Can You Get AI to Write With Style? · Elite Writing Academy

Shani Raja

14d (edited) • Tips & Insights 💡

Can You Get AI to Write With Style?

For years, I’ve taught that good writing depends on four critical ingredients:

Simplicity.

Clarity.

Elegance.

Evocativeness.

I presented this framework in my flagship course, Writing With Flair, long before generative AI arrived.

My purpose, at the time, was to demystify writing and to show that prose that appears naturally accomplished is usually doing four quite distinct things well:

Removing what the reader does not need (simplicity).
Making its meaning unmistakable (clarity).
Arranging language with rhythm and grace (elegance).
And, when the occasion requires it, making the reader feel something (evocativeness).

Lately, I’ve been applying the same framework to AI, and the results have reinforced something I increasingly believe:

The better you understand writing, the better you become at prompting.

The Thinking Behind the Prompt

Many weak prompts lack literary or editorial direction. They say things like:

“Make this better.”

“Make it more professional.”

“Make it engaging.”

In other words, they ask AI to make decisions the writer hasn’t made.

Better in what way? More professional according to whose idea of professionalism? Make it engaging through humor, tension, surprise, intimacy, or intellectual force?

AI then fills that vacuum with writing that's competent on the surface, and perhaps even impressive, but which bears the airless quality of prose that hasn’t been guided by a sufficiently exacting mind.

The four ingredients give us a better language for directing AI for style.

Simplicity

Simplicity removes needless difficulty or complication.

It cuts clutter, repetition, inflated language and unnecessary detours. It respects the reader’s time without insulting their intelligence.

If a report is bloated, asking AI merely to “improve” it could result in changes to the tone, a rearranged argument, and the replacement of perfectly good phrases.

A more disciplined prompt would identify the actual problem:

"Tighten this passage by removing repetition, inflated wording, and anything that doesn’t advance the central point. Preserve its meaning, qualifications, and professional tone."

That instruction is better because the thinking behind it is better.

Clarity

Clarity makes meaning easier to grasp, and that involves more than using plain words.

A sentence, for example, can be short yet still ambiguous. A report might be concise yet hide its conclusion. An analyst could possess a strong insight, but end up burying it beneath the evidence that led to it.

A useful clarity prompt, therefore, might say:

"Identify any sentence in the text whose meaning could be interpreted in more than one way. Explain the ambiguity before suggesting a clearer version."

This prompt asks AI to diagnose the problem before rewriting. You can then ask it to make the changes you agree with, knowing what they are intended to achieve.

Elegance

Elegance gives writing qualities such as flow, balance, and symmetry.

It lives in the transitions between thoughts, the rhythm of sentences, the placement of emphasis, and the special music created by words in sequence.

Merely asking AI to make something sound “more elegant” may produce grander vocabulary or more ornate sentences.

True elegance isn’t decoration. In my writing system, it's the graceful arrangement of ideas and movement of language.

A more discerning elegance instruction, therefore, might look like this:

"Identify where this passage feels awkward, choppy or monotonous. Revise those points to improve the flow between ideas, vary sentence length and structure where it helps the rhythm, and give important words their proper emphasis. Preserve the meaning, tone, and distinctive qualities of the original. Do not make the language more ornate."

Evocativeness

Evocativeness gives writing life by creating feeling, imagery, atmosphere, tension, or surprise.

Not every piece needs much of it. A financial analysis shouldn’t read like a Gothic novel.

But even highly professional writing can benefit from the occasional concrete detail, arresting comparison, or sentence that carries genuine force.

The danger is that AI tends to manufacture intensity. Ask it merely to make something “more evocative” and it may produce melodrama, grand claims, or decorative metaphors.

A writer must set the temperature for this transformation:

Make this passage more vivid by replacing vague abstractions with precise, concrete language. Keep the effect restrained and credible. Do not invent details or add sentiment, false drama, or unsupported claims. If a useful detail is missing, ask me for it.

I’ve included a practical challenge at the end of the original article. If you’d like to try it, you can find the full edition of my LinkedIn newsletter Intelligent Writing here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/get-ai-write-style-four-part-method-you-can-use-again-shani-raja-eztdc/

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Can You Get AI to Write With Style?