This week I found a rule in my own writing. I didn’t know I had it, and apparently I’d been breaking it for months.
I realized I couldn’t “teach” my own voice
When I ask AI for feedback, the suggestions are sensible. They’re also not mine. A sentence comes back smoother and suddenly belongs to somebody else.
So I tried the obvious fix. I pasted in three of my short stories and asked: “Describe my writing voice.”
The answer: “Your voice is intimate and understated, with a strong sense of place and a gift for quiet emotional detail.”
Lovely.
I’d put it on a book jacket. It also describes half the writers I know.
You can’t protect a voice you can only describe in compliments.
Then it started asking questions
Here’s what changed things: don’t ask the AI to describe your voice. Ask it to interview you about your voice, using your own sentences as evidence.
Your pages tell the AI what you do. Only you know why, and which patterns are choices rather than habits you’d quietly like to lose.
I borrowed a few rules from Ruben Hassid’s “Taste Interviewer” prompt (one question at a time, no vague answers allowed) and cut them down to size for writers.
The prompt
Copy it, paste in your pages, and give yourself about 20 minutes the first time:
You are a voice interviewer. Your job is to help me see my own writing voice clearly, so I can protect it when I work with AI.
Here are samples of my writing: [PASTE 3 TO 5 PIECES, IDEALLY FROM DIFFERENT PROJECTS]
Here are a few sentences I love, mine or other writers’: [PASTE 3 TO 5 SENTENCES]
Step 1. Read everything. Don’t summarize it or praise it.
Step 2. Interview me. Follow these rules:
Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer.
Anchor every question in my samples. Quote my own words back to me.
When you spot a pattern, ask me if it’s a choice or a habit.
If my answer is vague, push back. “I like it simple” should get “Simple how? Show me.”
If I contradict myself or my samples, point it out.
Keep each question under 50 words. Ask about 10, including one about what I hate reading.
Step 3. When I type PROFILE, write my Voice Profile with these blocks:
Core: my voice in two sentences
Always: patterns I choose, each with a quote from my samples
Never: things I refuse to do
Habits to watch: tics I didn’t choose
My words / not my words
How to give me feedback
Label each item HARD RULE, STRONG TENDENCY or LIGHT PREFERENCE. End with: “Use this profile to judge suggestions, not to imitate me.”
Start with your first question.
Use pieces from different projects, so it finds your voice and not one story’s mood. Around 5,000 words is ideal, but 1,500 is enough to start.
And answer fast: first instincts are more honest!
What happened when it quoted me back to myself
Before: the book-jacket paragraph.
After, three questions in:
AI: In your third story you write: “My brother wanted to throw the tin out, and I said fine, and then I took it home in my lap.” Characters agree out loud and then do the opposite, four times across your samples. Choice or habit?
Me: Choice. I like people who don’t mean what they say.
AI: Plenty of writers like subtext. What exactly do you refuse to write in those moments?
Me: I’d never explain it. No “but I couldn’t let it go.” The reader should catch it.
AI: Your second story ends a paragraph with: “She realized she had never really forgiven him.” That’s the sentence you just said you’d never write. Which one is you?
I went and checked. There it was, in a story I thought was finished, exactly where I’d got tired and stopped trusting the reader.
My profile now opens with a HARD RULE: never name the feeling once the action has shown it. Right under it, a habit to watch: when I’m tired, I explain the last line.
The description gave me a compliment.
The interview gave me a rule <3
Your turn (10 minutes, I promise)
Pick three pieces of your own writing, as different from each other as you can.
Run the prompt, but tell it to ask only five questions this time. Answer each in a line or two.
Type PROFILE and circle two items: the one that surprises you and the one you’d argue with.
Open a page you wrote recently and revise 100 words of it using the rule that surprised you. Your words, your pen.
Notice the question that makes you defensive. That’s usually where the profile gets interesting.
A few last thoughts
Save the profile. Next time you ask AI for feedback, paste it in first and add: “Flag any suggestion that breaks this profile.” The suggestions start fitting you, and when one doesn’t, you’ll know why. Just don’t ask it to write “as you”. The best it can manage is a careful impression.
If you write non-fiction, use essays or blog posts. You’ll learn how you argue: story first, or point first.
And redo it every few months. Your voice is supposed to move. The profile is a snapshot, not a cage.
Now hit reply and tell me the rule you didn’t know you had. I’m starting a collection.
Until next week
- Wilma