Five different drafts from Claude, not five clones

Anthropic's prompting guide says examples steer the format, the tone and the structure. Claude reads three examples as three copies of one pattern, so it repeats the pattern.

The fix has two parts. Tell Claude what the examples are for, and give it different material for each draft.

Add these to any drafting prompt.

1. 1

   Examples set voice only. Write: "Use my examples for my voice only, never as a template."

2. 2

   Ask for a spread. Write: "Give me five drafts, from safe to bold."

3. 3

   One fact per draft. Write: "Every draft must use a different fact from this list."

Line two sets the ladder: clean and professional, conversational and warm, bold and direct, a surprising angle, and one that pushes the boundary. Five drafts on the same fact can still say the same thing, which is why line three matters.

Before you run the prompt, paste in at least five facts that are true. Good sources:

• A customer quote, with permission
• A result from your own work, with the real number
• A mistake you fixed and what it taught you
• The question you get every week
• An opinion you hold that others in your field do not

Claude is told to take its quotes from your list instead of making them up, so the drafts stay closer to the truth. Read every draft for details you never gave it before you post.

Fill in the curly-brace parts, then paste it into a new chat. Paste your best past post in first as the example, then add one or two more.

Picture a six-person bookkeeping firm that serves local tradespeople. The owner wants a short LinkedIn post about getting paperwork in on time. She pastes in two posts she wrote last year, then adds five facts from her own work:

1. A client quote: "I stopped dreading the quarter end."
2. A result: clients who sent receipts weekly stopped needing late-night catch-up sessions.
3. A mistake: we once waited for clients to send everything at the end of the month. It never worked.
4. A question we get every week: "Do I really need to keep every receipt?"
5. An opinion: a shoebox of receipts is a system, just a bad one.

Claude comes back with five drafts. Each one opens with the fact it used, quoted word for word. Draft 1 builds on the client quote and reads calm and tidy. Draft 3 takes the shoebox opinion and says it plainly. Draft 4 starts from the weekly question and answers it. Then come the five one-line notes on how they differ.

Notice what the facts did. The five drafts could not collapse into one post, because each had a different starting point: a feeling, a habit, a failure, a question and a blunt opinion. The ladder changed the tone. The fact list changed the substance. You need both.

Her next step is not to post draft 1 because it came first. She reads all five, picks draft 3, and notices its last line tells every reader to send receipts weekly, which is stronger than she would say to a new client. She softens that line herself. Then she asks Claude what made draft 3 different, and saves the answer with her examples for next time.

Read all five and post the one that sounds most like you. You are the editor, so change any line that feels off before it goes out.

Then ask Claude: "What made draft {NUMBER} different from the others?" Add that answer to your examples next time. Over a few rounds your examples get better, and the drafts get closer to you.

Claude follows your instructions literally. When drafts match, look at the prompt first. These are the usual causes.

Mistakes that cause clones

1. 1

   Pasting one long example. One example with a strong shape pulls every draft toward it. Use two or three short posts, and make them different from each other in length and opening.

2. 2

   Leaving out the voice-only line. Without it, Claude tends to treat the examples as a template. Keep the line "Do NOT copy their structure, opening line, length or ending" in the prompt.

3. 3

   Giving five facts that are really one fact. A quote, a result and an opinion about the same job will still produce similar drafts. Pick facts from different corners of your work.

4. 4

   Asking for five drafts on a vague topic. "Write about our service" gives Claude nothing to separate the drafts. Name the topic in one sentence, and say who the post is for.

5. 5

   Posting the first draft you read. The ladder runs from safe to bold, so your best draft is often the third or fourth. Read all five before choosing.

Common failures and fixes

Most failures come back to the fact list. If the facts are thin, the drafts will be thin. If a fact is vague, such as "customers like us", Claude may fill the gap with something that sounds true. Write each fact as a sentence you could say out loud to a customer.

A quick check before you post: put your fact list next to the chosen draft and underline every claim in the draft. Each underlined claim should match a line on your list or in your examples. If one does not, cut it or replace it with something true. Expect to find something on the first pass, most often in a draft's last line. Check again after every rewrite.

Also read the bold drafts with extra care. Draft 5 pushes the boundary on purpose, so it may overstate. You decide what your business is willing to say in public.