Becoming a Better AI Writer: Simulating Intended Audiences for Feedback

Feedback is a vital part of the writing process. Whether you are writing non-fiction or fiction, fantasy or thriller, feedback is essential to understanding whether your piece aligns with your intended audience—whether it effectively engages and resonates with them.

ChatGPT can be an incredibly useful tool for simulating your intended audience, whether that be an eighteen-year-old high school student reading a coming-of-age story or a true crime fan interested in reading a murder mystery. Using the tool in this way can help you identify the flaws in your writing, such as problems with the logical flow of your story or use of stylistic devices. 

The feedback AI provides you with—particularly when it shares that feedback from the perspective of an intended audience member—may even contribute to your overall success as a writer. This blog will provide a guide on how to use AI to improve and further your writing.

Prompt Engineering Tips: Building Your Simulated Audience

When it comes to AI tools such as ChatGPT, an effective prompt can be the difference between identifying some flaws in your writing and being able to improve your writing in a way that matches your intended audience.

It’s important that you let AI know who you are and what you are hoping to achieve with your writing. For example, “I am a young writer looking for feedback on a short story I am writing.” This part of the prompt can be very brief, but it’s important not to skip it. It helps provide the AI with some context, which can be helpful when it is generating feedback.

Next, you have to list your intended audience and goal. Try to be as specific as possible with this step. For example, “My intended audience for this piece is teens who enjoy psychological, stream-of-consciousness fiction. The purpose of the piece is to convey the thoughts of the main character in a slow-paced manner, whilst still engaging the readers.”

Take Your Feedback to the Next Level

Even if you have a detailed prompt and ask AI for feedback on your story, it can be difficult to figure out where you stand. Does your story need a lot of work? Or is it well-written, but a couple of tweaks could make it even better? 

You can gain greater clarity by asking AI to rate your story on a scale of 10. The AI will generate its own scale, but you can set out some guidelines to enhance the revisions you make. For example, “1” may mean the story needs major work (e.g. the plot is very inconsistent and difficult to follow). “5” may mean the story is OK but could still be heavily improved (e.g. needs stronger character development). “10” would mean the story is very well-written, and at most has only minor grammatical issues.

To take it one step further, you can ask the AI to rank your story in relation to specific categories. These categories will vary from story to story, and from genre to genre, but there are several that you can use as a baseline: plot, theme, characters, tone, and stylistic devices. Once you have your initial ratings for these parts of your piece, you’ll want to determine how to improve them, if necessary. 

For plot, it’s ideal to focus on the coherence of your story and how it comes across to the reader. If you have a plot twist or aspect of the story that you’re not sure readers will understand, it’s important to see if the AI understands what’s happening. I recommend starting with broader yes/no questions, and then moving towards more open-ended ones. For example, you could ask, “Is the pacing of the story too slow or too fast?,” and then, depending on the answer that the AI tool gives, follow up with, “Which sections of the story feel rushed, and how could they be improved?” 

The AI will automatically justify its answers, but if you feel you need further elaboration, you could always ask questions like, “Can you explain why this part felt rushed in more depth?” This helps you gain a much better idea of the issues within your writing and how to improve upon them.

Sample AI Prompts to Get You Started

Typically, for the exercises listed above, you’ll need to craft prompt questions in ways that are specific to your story. But you can start by using questions like those below. Remember, you should still be prompting the AI to respond to you as if it were a member of your intended audience:

• Is the story coherent?
• Are there any plot points that seem confusing or unclear?
• Does the ending resolve the main plot points?
• Does the plot engage the reader throughout the story?

Theme is especially important for stories that are specifically intended to convey a message, but most stories have some deeper idea that they explore. You’ll want to make sure that the theme is effective, subtle, and woven throughout the story. To check and improve this with AI, you can ask questions along the lines of:

• Is the theme consistent and clear throughout the story?
• Is the theme subtle so that the story doesn’t come across as forced?
• Are there specific parts of the story that stray from the theme?
• Is the theme memorable? Would it resonate with readers?

Characters are a vital part of any story, and it is important that your readers sympathise with them. To make sure your story has well-written and relatable characters, you can ask questions similar to:

• Are the characters believable?
• Do the characters have clear motivations behind their actions?
• Are there characters who seem underdeveloped?
• Are the characters' interactions and relationships with one another realistic?

Tone may not seem as important to a story as other elements, such as plot or characters, but if not done well, an ineffective tone can bring readers out of a story. In order to make sure your tone fits your story and theme, you can prompt AI with questions like:

• Is the tone appropriate for the themes and emotions the story is trying to convey?
• Does the tone fit the genre?

Finally, you can focus on your use of stylistic devices. These devices can be used to emphasize the deeper meaning behind your story while also making it more enjoyable and engaging for the reader. Questions you can use to prompt the AI include:

• Are stylistic devices used to enhance my writing?
• Do the stylistic devices work with or add to the story?
• Are there too many or too few stylistic devices?

AI is a useful tool for feedback, especially when positioned as a simulated audience member. Hopefully this blog provides you with the tools to get started using AI to improve and enhance your writing. You can continue to adapt and adjust these prompts as you see fit for your own interactions with AI!