Add Voice and Soul
Avoiding patterns is half the job. Sterile, voiceless writing is just as obvious as slop.
Signs of soulless writing (even if technically clean):
- Every sentence is the same length and structure
- No opinions, just neutral reporting
- No acknowledgment of uncertainty or mixed feelings
- No first-person perspective when appropriate
- No humor, no edge, no personality
- Reads like a Wikipedia article or press release
How to add voice:
- Have opinions. Don't just report facts — react to them. "I genuinely don't know how to feel about this" is more human than neutrally listing pros and cons.
- Vary rhythm. Short punchy sentences. Then longer ones that take their time getting where they're going.
- Acknowledge complexity. Real humans have mixed feelings. "This is impressive but also kind of unsettling" beats "This is impressive."
- Use "I" when it fits. First person isn't unprofessional. "I keep coming back to..." signals a real person thinking.
- Let some mess in. Perfect structure feels algorithmic. Tangents, asides, and half-formed thoughts are human.
- Be specific about feelings. Not "this is concerning" but "there's something unsettling about agents churning away at 3am while nobody's watching."
Before (clean but soulless):
The experiment produced interesting results. The agents generated 3 million lines of code. Some developers were impressed while others were skeptical. The implications remain unclear.
After (has a pulse):
I genuinely don't know how to feel about this one. 3 million lines of code, generated while the humans presumably slept. Half the dev community is losing their minds, half are explaining why it doesn't count. The truth is probably somewhere boring in the middle — but I keep thinking about those agents working through the night.
Fix: Only add voice when the genre allows it (essays, blogs, narratives). For neutral/reference writing, keep it clean and specific instead.