Drafting with a machine in the room
A writing assistant changed the shape of my mornings long before it changed the shape of my sentences. The blank page used to cost me forty minutes of pacing; now it costs one paragraph of instruction. Whether you write newsletters, product notes or long essays, the useful question is no longer whether to use a model but where in your process it belongs.
- What these tools actually are
Statistical systems that continue a pattern. Give them a shape and they will fill it convincingly; give them nothing and they will fill it blandly. - Why bother
Speed on the parts of writing that are mechanical — outlines, transitions, the fourth rewording of a summary — so the parts that are yours get the good hours.
“A model does not replace a writer. It replaces the writer’s dread of the first sentence.”
Where drafting goes wrong
The failure modes are consistent enough to name, and every one of them is avoidable.
- Handing over judgement
A model has no stake in being right. It will produce a confident sentence about a fact it has no access to. Everything it asserts is a claim you have agreed to make. - Prompting for mush
Vague instructions return the statistical middle of everything ever written on the topic. That is exactly as interesting as it sounds. - Losing the grain
The specific detail — the odd number, the small failure, the name of the street — is what makes a paragraph yours, and it is the first thing a model sands off.
💡 A rule that holds: the assistant may draft, arrange and compress. It may never decide what is true or what matters.
Teach it your register first
Before asking for a single paragraph, tell the model how you sound. Two questions get you most of the way.
- Formal or plain-spoken?
Say which, and give an example. “Write this the way I wrote the paragraph below” beats any adjective you could pick. - Who is reading?
A note for engineers, a note for a board and a note for a stranger who arrived from a search engine are three different pieces with the same facts.
🎯 How to do it: keep a short file of your own paragraphs — three good ones, and one you dislike — and paste it in as a reference. Say what you like about the good ones. The difference in output is immediate and slightly uncanny.
Know the reader better than the tool does
Every worthwhile draft starts with a person, not a topic.
- Ask what they are stuck on.
Not what the subject is, but what a reader is trying to get past this afternoon. Write to the obstacle. - Borrow their vocabulary.
Use the words they already use. Explaining a term costs a sentence; inventing one costs the reader’s patience.
📊 Check yourself with numbers: whatever analytics you keep, read them once a month and look for the pieces people finish, not the ones they open. Finishing is the only vote that counts.
Making a draft that survives editing
Here is the sequence I actually use.
1. Open with the smallest true thing
Not a thesis — an observation. “The blank page used to cost me forty minutes” is a door; “In today’s fast-moving landscape” is a wall. Ask the assistant for ten openings, throw away nine.
2. Let structure do the work
Decide the headings yourself, then let the model draft under them. A good outline makes a mediocre drafter useful; a bad outline makes a good one useless.
3. Put yourself back in
Go through the draft and add the things only you know: the number you measured, the argument you lost, the customer who said the memorable thing. This pass is non-negotiable, and it is where the piece becomes worth reading.
🎨 On presentation:
- Use bold for the claim, not for emphasis-by-default.
- Break lists out when the items are genuinely parallel.
- Add one picture that carries information, or none at all.
What I keep and what I hand over
After a year of working this way, the split is stable. The assistant gets outlines, first drafts of transitions, compression, alternative titles and the tedium of turning notes into prose. I keep the argument, the evidence, the jokes and every decision about what to leave out.
The result is not faster writing so much as more finished writing. Pieces that used to die at 60 per cent now get shipped, because the boring third quarter of the work stopped being the reason to stop.
🌟 Final takeaway: treat the model as a fast, tireless, slightly overconfident collaborator with no memory and no taste. Give it the mechanical work, keep the judgement, and your voice comes out the other side intact.
Afterword: how this piece was made
This article was outlined by hand, drafted in three passes with an assistant, and then rewritten twice without one. The structure survived; roughly a third of the sentences did not. That ratio feels about right.
Curious whether it works for you? Take something you abandoned last month and try the sequence above on it.