In short
A profile is only as good as the writing it's built from. Use three to ten authorised samples from the same voice, written to a similar standard. A few consistent samples beat a large mixed pile every time — and if a profile feels generic, the fix is almost always better samples, not more tweaking.
Building a profile takes a couple of minutes. Choosing the right samples to build it from is where the quality actually comes from — and it's worth slowing down for, because every draft that profile later produces inherits the choices you make here.
What makes a good writing sample
- Use writing that genuinely represents the voice you want to reuse — pieces the person would happily publish again today.
- Prefer samples from the same person or brand, written in a similar context and to a similar standard.
- Include a mix of lengths where you can: a short post shows sentence rhythm, a longer article shows how the writer builds an argument, a quick email shows their conversational register.
Avoid
Skip drafts the writer wasn't happy with, pieces that reflect someone else's heavy edits more than their own voice, or anything unrepresentative of how they write now. A profile built from off samples will sound off, even when the analysis is technically fine.
How many samples to use
Aim for three to ten authorised samples. Three is the practical minimum — below that, there isn't enough material to find a consistent pattern. Ten is a sensible upper bound; beyond it you tend to get diminishing returns for the extra effort.
And more is not automatically better. A longer, more varied set can actually make a profile weaker if the writing inside it pulls in different directions. Three samples that clearly agree on tone will usually produce a sharper profile than ten that don't.
When to start a new profile instead of reusing one
A profile represents one voice. If the voice you need is meaningfully different — a different audience, a different register, a different person — create a new profile rather than stretching an existing one to cover both. A founder's casual Slack messages and their formal investor updates are two voices, not one. Profiles are cheap to create; one trying to do two jobs at once usually does neither well.
If the output feels generic
- Check the sample quality first — generic samples produce generic profiles.
- Rebuild the profile with clearer, more distinctive writing rather than hand-editing every draft after the fact.
- Avoid samples mixed from multiple sources or contexts — inconsistent input tends to average itself into something bland.
Nine times out of ten, "the output feels generic" is really "the samples were generic." Fixing it at the profile stage saves you correcting the same thing on every draft afterwards.