Write Beyond Borders With ChatGPT

Connect With Every Reader

April 14, 2023

“Walk with me for a while, my friend—you in my shoes, I in yours—and then let us talk.”

- Richelle E. Goodrich

In today’s email:  

  • AI Write Byte 🖋️ - How ChatGPT can produce a "regional audience cheat sheet" to help you connect with readers from unfamiliar cultures

  • AI Teaches Writing📚 - Watch ChatGPT break down a gripping paragraph from American Psycho

  • AI Meme Of The Day 😂- I apologize in advance

AI Write Byte 🖋️

ChatGPT And The "Regional Audience Cheat Sheet"

As writers, we strive to connect with our audience. There often comes a time when the audience we want to connect with or a culture we're writing about isn't familiar to us.

Example scenarios where this is important:

  • Writing for a foreign publication

  • Writing an article/blog post about a foreign culture

  • Crafting dialogue for characters from a specific culture

  • Writing marketing content for a product targeting a specific culture

  • Creating social media content that appeals to a specific regional audience

  • Writing speeches for an audience that includes people from different regions

I use ChatGPT to produce a "Regional Audience Cheat Sheet". It's a tool that helps writers understand the nuances of a particular region's culture, customs, and language before/while writing.

It'll help to connect with foreign audiences or just make it clear to the reader that you've done your research.

Here's the prompt template. Copy and paste it into ChatGPT after filling in the blanks you feel are most relevant. I'll give you an example of a cheat sheet I came up with afterward.

"I'm a writer. To really connect with my readers, it's important to make it clear that I have an understanding of the culture I’m writing about, especially when it’s a region I'm not familiar with. I want you to create a "Regional Audience Cheat Sheet" that I can refer to when writing my article. Please take the following information into account:

Who I Am: [A brief, 1-2 sentence explanation of who you are - eg. a fashion blogger]

Topic or theme of my writing: [Insert topic or theme]

Target audience: [Insert target audience]

Region or culture I want to connect with: [Insert region or culture]

Tone or style I want to convey in my writing: [Insert tone or style]

The cheat sheet should be in the form of a table containing ideas for the following list of items. Please take the information above into account to ensure your responses are relevant. If the information isn't relevant, don't include it. Format the ideas into a neat table please - it'll form the "Regional Audience Cheat Sheet" I can refer to when writing my article.

- Local knowledge

- Cultural references

- Slang/regional synonyms

- Expressions

- Local traditions or customs

**End Prompt**

Here's an example of a scenario where a writer put this ChatGPT prompt to use. He wanted to create a Regional Audience Cheat Sheet before writing an article on the global influence of Parisian men's fashion.

Here's the cheat sheet ChatGPT came up with.

As you can see, it's pretty impressive.

While not all of the information is directly relevant to Parisian men's style, the writer can easily make references to the items mentioned in the table as and when he feels like it.

The occasional French term, the odd reference to a landmark - they're all ingredients he can use to add more flavor and zest to the article.

Now, you may need a couple of iterations to really get the cheat sheet you want.

If you'd prefer that the suggestions/ideas in the response were even more relevant to the topic, ask ChatGPT to revise them for you. Eventually, you should end up with something pretty impactful.

Think of ChatGPT as a personal tour guide, showing you the parts of the city most relevant to your writing.

AI Teaches Writing 📚

This paragraph from American Psycho is spine-chilling. I asked ChatGPT what makes it so effective.

“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”

– Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

AI Meme Of The Day 😂

That's all for today folks! Another one is just around the corner.

Happy writing.

Best, Misya from The Pen Pivot