How to Write With AI: Writing Guide & Best Practices (2024)

The debate over AI in writing has never been more relevant, especially in light of rapid technological advancements. As AI redefines its previous limitations, it raises compelling questions that we should answer: Can it replace human writers, or should it merely enhance our creative processes? How do we harness AI in our writing workflows effectively? This guide explores these questions and the practical steps for how to write with AI.

We’ve done our research and give you this foolproof way to incorporate AI into your writing practices.

What Are AI Writing Tools

If your goal is to write better, you probably realize artificial intelligence has a role to play. The tricky part is understanding how (and to what extent) you should use AI for writing. When writers ask me for help with creating content, they are usually dealing with the same set of problems:

• Writer’s block: AI-generated text from simple prompts can often produce a spark for a writer—especially when trying to incorporate more detail into their writing.
• Managing tight deadlines: Everywhere, from newsrooms to print publishers, are feeling the crunch and reducing turnaround times to fill their content and editorial calendars.
• Balancing creativity with SEO practices: SEO can often conform to a rigid structure. Balancing creative and original writing with SEO is a prime place to use a second brain to help connect the two disciplines.
• Difficulty organizing ideas: AI tools can help structure your thoughts, providing clear outlines and logical flows for your content. Whether you need help with an outline, mindmap, or some other organizing principle.

Well, the intersection of your writing projects with AI starts with the right AI tools—and there are many.

Let’s narrow down the field to find a correct fit for your needs. Here are some general AI writing tools for you to consider. We’ll reference each of these throughout our guide, but you only need one to start with.

• All-in-one AI Writing Platform: AI writing platforms offer specialized features specifically for writing. They have easy-to-use writing templates for various types of writing and long-form document editors for creating longer works. For this, we recommend either Writesonic (read review) or Rytr (read Rytr review).
• An AI Chatbot: Chatbots are one of the most popular AI types to use. They’re flexible since you can interact with them through conversational language. We suggest ChatGPT or Chatsonic as good starter AI chatbots.
• Business and Grammar-Focused AI: If most of your writing is done in the workplace (and you’re not in marketing), we recommend an AI-powered grammar checker. Perhaps the most popular is Grammarly. But it does more than just check grammar and syntax. It also has an integrated AI writer that is very good for business email and other communication. We highly recommend Grammarly to any writer.

There are other AI writers that leverage generative AI well, and we’d highly encourage you to look into them. At the end of this article, we’ve listed them by use-case for those needing specific tools for various writing types (e.g., resumes, books, emails, etc.)

Pros of Writing with AI

You’ll notice a staggering amount of benefits as you explore how AI can fit into your writing and creation workflows. These include:

1. Better Research: AI enhances your ability to dive deep into topics. Your writing will benefit from more knowledge sources and reasoned explanations from AI research.
2. Spend Time on What Matters: Artificial intelligence takes care of repetitive tasks, enabling you to concentrate on the more imaginative elements. We’ll take efficiencies anywhere we can.
3. Versatile Across Different Types of Writing: AI tools are useful across various writing formats, from blogs to business documents and even books.
4. Makes Writing Available to More People: AI democratizes writing and encourages a broader demographic to start drafting their ideas. If you’ve struggled with writing, AI might just be the catalyst you need.

When used correctly, AI writing assistants are perfectly safe to use. Using AI throughout your writing process will save time and enrich your work.

Cons of Using AI in Writing

However, challenges like content inflation, detection of AI-generated text, and ethical concerns about originality and plagiarism loom large. The key is using AI as an assistant rather than replacing human creativity and judgment. Using AI poorly has significant downsides:

• Content Inflation: AI is like the printing press. It makes it so that more work gets published every day. Unfortunately, AI-created work (as opposed to human-created work) is spreading rapidly. This makes content more plentiful but lowers its quality, leaving readers in the lurch.
• Plagiarism Concerns: Most current AI models are trained on copyrighted material. This means that it is very possible that fragments of copyrighted works can appear in the outputs of generative AI tools. Simply copying and pasting that information could land you in plagiarism trouble.
• Loss of Reputation: Some AIs, like ChatGPT, have a very distinctive tone. Readers have developed the ability to quickly sniff low-quality work generated by these tools. If you are trying to publish something that matters for your business, relying too heavily on the exact words that AI creates can tank your reputation and authority.

Case Study of Negative AI Use

This can be seen in a very narrow domain from an SEO case study. This happened with the March 2024 Core Update from Google. Many low-quality publishers and content mills spent most of 2023 creating millions of pages of AI content. And it ranked well—for a while. In March 2024, Google penalized hundreds of websites for low-quality and spam content, most of which was generated via AI tools. Websites went from millions of monthly visitors to just a few thousand overnight. AI content was a short-term play with long-term consequences (even if these domains published human-written content, they’ll have a hard time rebounding).

Data Collected and Shared by NicheSiteMetrics.com

AI writing in other industries (published books, paid email newsletters, etc.) can have its own negative consequences that aren’t worth it. The rest of this guide goes into showing you exactly how to use AI to write while avoiding negative repercussions. There are ways to use it to help you without turning into a huge liability later on.

