Crafting Your Personal Newsletter Style Guide Using ChatGPT: A How-To Guide

3 Quick Steps to Streamline Every Article You Craft

In the world of AI-assisted writing, the best compliment you can receive is when your reader can’t even tell an AI had a hand in crafting your text. The secret to achieving this lies not in your AI’s programming, but in the way you guide it - with a personal style guide.

This style guide, custom-tailored to your unique voice and style, serves as the roadmap for the AI to follow, ensuring the output matches your distinct voice.

The benefit? A seamless blend of your creativity and the AI’s capabilities that’s almost indistinguishable from a human-written piece. I’m going to show you how to do this.

Imagine the time you’d save by reducing the back-and-forth editing process. This is where the personal style guide becomes invaluable. By using it as a “pre-prompt” for your AI, you’re effectively setting the tone, language, and style right from the start. You’re giving the AI specific and consistent instructions to follow, dramatically cutting down on the time spent polishing and tweaking the generated text later.

Every time you use your personal style guide, you’re essentially “training” your AI in your author voice. Over time, it gets better at mimicking your style, and becoming more attuned to your unique way of expressing ideas.

This process not only ensures a higher quality of text generation but also frees you from having to constantly oversee the writing mechanics or style. Instead, you can devote your full attention to the most critical part of writing - the creativity and development of your content. The AI, armed with your personal style guide, takes care of the rest.

Now that we understand the benefits of crafting a personal style guide for AI-assisted writing, let’s dive into the actual process. It’s as straightforward as one, two, three. Let’s get started with Step One!

STEP ONE - Fine-Tuning Your Author’s Voice: Teaching AI to Mirror Your Writing Style

Step One starts with giving ChatGPT a taste of your writing style. Select a piece of your writing that best represents your intended author's voice. Remember, it’s important to be strategic in your selection. If you’re aiming for a polished, academic style guide, it’s not the best idea to feed the AI an informal email you wrote to a friend. The sample you provide should align as closely as possible with your desired output.

If you’re wondering how much text to input, don’t worry. ChatGPT is well-equipped to handle everything from brief paragraphs to large volumes of text. For larger samples, I’ve found the AskYourPDF plugin to be a convenient tool. I once uploaded an entire 250-page book! This allowed the AI to get a comprehensive understanding of my writing style, tone, and voice.

Once you’ve fed the AI your writing sample, don’t stop there. Engage with it. Ask it if it requires more information to create your personal style guide. This could be anything from the tone you prefer to use, to specific word choices you’re fond of, or even formatting preferences.

Be prepared to answer its questions. The more information you provide, the more the AI learns about your unique style, resulting in a robust, efficient personal style guide.

Here’s an example I used to create a “J. Thorn Style Guide.” Use it as a starting point for crafting your prompt:

Hello AI! I’d like your help in generating text that more closely resembles my author's voice, that of J. Thorn. Therefore, I’d like you to read and analyze this book I’ve written. The tone and POV is representative of my writing, and the PDF should give you a large enough sample to use effectively. Other than the PDF document, is there anything else you need before we begin?

Go back and forth with the AI until you feel the “pre-prompt” accurately describes your “style.” You want to make sure your tone is accurate before we have the AI generate the style guide.

STEP TWO - Perfecting Your Personal Style Guide: Breaking Down Key Components

Once you’re satisfied that the AI has a firm grasp of your style, we can proceed to instruct it to create your personal style guide. Here are the elements of the style guide you’ll want to include. You can add or remove based on your specific needs:

Tone and Voice: This includes the overall feel of the writing.

Point of View (POV): This is the perspective from which the story is told. For non-fiction, this is often first person (”I,” “we”) or second person (”you”).

Language and Diction: This includes the type of language used (formal, informal, technical, etc.), as well as any specific words or phrases that are commonly used.

Sentence Structure: This includes preferences for short, concise sentences versus long, complex ones. It also covers the use of active versus passive voice.

Formatting and Punctuation: This includes preferences for things like Oxford commas, em dashes, and how to format dialogue or lists.

Themes and Topics: This includes the common themes or topics that are often covered in the writing.

Characteristics: This includes any specific characteristics of your writing.

References and Allusions: This includes any common references or allusions that are often made in the writing.

