Most people get AI to write in their voice the slow way. They write a long prompt. They add rules: be confident, not arrogant; warm, not gushing; no jargon. The draft comes back close but off. They add more rules. Ten rounds later, it's nearly right, and next week they start again.

I found a faster route this week, and it came from the same idea behind all my work with AI: think like a director. When a director needs a performance, they don't hand the actor forty rules. They say who the character is.

What I tried

I needed a consistent writing voice for my career materials: resumes, cover letters and my portfolio site. The usual advice is to feed the AI samples of your own writing. I didn't have good samples to give it.

So I cast a character instead. I picked a well-known fictional leader and asked Claude to research him: his leadership, his sense of fairness, his empathy, how he makes decisions under pressure and how he treats his crew. Then I asked it to turn what it found into a written persona for me. From then on, it would use that persona for everything it writes in my voice.

It came back with a one-page profile. It covered decisive ownership, asking for advice from people who disagree, leading from the front, crediting the team and admitting mistakes. It set tone rules: short confident sentences, "I" for my own calls, "we" for team wins, no hedging and no bragging. It also listed what to leave out. The character I chose bends the rules and bluffs. That doesn't belong on a resume, so the persona dropped it.

Then I asked Claude to rewrite two short sections of my portfolio site in the persona. Both came back close to what I wanted on the first pass. I approved them and asked for the whole site. No back and forth about tone.

Why a character works better than a long prompt

One name carries dozens of instructions. "Confident, decisive, fair, warm with his team, calm under pressure" is a long list to write out. A well-known character carries all of it, and the AI already knows how those qualities fit together.

The AI can research it. Famous people and characters have been written about at length: biographies, articles, analysis, leadership lessons. When you ask the AI to study that material first, it builds a far richer picture than any prompt you would type.

Fictional characters often work best. A character is written to be consistent. Fans and critics have spent years picking apart how they think and why they act the way they do. That gives the AI a clear, well-documented personality to draw from.

You and the AI share the reference. When a draft drifts, you don't need to explain what's wrong. "My character wouldn't hedge like that" is a complete correction.

How to do it

  1. Pick a character with the qualities you want. Choose them for their qualities. You want their confidence, patience or clarity. Their catchphrases stay out.
  2. Ask the AI to research them first. Have it study the character's personality, values and how they lead or speak. Ask for a summary of what it found.
  3. Turn the research into a written persona. Ask for traits, tone rules, and a list of what to leave out. Every character has flaws you don't want copied.
  4. Test on two samples before the big job. Pick two short pieces, compare old and new, and adjust the persona if needed. It takes minutes.
  5. Save the persona and reuse it. Keep it in a document, a project or the AI's memory. Next time, start with "use my persona" and skip the setup.

Keep your hands on the final cut

A persona sets the voice. It doesn't supply the facts. Every claim, number and job title still has to be true, and you still review every line before it goes out. The director owns the result.

Borrow the qualities and leave the costume behind. My resume never mentions the character, and the persona forbids it. With a real person, the same rule applies: take the leadership qualities you admire, and never write as if you were them.

Try it this week

Pick one short piece of writing you need, such as an email, a LinkedIn post or your About page. Choose two or three characters with different strengths and run the same piece through each persona. Compare the results side by side. You'll see quickly which one sounds like the person you want to be on the page.

I would love to hear who you cast.

This builds on the director approach in Take the director's chair. The two-page guide is here: Take the director's chair (PDF).