Write Like You Tune

Write Like You: Tune

Improve your write-like-you voice skill from one before/after pair. write-like-you writes; this tunes it. The whole skill turns on one risk: overfitting, baking this-piece-only language into a rule. Learn the durable pattern, not the sentence.

Apply edits like good skill-writing: prefer a general rule over this-piece phrasing. Sharpen an existing line before adding a new one, and prune anything the file already says.

Steps

1. Get both versions. before = the AI draft; after = your rewrite of the same piece. Done when you hold both for one piece; if not, stop and ask.
2. Diff across six axes: word choice · rhythm/punctuation · openers/endings · additions · cuts · tone. Done when every material difference is named.
3. Keep only durable patterns. Restate each difference as a general rule in your own vocabulary, then ask: would it apply to a different piece? Drop the rest. Done when every kept rule names no phrase from this piece: the overfitting check.
4. Route each to its existing home in write-like-you (invent no new section): a hard rule, a banned-tell row, or an exemplar quote, the sole home where this-piece wording may live. Prefer sharpening an existing line to adding one; dedupe against what's there. Done when each candidate is an add or edit against a named existing line.
5. Validate non-obvious rules against a held-out pair. When another saved before/after pair is on hand (step 8 builds this bank over time), regenerate that pair's before with vs. without the rule and keep the rule only if its output moves toward that pair's after. That result is its evidence. A rule that helps only the pair it came from is overfit; demote it to an exemplar. Only one pair so far? You can't hold out yet, so treat it as n=1 (see Traps). Skip self-evident rules (e.g. a punctuation ban).
6. Present the proposal table, one row each: finding · home · add|edit · exact old→new · why durable (+ evidence). Done when you can accept a row and its exact edit is already written out.
7. The gate. Write nothing to the voice skill until you accept a row.
8. Apply accepted rows to write-like-you (every copy you keep), then confirm the copies match. Save the before/after pair somewhere durable for provenance and revert. Done when only accepted rows changed and the pair is saved.

Traps (diagnose a bad run)

• Overfitting: a rule carries a phrase from this one piece. Generalize it, or demote the phrase to an exemplar.
• Bloat: a new row where an existing line already covers it. Edit that line instead.
• n=1: one pair rarely proves a pattern; low-generality candidates get dropped or demoted to an exemplar.