The DNA Test to Stop Sounding Like a Robot

One of my editors at Wired used to say, “Put a fact in every sentence.” It was a way of eliminating throat-clearing intros and excess opinion. In our era of ghostwritten gray goo, my key element of style is this: put a piece of you in every sentence.

If a line doesn’t contain your DNA, delete it.

A few other notes, for humans and their robot collaborators:

Reporting > Writing

I was never the best prose stylist, but I took pride in finding engaging stories. You don’t need to break Watergate or pen a heartbreaking listicle of staggering growth-marketing ideas. Just ask:

What was the most interesting thing I saw today?

Share that. Delete the rest.

Can you hear yourself?

You wield a computerized superintelligence to make you sound like the best version of yourself.

Why not aim higher than churched-up committee notes?

If you’re not sure what you want to sound like, ask the AI to help you be the Bill Simmons of B2B marketing. Capture intraoffice drama with the flair of Colleen Hoover. How would Andy Weir chronicle the heroics you engaged in to hit your number in Q2!

Season your takes.

Write less, yeet more, give the people what they clicked through for

One of the giveaways of AI ghostwriting is length. AIs seem hyperoptimized to help school kids hit word requirements for essays. If you’re writing for LinkedIn, land the plane, or at least give me a subhead to skim.

Simplify, cut, repeat!

Don’t sweat typos

Embrace the occasional comma splice. Break a rule or two. A slightly misshapen sentence can serve as a shibboleth that your post on HR policy came from the heart, not the shoggoth in the data center.

Writing is dead, publishing is vital!

We all need to relearn to write with computers without sounding like one.
Our mission, at least for now, is human connection, but that requires you to have a perspective and personality and to use the tools at hand purposefully.

Used artfully, AI is like having a private writer’s room that can find the perfect phrase or scaffold your thoughts when the Cherry Coke Zero buzz wears off. When deployed amateurishly, they diminish you more than failing to follow the double-opt-in intro protocol.

The eulogy for writers is being written now – the charter for publishers is still taking shape!