs of my own writing pasted in.
• Position: my opinion, in one sentence.
• Shape: the structure — sections, length, what each section contains.
• Bans: the words I never use, plus the ending instruction.

That’s it. Five lines, two minutes. The draft that comes back isn’t finished — it never is — but it’s mine in the ways that matter: the reader is real, the opinion is mine, the shape is mine, and the words I hate are nowhere in it. My editing pass is then the fun part: tightening sentences, adding one specific detail per section, cutting 10%.

The tool didn’t learn my voice. I just stopped asking it to guess. A good brief isn’t a clever prompt. It’s you, on the page, before the writing starts.

A quick checklist

• Reader is one named person with a real problem
• Two paragraphs of my own writing pasted as the voice sample
• My opinion stated in one plain sentence
• Structure named: sections, length, what each contains
• Ban list of words I never use included
• Ending instruction given (opinion, coffee line, or question)
• Final read: does the draft sound like me on a good day?