A Guide to Writing with AI (Step-by-step)

Here’s a step-by-step approach to infusing your writing process with AI. We have tips and tricks but also some warnings for overusing AI.

Step 1: Conduct Topic Research with AI

Research is a foundational part of writing high-quality content. When something is published, someone’s reputation is at stake. Research makes sure that statements, claims, and opinions are backed up to a reasonable degree. Obviously, it’s big for academic and business writing. But it’s also good for other formats as well.

For general writing, like blog articles and thought leadership, Search Engine-based research is wonderful. You can use your preferred AI chatbot, but some good options are Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Perplexity.ai. These are great for finding facts and figures and coming up with new ideas.

Perplexity creates brief, one-page documents explaining a topic and gives references to learn more.

For academic writing, we like to use Consensus.app, an AI journal finder. It digs through academic journals to find relevant articles based on your search term and topic. Its AI also gives a one-sentence summary of the paper and does other cool things to help you find scholarly information quickly.

Less formal writing might need less research, but in our opinion, there’s always something to dig into. Marketing teams often spend a lot of time on their GTM (go-to-market) strategy, which means they do a lot of competitor research. Yes, AI is making that easy, too. Predis.ai is one such tool that helps monitor competitor social profiles. Competitor analysis is a vital part of research for a lot of writing and shouldn’t be shrugged off. Similar research can be done for SEO with AI tools for SEO.

Unless you’re going down unnecessary rabbit holes, research always makes a difference in written works. This goes for books, academic articles, blog posts, and social media posts.

Step 2: Make an Outline Using AI

We find that an outline makes all the difference for writing projects that are more than a couple hundred words. This is because they keep an author on track. It’s just too easy for a writer to get carried away and veer off from the main point.

You should start with your main idea for your outline or content brief. What’s the big takeaway? In academic writing, this is the thesis statement, but it’s just as important as in other types of writing.

Use Google Gemini’s AI for help creating writing outlines

Your outline will start to take shape as you add supporting ideas. If you’re making an agreement or providing a hot-take, your outline should show the steps about how you reached that conclusion. If you’re informing your audience about a process or general piece of knowledge, your outline will reflect the questions that readers often have concerning it. Fiction outlines show the overall plot and development of your story.

AI chatbots are excellent at helping with this because of their conversational nature. Ask one to help you structure your thoughts. Then, ask it to provide other ideas or incorporate any additional thoughts you have. The back and forth is great for creating something you can work with.

Step 3: Write First and Subsequent Drafts

Start by setting the foundation of your piece. Since you already have a written outline, you should try expanding it at this point. You may explore using AI-infused document editors (like those found with Writesonic or WordHero) to help speed up your first draft quickly.

AI Writers with full document editors make it easy to infuse your own writing with AI

We’d recommend that you don’t use AI tools that will generate an entire draft at once. These can go in a different direction than you expected, are usually more basic, and need a lot of editing. You are better off using AI on a line-by-line basis to have the most control. Many AI writers also come with Chrome and desktop extensions, so you can bring generative AI to the tools you already use to write.

Any way you go about it should be about speed and getting a broad version of your ideas on paper. Don’t stress about being perfect. Think of it as a rough draft that you can improve and make better.

Work Through Drafts Until You’re Finished

You’ll certainly run into writer’s block, further questions to research, and other things that slow your writing down. To pick it back up, treat AI like a collaborator. Ask specific questions to help you focus. This helps AI give you useful and interesting information that moves you forward. It can improve your work by bringing in new ideas or facts you haven’t considered.

ChatGPT and other AI Chatbots make it simple to ask questions about your writing and what it thinks you are missing.

However, reflect on the balance between AI-generated content and your own writing. While the exact ratio will vary based on your project and personal preference, ensuring your voice dominates is a good rule. AI writing often sounds robotic and unnatural, often including fluff words that detract from your work. At its worst, it can riddle your writing with generic and repeated phrases.

Make sure your drafts accurately represent your thoughts and opinions. Liberally make revisions, subtractions, and additions to any content generated by AI. Be cautious when considering sentences from AI, as the temptation to use them “as-is” can be strong. Original writing is often the best and safest.

Remember, if an AI writing tool writes you something, it can easily do something similar for another person. And if you publish something in your name (or your company’s), you are responsible for it—even if AI generated it for you.

Step 4: Create Rich Content Using AI

Creating rich content for written works is a surefire way to make your message more accessible and memorable. These elements let readers understand and digest your information in multiple ways, meaning they’ll understand better what you tried to communicate. This works for fiction literature as much as it does for business blogs. You just need to know what AI can do for you when creating multimedia assets for your written works.

Enriching Content with Multimedia

AI makes it easier to include multimedia in your writing. With AI image generation tools, you can create custom visuals that align perfectly with your text, making your articles, newsletters, or business presentations more engaging. Canva’s AI helps make custom images and infographics. Using premade image templates alongside advanced generative AI makes these assets very easy to create. There are dozens of AI image generators that can create unique images.

