06-reference

ship30for30 ai prompting for writers

Wed Jan 07 2026 19:00:00 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time) ·reference ·source: Ship30for30 (Start Writing Online) ·by Dickie Bush / Nicolas Cole
writing-craftcontent-strategyai-writing

8 AI Prompting Tips for Digital Writers — Ship30for30

Nicolas Cole’s framework for getting usable writing outputs from AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). The core argument: bad outputs are a prompting problem, not an AI problem.

The 8 Tips

  1. Use Claude Projects as a context library. Create per-format projects (social, newsletter, blog). Add finished pieces so the context library converges on your voice over time. More context = better output.

  2. Break tasks into singular prompts. Don’t cram brainstorm + outline + draft into one prompt. Distinguish “singular prompts” (one task, 500-1500 words) from “modular prompts” (a sequence of singular prompts chained to produce a larger work like a book).

  3. Name every format you train AI on. E.g., “Format 1: Paragraph Style” with attributes and examples. Naming forces clarity and gives AI a handle to reference later.

  4. Use objective, not subjective, language. “Write really great content” is subjective. “Generate thought leadership short-form social content, 280 characters or less, no hashtags, with 3 bulleted items” is objective. AI is pattern recognition — specificity drives quality.

  5. Reinforce instructions with positive attributes. Don’t just say “write social content.” Add: concise language, economical phrasing, strong opinions, alternating sentence length for rhythm. Bake in frameworks from books you’ve read.

  6. Use examples that mirror instructions exactly. If your rules say “declarative opener, 3-5 bullets, one-sentence insight,” every example must follow that structure. Mismatched examples confuse the model.

  7. Add delivery instructions. Tell AI how to present output: format, length, labels, number of variants. Most people skip this step and get poorly formatted results.

  8. Iterate with AI on your prompts. Ask “Why did you do that? What could I add to improve this prompt?” Treat yourself as a Writing Prompt Engineer: write, feed, review, iterate.

RDCO Mapping

Tips 1-3 directly apply to Sanity Check production — building a Claude Project with past issues as context, using singular prompts per section, and naming the newsletter format explicitly. The objective-language principle (Tip 4) aligns with the CopyThat framework’s emphasis on concrete over abstract.