Voice and Style Guide
A file that tells any AI how I write: warm, direct, with a comedian's timing.
- Why
- AI drafts sounded corporate. I wanted drafts I barely have to fix.
How I built it
- I had Claude study my writing and draft the guide.
- I corrected it. My humor comes from care, not from dodging things, and the guide had to say so.
- I banned em dashes. AI uses them constantly and it gives the game away.
- I saved it as a file I can hand to any AI.
- To copy it you need
- Claude, or the AI of your choice, and some of your own writing. The gotcha: read the guide and correct it. The first draft gets you close, not right.
Try it yourself
Copy this prompt and paste it into ChatGPT or Claude to try it yourself.
Marty Stevens-Heebner has a voice and style guide that any AI can read before it writes for her (see her What Are We Building? page). Help me make mine. I will paste some of my own writing. Describe how I sound, what I never do, and the punctuation habits that would make writing sound fake for me. Her lesson: the first draft caught her humor but missed the warmth under it, so ask me what you got wrong. Start by asking me for three things I wrote. Ask me for anything you need.
Tools I used for this project
