Writing a first newsletter draft with AI

Give an AI tool a vague request and you'll get vague writing. Give it your real notes and a clear job, and the draft gets much closer to usable. The difference comes from what you hand over.

Why a draft goes generic

A writing tool works by guessing what text should come next.¹ With nothing specific to work from, the likeliest words are the most common ones. Hence the stock phrases about "exciting news" and "valued customers" that so many newsletters share.

It also fills gaps. Wikipedia notes these tools can state falsehoods as though they were true.² If you say "write a newsletter about our spring sale" and give no dates, it may invent dates, discounts and even products.

So your job is to remove the gaps before it starts.

What to give it

Think of a short brief with four parts.

The reader. Say who gets the newsletter. "Existing customers of a family-run garden centre, mostly local" tells the tool more than "customers".

The real news. Write it as plain notes, in your own words. Include the exact details a reader would need: what, where, when, how much, and how to get in touch. If you leave a detail out, say so, so the tool doesn't fill it in.

Your voice. Paste in one or two short pieces you've written yourself, such as a past newsletter or a friendly email to a customer. Ask the tool to match the tone. It's matching patterns in your samples, not learning who you are, so check the result.

The rules. Spell out what it must not do.

A brief you can adapt

Draft a customer newsletter for a small hardware store from the notes below. Every fact must come from those notes. Invent no prices, dates, offers, staff names or quotes. Where a detail is missing, write [CHECK] in its place rather than guessing. Keep the tone friendly and plain, in short sentences, like the sample. Notes: ...

The [CHECK] marker is the trick worth keeping. It turns a hidden guess into a visible gap that you can search for and fill.

Ask for structure, not polish

For a first pass, keep the request small. Ask for:

• a short opening that gets to the point;
• one section per piece of news, each with a plain heading;
• a clear closing line saying what the reader should do next, if anything;
• no filler greetings.

Leave the subject line for a separate request, because it's a different job. The subject line page covers it.

On wording, the US government's writing guide favours active voice, which names who does what.³ You can ask the tool for it directly. "We're closed on Monday" beats "Monday is when the shop will be closed."

The same guidance says plain writing means communicating clearly for your specific audience.³ That's a good test for a newsletter. Would your regular customers follow it without effort?

Read the draft against your notes

Put the draft beside your notes and go line by line. Ask of each sentence: did I give the tool this?

Look hardest at:

• numbers, dates and times;
• anything described as new, free, limited or special;
• sentences that sound like claims about quality or results;
• any name, place or event you didn't mention.

Delete what you can't match to your notes. Then check what's left, using the fact-check routine. Once the facts are right, the next page, on fixing the wording, takes over.

Don't paste customer names or email addresses into the brief. Another page sets out which customer data stays private.