Why a three-word brief can only produce filler
Ask for 800 words on digital marketing and you get the average of everything ever written on digital marketing. That average is the thing readers recognise instantly — the opening about a rapidly evolving landscape, the four subheadings anyone could have guessed, the conclusion that restates the subheadings.
The fault is not the model's. That brief withheld three things it needed — who is reading, what single claim the piece must land, and which obvious ground to skip. With none of them supplied, covering the topic broadly is the only thing left to do.
Rewrite it as 800 words for the owner of a single-outlet restaurant in Pune, arguing that a Google Business listing returns more than paid ads under a ₹20,000 monthly budget, skipping social media entirely. Same tool, same model, and a draft you could put your name to.
What a brief needs before you press generate
Name the reader, not the category. Small business owners is a category; a chartered accountant with four staff who has never run an ad is a reader, and it tells the draft what to explain and what to assume is already known. Most of the gap in quality sits here.
Then give it one claim to argue. A piece that says five things says none of them, while a piece arguing that hiring a junior in Bengaluru costs far more than the salary line suggests has somewhere to go. The claim can be wrong — you will edit it — but it has to exist.
Last, say what to leave out. No history of the topic, no definitions, no closing summary removes the three paragraphs you would have deleted anyway. Format, tone and word count then work as instructions rather than decoration, because 300 words of persuasive product description behaves nothing like 900 words of explanation.
What the first draft still gets wrong
Treat every fact in the output as unverified. Figures, dates, statute names, GST rates, prices and the attribution of quotes are all things a language model will produce confidently and get wrong, because it is assembling plausible sentences rather than looking anything up. Check each one before the piece goes anywhere.
The prose has habits too. Sentences arrive at a uniform length, paragraphs open with In today's and Moreover, and the first paragraph usually restates the brief before the piece properly begins. Delete that paragraph, break the rhythm in two sentences out of every three, and most of the tell goes with it.
What it cannot supply is anything only you know — the objection your customers actually raise, the figure from last quarter, the reason the previous campaign failed. It does not search for anything either, so recent events and your own data sit outside it. Expect a structure worth editing, not a finished piece.