Training AI to Ghostwrite for You (Without Losing Your Soul)

Let AI do the heavy lifting, but your brain still runs the show.

AI Can Write for You. The Trick Is Making It Sound Like You.

AI is a great writing assistant. It’s fast, tireless, and won’t ghost you when you need a draft by Monday. But here’s the deal: AI is the brawn, not the brain.

It can crank out words at an inhuman pace, but it can’t think for you. It won’t have original ideas, opinions, or a sense of humor (unless you count accidentally hilarious AI hallucinations). That part is still up to you.

So how do you get AI to write with you instead of for you? Here’s the system.

1. Create a Brand Guide (Yes, Even If You’re Just One Person)

Before AI can write like you, you have to know what “you” sounds like. I built Experimentation Labs Brand Guidelines to define my voice: smart, irreverent, and allergic to marketing clichés. That means:

• No unnecessary dashes posing as commas.

• No exclamation points unless someone is literally on fire.

• No phrases like “unlock your growth potential.”

If you don’t have a guide yet, start with these questions:

• What do you sound like? (Casual? Blunt? A little sarcastic?)

• What makes you cringe? (Words you’d never say out loud?)

• What makes your writing sound like you? (A specific phrase, rhythm, or level of disdain for corporate jargon?)

2. Give AI a List of Words to Avoid

AI loves to sound important. That’s why it spits out words like “facilitate” and “enhance” like it’s getting paid per syllable. I have a running blacklist of words that instantly make writing sound robotic. Some of the worst offenders:

• Leverage (unless we’re talking about a pulley system)

• Embark on a journey (this is not a Tolkien novel)

• Unleash (unless you’re talking about an actual dog)

Words You Should Never Use

If you want to stop AI (or yourself) from writing like a generic corporate blog, avoid these entirely:

Individual Words:
Acted, Address, Advocated, Aided, Amidst
Beacon, Bolster, Breeze, Captivate, Churn
Command, Compelling, Conveys, Crack, Crucial
Delve, Drive, Embark, Employ, Embodies
Emphasizes, Enable, Encourage, Ensure, Elevate
Evoke, Enduring, Enhance, Entices, Essential
Gaze, Facilitate, Forge, Foster, Fortify
Inundated, Ignite, Imperative, Instrument, Instills
Navigate, Irresistible, Master, Mitigate, Multifaceted
Refine, Oversee, Paramount, Promptly, Realm
Soar, Revolutionize, Robust, Safeguard, Smooth
Unleash, Sparks, Streamline, Tapestry, Uncover
Unveils, Utilize, Transformative, Vast

Phrases That Need to Disappear Forever:
An ongoing voyage of, As we conclude, Captivating narrative
Conducting a comprehensive, Craft compelling and concise, Digital realm
Embark on a journey, Encountered hurdles, Ever-evolving
Game-changer, Golden ticket, In a sea of
In the dynamic world of, In the realm of, Let it shine through
On the ascent to, Reaching new heights, Seize the
To furnish, To thrive, Treasure trove of information

AI loves stuffing these into its output. If you see them, delete immediately.

3. Use the Magic Prompt: “Make This Sound Like Me.”

Once you have your guidelines, put AI to work:

Rewrite this in my voice: smart, irreverent, no marketing fluff. Make it sound like a conversation, not a press release. Vary sentence length. No filler words.

This small tweak forces AI to break its robotic, overly formal patterns. If the result still sounds stiff, tweak the instructions until it gets it right.

Bonus Tip: If you’ve had enough conversations with ChatGPT, it actually starts learning how you talk. The more you correct it, the better it gets at mimicking your style. So if AI keeps getting your voice wrong, don’t just accept it—keep refining. Over time, it’ll start sounding more like you and less like a bot that just read too many corporate blogs.

4. Turn Half-Baked Thoughts into Full Articles

AI is great for fleshing out rough ideas. Drop a thought into ChatGPT and let it expand it into something useful—especially if you’ve trained a CustomGPT to match your voice.

Example: If your audience is startup founders, prompt AI with this:

Expand on this thought for startup founders. Keep it sharp, conversational, and a little irreverent. Assume they know the basics—skip the fluff.

AI isn’t creative. It just remixes what you feed it. So be specific.

5. Edit Like a Human (Because You Are One)

AI can speed up writing, but it can’t replace judgment. Read everything aloud. If it sounds like it belongs in a shareholder letter, cut it. If it makes you smirk, keep it.

This is where the brain part comes in. AI can’t tell when something feels off—it just follows patterns. It won’t make a clever reference, take a deliberate risk, or cut a sentence because it feels unnecessary. That’s still your job.

The best way to use AI is like an overenthusiastic intern. Let it do the grunt work—structuring ideas, suggesting phrasing, filling in gaps. Then come in, break it, tweak it, and add the one thing AI still can’t replicate: a personality that doesn’t sound like it was trained on 10,000 corporate emails.

The AI + You Formula:

1. AI drafts. (The brawn.)

2. You refine. (The brain.)

3. Final result sounds like you, just faster.

AI isn’t here to replace you—it’s here to make you dangerously efficient.

Why I’m Finally Writing This

I’ve wanted to write a newsletter for a while. Turns out, when you’re busy, creating content always seems to land at the bottom of the priority list. AI has changed that for me—not because it does all the work, but because it helps me get my actual thoughts into writing in a fraction of the time.

I talk with my wife, friends, and family all the time, and they tell me my insights are valuable. That pushes me to create something that might be useful beyond just those conversations. If AI can help me finally make that happen, I’m all in.

Want more experiments in writing and marketing? You could subscribe. But why ruin the mystery?