Editing · 7 min
How to edit an AI draft in five minutes (the field guide)
A repeatable pass you can run on any AI draft — emails, posts, articles — that consistently produces something worth sending.
- 1
Minute one — kill the opening
AI drafts almost always start with a throat-clearing sentence: 'In today's fast-paced world,' 'In the realm of...,' 'It's worth noting that.' Delete it. Start with the actual point. If the second sentence works as the new opening, you are done. If not, write a single sentence that names what the reader cares about. This change alone resets the entire tone of the piece.
- 2
Minute two — fix the rhythm
Read aloud. In every paragraph, find the longest sentence and either break it in two or cut a clause. Find any consecutive short sentences and merge if it improves flow. The aim is not random variation but the cadence of someone thinking — long enough to develop, short enough to land.
- 3
Minute three — name one specific thing per paragraph
Find the most generic noun in each paragraph ('solutions,' 'users,' 'experiences,' 'opportunities') and replace it with what it actually refers to ('the cancellation flow,' 'finance leads at small SaaS companies,' 'a refund within five days'). One substitution per paragraph is enough.
- 4
Minute four — verify the claims
Scan for statistics, named sources, statements of fact about your product, dates, names. Each one is a possible hallucination. Resolve them — confirm, correct, or cut. If a claim cannot be verified quickly, replace it with a softer version you can defend.
- 5
Minute five — write the ending
Delete whatever summary the model produced. Write one sentence — a concrete next step, a single image, or the sharpest restatement of your central claim. This is the part the reader will remember. Make it yours.
Common pitfalls
- •Trying to polish before cutting. If a paragraph is filler, polish does not save it.
- •Replacing every generic noun. One per paragraph is plenty; more starts to feel forced.
- •Skipping verification because the model 'sounds confident.' Confidence is uncorrelated with accuracy.
- •Adding emoji or affected typos to 'humanise.' These lower detector scores and lower writing quality simultaneously.
Frequently asked
Does this work for long articles?
Yes — apply the five-step pass per section rather than per piece. Allocate roughly five minutes per thousand words once you are practised.
What if the draft is genuinely bad?
Often the right answer is to ask for a new draft with a better prompt rather than rescue a poor one. Editing time should not exceed the time it would take to redraft.
Can I skip steps?
The opening, the verification, and the ending are non-negotiable. Rhythm and specificity can be skipped on very short drafts where the gain is small.
Run the workflow on a real draft
Open the rewrite engine and apply the steps to writing you actually have to ship today.
Start rewriting