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I bet you’re thinking the same thing as everyone else. Who cares if you know how to write. It doesn’t matter anymore. Generative AI can do it for you, from emails and reports to poems and speeches.
Guess what?
You’re damn right. That is, if you want to be completely dependent on your new AI overlords.
But if you don’t want to get left behind in the automated economy of tomorrow (or rather, today), then it helps to have survival skills.
There are few skills more important than writing better than ChatGPT.
The good news is that it’s very possible to be a better writer than ChatGPT. And it doesn’t require being a creative genius, deep knowledge of English literature or aspirations to be a professional scribbler. Why? Because ChatGPT and other LLMs generate text based on what they ingest across the web, the result often lacks voice, authenticity and concision.
It’s good bad writing.
Passable for many tasks to be sure, but it’s not the first rate work the best organizations and leaders demand. You can do better with a rigorous return to the fundamentals.
Here’s five quick steps to lift your prose game today.
Be Simple — Omit needless words, the famous creed of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. It remains timeless.
Be Active — Make sure each sentence you write is based on the greatest foundational sentence in children’s literature: “Jack and Jill ran up the hill.” Subject, verb, object. Examine your sentences from this perspective and you’ll be shocked at how twisted and tortured they are. And how much more powerful you can make them.
Avoid Big Words — Most of the time, they’re a cop out to cover up unclear ideas or a lack of subject matter expertise. Let’s name a few: multifaceted, determinants, synergy.. Next time try: many-sided, causes, teamwork. You’ll get your point across!
Build Paragraphs Like a House — Too often paragraphs ramble, jumping from one idea to the next. Effective paragraphs have 1) a setup sentence; 2) body copy, e.g., sentences that build on the set up; 3) an exit sentence that bridges to the next paragraph and sub-theme. Think of each paragraph like a house with a front door and a back door, and your readers will thank you for the clarity.
Cut 20% No Matter What — The last step is the hardest. Kill your darlings, as Faulkner famously said. But who can read Faulker with his complicated, twisted sentences…never mind…what matters is that whatever you wrote is twenty percent too long. Every time. Guaranteed. Cut. Or your work will read too much like LLM copy!
Follow these steps with thoroughness and you’ll make fast progress. Your human created content will read better, with more pop, and generally outperform AI-generated material.
Remember, LLMs can only work off the material they can find, material that by definition is average and likely too complicated, filled with passive constructions, jumbled paragraphs and too many words!