AI can also help create videos and edit audio for podcasts. Both of these mediums are great avenues for disseminating your message.

AI for Generating FAQs, Schemas, and Other SEO Essentials

AI can assist in generating comprehensive FAQs relevant to your content and addressing common questions your audience might have. This adds value to your content and improves its visibility in search engines, especially in Google’s People Also Ask (PAA), Search Generative Experience (SGE), and rich snippets.

Similarly, AI tools can generate schema markup for your content, making it more structured and easily interpretable by search engines. Feed an AI chatbot your content and ask what kind of generally acceptable schema it can create. Have it generate the JSON-LD for that content for any appropriate entity found in your content or web page.

ChatGPT can easily create schema markup, markdown tables, page meta descriptions, and more.

AI tools for SEO help ensure that search engines can easily discover your content. From generating keyword-rich titles and meta descriptions to optimizing image alt attributes, AI can automate the tedious aspects of SEO, making your content more likely to rank higher in search results.

These optimization techniques can also be applied to academic writing since articles can be discovered by searching academic databases. Direct keyword and topical matching is more important for these less sophisticated search engines.

Step 5: Substantive and Copy Editing with AI

Ensuring the accuracy and polish of your content is as crucial as the initial creation. Substantive editing and copy editing are essential steps where AI can significantly enhance efficiency.

Substantive editing looks into the structure, content, and flow of your writing. This is often the most brutal of editing, and you tend to see a lot of “red ink.” AI tools can assist by suggesting areas where arguments may lack support and proposing enhancements. For example, AI chatbots can be asked to analyze your text for logical flow and suggest reordering sections for better narrative progression. This may help ensure that each part of your content contributes meaningfully to the whole.

Guard against plagiarism by using tools like Copyscape or Grammarly’s plagiarism checker. It’s essential to verify that the AI’s contributions are original and, when necessary, properly cite sources. This step guarantees the integrity of your work and protects your credibility as an author.

Winston AI shows which lines are likely human or AI-written and also provides a plagiarism report.

When it comes to copy editing, AI shines by offering advanced grammar, punctuation, and spelling checks beyond what traditional word processors can achieve. Tools like Grammarly and the Hemingway App further assess sentence structure, offer synonyms to avoid repetition, and suggest simpler alternatives to complex phrases. This polishes your writing and improves readability, making your content more accessible to a wider audience.

Example of Grammarly shortening a sentence and rephrasing it so it is more readable

The Hemingway App highlights sentences that are hard to read, passive voice usage, and adverbs that could be replaced, pushing you towards crisp, clear, and active writing.

Hemingway Editor visually shows you where your writing may be confusing

Different Use Cases for AI Writing

Writing is important in multiple industries and areas of life. Various types of writing use different methods, structures, and rules. Hence, there is a need for different AI tools.

How to Use AI for Writing Emails

There are many AI email writing tools you can use to streamline your email writing process. Whether marketing, sales, or general communication, emails are a medium all their own. They often have to be very brief and highly engaging. Most emails go unread, so to stand out, subject lines, pre-headings, and the whole body have to be engaging. This includes images as well.

AI Email Writers like Hoppy Copy are uniquely positioned to help with this kind of writing. Trained using successful marketing and sales emails, Hoppy Copy understands the cadence.

How to Write Resumes Using AI

Resume writing is very specific. They are full of action verbs with a results orientation. AI can help you best position yourself to potential employers. AI Resume builders like KickResume are trained on successful resume examples to help you write and design your resume to target specific jobs and stand out from the other candidates.

How to Write Essays and Academic Works With AI

We all know the challenges of essay and academic writing. There is a strong need for formal speech and logical coherence between sentences. There are powerful AI Essay Writing tools you can use, like Jasper or Rytr, to streamline the entire writing process, including research, formatting, and editing.

However, Grammarly provides one of the best toolsets for the job. Since most academic writing is written by hand, Grammarly shores up the grammar, syntax, and readability of writing. You can also set goals for each piece of writing to make sure to strike the right tone.

How AI can Help You Write a Book

Stories are obviously a unique type of writing. But AI can help create engaging dialogue, move a plot along, and build worlds that readers want to embody. If you’re a fiction and story writer, Sudowrite is just the AI story writer for you. It helps you jot down your ideas and direction, set your genre, and create characters. Its paid version does a pretty good job of retaining these details to make a consistent story from chapter to chapter.

Get Started On Your Next Writing Project

There’s nothing like the satisfaction of finishing up a writing project and sending it off to readers (we say as we wrap this article up). There is a lot of satisfaction in nurturing an idea to life. From conception to publishing, writing has its many challenges.

Thankfully, AI tools can insert themselves effortlessly at various parts of the writing process. No matter what you choose to write, AI can help you achieve your dreams and writing goals.

We’ve covered a good many tools and how they fit into various writing processes. If you need more recommendations, we have them. Check out our articles on the best AI writers, AI rewriting software, and AI email creators. You should also see our guides on finding the best AI content detectors and grammar checkers.

FAQ

Answers to more questions on the intersection of writing and AI.

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