How to ask ChatGPT to write something for you

An email at least has a shape everyone agrees on. A post, a note, a bio, a message to a group: those don't, so the AI invents one, and what it invents comes back longer and more formal than what you had in your head. The questions below pin the shape down first.

What a thin request looks like

Most people start here:

write a post about my bakery

The built version says who reads it, hands over what the post actually has to get across, caps the length, and tells the AI not to invent details about the bakery.

Build your prompt

Role Act as a writer who keeps things plain and short.

Task Write the piece I describe below for my customers.

Context I haven't told you what to write yet. Ask me what the piece is and what it needs to say.

Constraint Keep it under 120 words. Keep the tone friendly.

Guardrail Do not add facts I did not give you, and do not pad it. If a sentence adds nothing, cut it.

Show as plain text 
Act as a writer who keeps things plain and short.
Write the piece I describe below for my customers.
I haven't told you what to write yet. Ask me what the piece is and what it needs to say.
Keep it under 120 words. Keep the tone friendly.
Do not add facts I did not give you, and do not pad it. If a sentence adds nothing, cut it.

Why this prompt works

Role
Telling the AI who to be aims the voice before it writes a word. Skip this line and the draft tends to drift toward the flat, committee-written tone everyone recognizes on sight.
Task
One clear instruction, with one verb. A vague ask gets a vague answer, and most disappointing results start right here.
Context
The AI knows nothing about your situation. Anything you leave out, it fills in with a guess, and that guess is why so many drafts come back sounding like they were written for somebody else.
Constraint
Left to itself, the AI writes long and formal, so name the length and the tone you actually want.
Guardrail
This line names the two habits that waste the most of your time and asks the AI to skip them: inventing facts that sound right, and padding the answer to feel thorough. It will not always listen, but the asking costs you nothing.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use this for a social media post?

Yes. The builder doesn't care what the piece is. You describe it in the box, and the prompt carries that description through along with the reader, the tone, and the length.

What if the draft sounds nothing like me?

Change the tone and build it again, then paste two or three of your own sentences into the box so the AI has your wording in front of it. What you copy from here is a starting point you edit, and it isn't a fixed formula.

Why is there no format line in this prompt?

Because a post, a note and a bio don't look alike on the page, and forcing one layout onto all three would make the result worse. Other jobs in the builder do have a format line, where a fixed shape earns its place.

More on this: How to use ChatGPT for writing, or pick another job on the prompt builder page.