Now, you’ll need to copy/paste AI’s response in Step One with your specific answers to the elements mentioned above. Then, add this to the end:

Now that you have my author voice along with specifics of my style, please use it to generate a “personal style guide.” This guide will become a “pre-prompt” that I will put before a writing prompt to ensure that you’re generating the words in my voice and according to my style.

How do you know if your style guide is good enough? Pretend you’re giving the style guide to an assistant or ghostwriter. Would they be able to draft in your voice and style? If so, you’re good to go!

In Step Three, I’ll show you how to save your personal style guide and then use it as a “pre-prompt” for all future writing projects. Plus, I’ll share my personal style guide with you.

STEP THREE - Implementing Your Personal Style Guide: Streamlining Your Writing Process with AI

In Step Three, the fruits of your labor start to show. Once you’ve reached a stage where you’re satisfied with the personal style guide developed by ChatGPT, the next step is to secure it for future use. I recommend copying and pasting your style guide into a document saved on your device. This will ensure that your style guide is always readily accessible.

If you’re still not completely satisfied with the AI-generated style guide, don’t worry. You can always go back and fine-tune it with the AI. Keep working on it until it accurately reflects your writing style.

Once your style guide is complete and saved, you’re ready to put it into action.

The next time you use AI to generate written content, use your personal style guide as a “pre-prompt.” Simply copy and paste it into the text box before adding your specific writing prompt. This will provide the AI with a precise framework of your writing style and voice, ensuring the generated content aligns with your unique authorship.

I copy/paste my “pre-prompt” into the text box before every writing prompt. You’ll notice that my personal style guide is incorporated into the “pre-prompt,” which makes it a simple one-step copy/paste to ensure you’ll get words that more closely match your author voice. Here is my “pre-prompt” for your reference:

Hi AI! Here’s a “J. Thorn Style Guide for General Nonfiction” you generated in another conversation. Before we generate text in this conversation, please read the style guide and confirm that you are ready to write in the “style of J. Thorn.”

Tone and Voice:

• Gritty but humorous: The writing should have a certain edge to it, but not without a sense of humor. It should be fun and enthusiastic, yet realistic.

• Gen X values: The writing should reflect values of independence and freedom, characteristic of Generation X without mentioning “Generation X” or “Gen X” specifically.

Point of View (POV):

• Primarily use the first person (”I,” “we”) or second person (”you”) perspective. The writing should feel personal and directly address the reader.

Language and Diction:

• Use clear, direct language: The writing should be straightforward and practical, aimed at helping the reader achieve their goals.

• Use of motivational and encouraging language: The writing should inspire and motivate the reader to take action.

Sentence Structure:

• Prefer active voice over passive voice: The writing should be direct and engaging.

• Use a mix of short, concise sentences and longer, more complex ones for variety and rhythm.

Formatting and Punctuation:

• Follow standard American English punctuation rules. Specific preferences, if any, can be specified later.

Themes and Topics:

• Focus on self-improvement and personal growth: The writing should help readers achieve balance in their lives, including health, relationships, finances, and creativity.

Characteristics:

• Practical and goal-oriented: The writing should provide clear, step-by-step instructions and offer support through additional resources.

References and Allusions:

• Use relevant references or allusions as needed, especially those that resonate with a Gen X audience.

Embracing the Future of AI-Assisted Writing: The Ultimate Takeaway

As we wrap up this journey of creating a personalized style guide with ChatGPT, let’s revisit the key insights we’ve gathered along the way.

The first one being - a reader should not be able to discern if a piece was AI-generated. This is where the importance of a personal style guide comes in. It equips ChatGPT with the understanding of your unique voice and style, saving you time and ensuring consistency in your writing.

The guide serves as a “pre-prompt,” streamlining your interaction with the AI and cutting down on editing later. Moreover, as you consistently employ your style guide, the AI “learns” your voice, improving its synchronization with your writing over time.

Now, you are free to concentrate on the crucial aspect of writing - ideating and developing engaging content while the AI handles the style and mechanics.

But how about we take this a step further? I invite you to create a free account on beehiiv, where you can easily implement these tips and streamline your email writing process with AI. With the built-in AI content generator exclusively on beehiiv, you’ll never face writer’s block.

But that’s not all! If you subscribe to Creative AI Digest, I have a special bonus for you. I will send you the actual transcript of my conversation with ChatGPT, detailing how I transformed this article from a simple idea to the final draft you just read.

Witness firsthand how a personal style guide can revolutionize your interaction with AI and elevate your writing journey!