ChatGPT for Drafting & Brainstorming
ChatGPT is the AI tool most people meet first, and it remains the best starting point for fast, high-volume creative work — brainstorming hooks, drafting outlines, generating headlines, banging out short copy, and producing first drafts that you can polish later. In this lesson you will run six concrete drills inside ChatGPT that you can copy directly into your own work.
The goal is not to admire what ChatGPT can do. It is to get you typing, getting outputs, and seeing the speed difference for yourself.
What You'll Learn
- The six core drafting moves ChatGPT does best
- Real prompts for headlines, hooks, outlines, and short copy
- How to use ChatGPT's Custom Instructions to lock in your voice
- The "draft a week of content in one session" workflow
Drill 1: 20 Hooks in 30 Seconds
A "hook" is the first sentence of any piece of writing — the line that decides whether someone keeps reading. Most beginners spend 40 minutes on a hook and still produce something average. ChatGPT can give you 20 options to pick from.
Open ChatGPT and run:
Act as a copywriter. Give me 20 different opening sentences for a blog post titled "Why I Quit My Side Hustle After 6 Months." Vary the styles: question hooks, contrarian hooks, story hooks, statistic hooks, list hooks, second-person hooks. One sentence each.
Read all 20. Pick the one that gives you a small jolt of "I want to read more." That is your hook. Total time: under two minutes.
Drill 2: Outline Before Drafting
Never let ChatGPT write a long piece without an outline first. The outline gives you a chance to fix the structure before the words are committed.
Run:
Outline a 1,000-word blog post titled "Why I Quit My Side Hustle After 6 Months." Audience: aspiring 20-something founders. Tone: honest, slightly self-deprecating. Use 4 H2 sections with 2-3 bullet points under each. The post should end with one piece of practical advice.
Now read the outline. Move sections around, kill ones that feel weak, add anything missing. Then say:
Now write the full draft based on the outline I approved.
You will get a much better article this way than from a one-shot "write me a blog post" prompt.
Drill 3: Headline Workshopping
Headlines do 80% of the click-through work. Write yours the way professional copywriters do — generate 30 and pick.
I have written a blog post about how I got my first internship by emailing 50 founders directly. Generate 30 headlines for it. Use a mix of "How I" stories, listicles, contrarian takes, and curiosity gaps. Each under 70 characters. Tag the strongest 5.
ChatGPT is genuinely good at this. The shortlist of 5 will usually contain at least one excellent headline. Pick that one.
Drill 4: Adapt One Idea for Three Channels
Any idea worth writing is worth writing three times — for blog, LinkedIn, and X.
Take the idea "Most college side hustles fail because students underestimate the boring middle months." Write three versions:
- A 600-word blog post intro
- A 200-word LinkedIn post with a hook, story, and lesson
- A 280-character X post with a strong opening line
You now have a week of content from a single idea. We will return to this multi-channel pattern in Module 3.
Drill 5: Short Copy at Volume
Email subject lines, ad copy, taglines, button text, push notifications — short copy is hard. ChatGPT excels at it because the constraint is built in.
I run a free Substack about AI for college students. Generate 15 subject line variants for an email titled "Three ChatGPT prompts to write your final paper." Mix curiosity, urgency, and value. Each under 50 characters.
Open the variants in a doc, A/B in your head, send the winner.
Drill 6: Custom Instructions (Set Once, Forever)
ChatGPT lets you set "Custom Instructions" — background context the model sees on every chat. Once set, you stop re-typing your context.
In ChatGPT, click your name → Customize ChatGPT. Fill in:
What would you like ChatGPT to know about you?
I am a third-year university student studying [your subject]. I write a personal blog about [your topic] for an audience of fellow students and early-career professionals. My voice is [warm, slightly nerdy, never corporate]. I value clarity, specific examples, and short sentences.
How would you like ChatGPT to respond?
Default to short answers unless I ask for long. Skip preamble like "Sure, here is your..." and start with the answer. Match the voice I described. Avoid em-dashes. Avoid the words "delve," "leverage," and "unlock." Push back on weak ideas instead of being agreeable.
These two boxes alone will improve every future ChatGPT response by 30%.
The "Week of Content" Workflow
Once a week, sit down for one focused 60-minute ChatGPT session and produce:
- Three blog post outlines (~10 min)
- One full blog post draft from the strongest outline (~15 min)
- Five LinkedIn posts (~10 min)
- Ten X posts (~10 min)
- One newsletter with 30 subject line options (~15 min)
That is one workweek of content in one hour. The trick is that the prompts feed each other — the blog post becomes LinkedIn posts, which become X posts, which become newsletter sections. Module 3 covers this in detail.
When NOT to Use ChatGPT
A few moments when you should switch tools instead:
- Heavy editing of existing prose → Claude does this better.
- Anything needing live web data → Use Gemini or Perplexity.
- Long documents (4,000+ words in one go) → Use Claude.
- PDF reading → Use Claude or Gemini.
ChatGPT shines at fast, creative, short-to-medium drafting. Lean on it for that.
A Quick Practice Exercise
Set your Custom Instructions right now (instructions in Drill 6). Then run Drill 4 with one of YOUR own ideas — a topic you actually care about. Save the three outputs (blog intro, LinkedIn post, X post) somewhere. You will use them in Module 3.
Key Takeaways
- ChatGPT is the best AI tool for fast brainstorming, hooks, outlines, headlines, short copy, and first drafts.
- Always outline before drafting long pieces — fix the structure before committing to words.
- Generate 20-30 options for hooks and headlines, then pick the best — never settle for the first answer.
- ChatGPT Custom Instructions let you set your voice and constraints once and benefit on every future chat. Do this today.
- The "week of content in 60 minutes" workflow uses ChatGPT to produce blog, LinkedIn, X, and newsletter content in one session by reusing ideas across formats.