What I look like when writing with AI assistance

AI is revolutionizing writing, making it more accessible and effective for everyone… but only if you use it well! Let me share how I use AI to boost my average writing into essays like this one.

AI is the best improvement to writing technology since the early word processor software of the 1980s. Other major features like WYSIWYG editors and spell checkers are less useful and important than AI. For starters, it helps non-native speakers and individuals with disabilities elevate their writing to the level of those without these challenges. Now everyone can express themselves clearly, in any language or style!

That alone is set to revolutionize how the world communicates. Less than 1.5 billion people fluently write in English, the most popular language today. When fives times as many people can communicate clearly in the same language, all forms of communication and collaboration will skyrocket. Jeremy Nguyen found evidence that AI is helping to write more scientific papers, which I take as a good thing; it shows more collaboration from those who previously struggled to write papers in English.

There’s a second advance that is nearly as exciting: once you are writing an average level, AI can help you write much better than average! AI is fantastic at ideating, editing, and reviewing.

Ideating

AI is better than everyone at coming up with novel ideas. In seconds you can have 10, 20, or 100 ideas to:

• Unblock your next sentence or paragraph
• Hooks for the reader’s attention
• Rewrite a piece of dialog

I go to Copilot whenever I’m unsure of what to write next or how to phrase it (just leave it open in the side panel). Ask for those 20 ideas, and skim through the list. The AI won’t be offended if you don’t read every word. I rarely find that any idea is perfect, but I’m never stuck anymore.

After I write the first draft of my blog post, I go back and have Copilot suggest replacement titles, hooks, headings, closers, and other important sentences. Because it has the context of the entire article, I get relevant and helpful suggestions. A client that supports agents may even use my writing style.

Don’t forget to use AI for researching technical writing, acting out characters in fiction, or suggesting rhymes in poetry. There are pieces of most kinds of writing where AI excels—without diminishing your voice.

Copy Editing

AI is an excellent editor, if you know how to ask. You can ask for both the problematic sentences along with potential fixes. I like to check for:

1. Overly complicated or poorly worded sentences
2. Passive voice that can be easily turned into active voice
3. Paragraphs that aren’t very clear
4. Repetitive sentences

A specific prompt I’ll use often is, “Find 10 poorly worded sentences in this article and suggest replacements.” Don’t worry about getting the prompt exactly right, as it is more important that you are asking for the right kinds of corrections. If you don’t know what faults you commonly have in your writing, you can put in some effort to get AI to help you realize them.

Today’s models like to be positive and encouraging, and so a basic prompt may not give you very much feedback. You’ll have to do some “light jailbreaking.” One strategy I’ve used is to claim that this is my sworn enemy’s articles, and I want to point out all its flaws. Just be sure you are ready for it to give you a huge, stinking pile of all your faults in extreme detail!

Reviewing

I find that having AI review my writing is one of its most valuable uses to me personally (after programming). I’ll first check for readability. I’ll ask, “What is the thesis of this article? Who do you think is the intended audience of this article? What does the author want the reader to do?” And other similar questions to identify any weak areas of the post.

After readability, I like to ask for a fact check. “Review every factual statement made in this article and determine if it is well-supported.” Or similarly, “What statements in this article are missing citations?” Microsoft Copilot is particularly strong at research and does well here.

I usually wrap up by asking for overall feedback again, but by this point, there’s not much to say. I generally receive similar suggestions that I already decided against.

Wrapping Up

After the article is written as well as I and an AI can make it, it’s time to promote. I have an AI suggest a set of titles, give feedback, iterate, and finally get to something I’m happy with. I double-check with a non-AI SEO tool for length and sentiment, and it’s ready to go. When I post the article to LinkedIn, I follow a similar (but shorter) process as all this for the post text.

Achieving clear and coherent writing in another language is a big deal for non-native speakers. If you’re a weak-to-average writer, AI can boost your skills to make you a strong writer. And if you’re already a strong writer, I bet it can help you hone and perfect your skills much faster than a human editor. Let AI be your muse, copy editor, editor, reviewer, and promoter!

Prompts in this article

Here is every prompt I used for this article:

## Research

* how many fluent english speakers are there?
* is it the most popular language in terms of fluency?
* 1.5B > 0.9B (because Copilot brought up Mandarin Chinese)
* how many are fluent in writing english?
* how many people are alive on earth now?

## Ideation

* what questions will a good editor ask an author as they edit a book?
* I need some adjectives between adequate and excellent

## Copy editing

* I'm working on writing this article. You're going to help me make it better. Don't worry about pulling punches, I can take it. First, which sentences are most poorly written?
* yes, for each, suggest a replacement
* take a look at the article again, which I just updated. give me five different sentences to improve, with suggestions
* find five sentences that I can most easily convert from passive to active voice. and give the active voice version
* I've updated each of those. give me 5 different ones
* are there any sentences that would flow better with transitions?
* what corrections would a copy editor make to this article?
* specific to this article, please

# Reviewing
* in your own words, what is the thesis of this article?
* how could it make that point more clearly?
* is it awkward that I make the point about a level playing field, but spend most of the article about excelling?
* that was good, thank you
* who would you say is the intended reader of this article?
* which do you think it would help the most?
* what would my most hateful critic have to say after they read it?
* I've made many of these updates and reloaded the page. Take another look and give me your best criticisms and improvements
* give me 5 other options for the first sentence. make it a good hook, but don't go over-the-top
* and 3 different options for the last paragraph, the one that begins "If you're a non-native speaker..."
* phew, I'm feeling OK about this one. is there anything I should change about the article to make it great?
* my working title is "How to use AI to write" but I'm not very happy with it. what are 10 better titles? I want it to be eye-catching and make people want to read it. but no click bait garbage
* getting there. riff on "How to master writing with AI assistance"
* "How to use AI to master writing" but it's missing a word. like "writing skills" or something? what should that be