Ask AI to Interview You Before It Drafts
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AI Writing Assistance · Find Your Voice · Public Lesson 18
This lesson is part of the public AI Writing Assistance series: practical training you can use now, with a deeper Find Your Voice practice available where your access includes it.
If the idea is yours but the material is still in your head, drafting immediately is often the wrong first move.
The Jack Righteous approach
Use AI as an interviewer to extract examples, beliefs, details and contradictions before it becomes a writer.
Use this workflow
- Give AI the topic and intended reader.
- Ask for one question at a time when you want depth.
- Push for concrete examples instead of polished statements.
- Correct summaries that make your thinking sound too neat.
- Draft only after the interview contains enough usable material.
Why this matters
AI can move quickly enough that a weak assumption becomes polished before you notice it. A stronger workflow makes the important choices visible earlier: what the source material actually says, what belongs to your voice, what the reader needs, and what still requires human judgment.
A prompt you can actually use
Copy and adapt:
Interview me about this topic before writing. Ask one useful question at a time. Look for what I believe, what happened, examples I can give, what I am uncertain about and what I want the reader to understand. Do not draft until I say the interview is complete.
What a useful AI response should do
A useful response should help you inspect the material, not hide the reasoning under better prose. You should be able to see which patterns came from your source material, which conclusions are tentative, and which choices still belong to you.
Your five-minute exercise
The story or example I keep returning to is: ______________________________
The belief underneath it is: ______________________________
The part I am uncertain about is: ______________________________
The reader needs to understand: ______________________________
What the human still decides
AI can help with pattern recognition, organization, questions, alternatives and editing. You still decide what is true, what sounds like you, what belongs in the project, what is safe to publish and what deserves to become a reusable rule.
Continue from here
If you are reading publicly: continue through the AI Writing & Story Development Library for more free writing, story, manuscript and creator workflows.
If Find Your Voice training is included in your access: continue with Idea Selection Worksheet | Module 6 Tool. That link enters the deeper training layer and may require you to log in.
If you are unsure where to go next, use How to Use Jack Righteous and start with one project, one blocker and one useful next action.
Jack Righteous principle: Use AI to make your thinking clearer—not to make your thinking disappear.
Continue the Public Series