Write a Voice Brief From Your Old Work

Telling an AI tool to "write like me" doesn't work, because it has no idea what you sound like. A voice brief fixes that. It's a short description of how you write, built from things you've already written, that you paste in at the start of any writing task.

Step 1: Gather three to five samples

Pick pieces you wrote yourself, without AI help, that you're reasonably happy with. Good sources:

• Emails you sent to colleagues or clients
• Posts or articles you've published
• Reports, proposals or school essays you wrote by hand
• Long messages to friends, if you want a casual voice

Match the samples to the kind of writing you'll ask for. Your work voice and your texting voice are different, and that's fine. You can have more than one brief. Aim for 600 to 1,500 words in total. Less than that, and there isn't enough to find patterns.

Step 2: Ask the model to describe your style

Models are good at describing patterns, even when they're bad at copying them. Use a prompt like this:

Read what comes back with a critical eye. Delete anything vague like "engaging and clear". Keep anything you can check, like "opens emails with the request, not a greeting" or "uses dashes rarely, parentheses often".

Step 3: Turn it into a short brief

Cut the description down to 10 to 15 bullet points. Short is better. A long brief gets partly ignored. Here's an example of a finished brief for a marketing manager's work emails:

Voice brief: work emails
Short sentences, often under 12 words. One longer sentence per paragraph at most.
Opens with the point or the request. No "I hope you're well".
Uses "we" for the team, "I" for my own opinions.
Contractions always (I'm, we'll, don't).
Dry humor, maybe once per email. Never exclamation marks.
Numbers as digits. Dates as "Tue 14 Oct".
Likes the words: sorted, quick, honestly, the plan.
Never uses: leverage, synergy, circle back, touch base.
Ends with a clear next step and a name, no sign-off phrase.

Notice how concrete that is. Every line is something you could check a draft against. Lesson 2.3 adds a fuller list of banned words and style rules you can merge in.

Step 4: Use it, then test it

Paste the brief above your brain-dump in any prompt:

Then test whether it worked. Read the draft next to one of your real samples. Does it sound like the same person? If one line of the brief keeps getting ignored, make it more specific or move it to the top.

Why a brief and not just samples?

You can paste samples directly and say "write like this". Sometimes that works well. But models tend to copy the topics and phrases of samples, not just the style, and a long set of samples eats up space in the prompt every time. A brief is portable. It fits in a note on your phone, and it works in any AI tool.

Module 4 goes deeper. You'll audit your old writing by hand and build a full personal style sheet. The voice brief is the quick version you can use today.