How to Sound Like a Human
It's harder than you think.
Thanks to the ongoing AI revolution, robotic writing has never been more in vogue. But as it turns out, anyone can be responsible for clunky wording and language that just…doesn’t quite make sense, myself very much included.
How did we get this way? I think it starts in school. If you’re on a “high achiever” or college-bound path, you’re going to learn to write the way universities want us to write, which is the notoriously incomprehensible form of communication known as “academic writing.”
Take a writing job after college where your audience is average consumers, and you’re in for some whiplash. Us copywriters are typically trying for about a sixth grade reading level.
There are tons of advantages in writing this way. Your writing becomes more accessible to non-native speakers, who may be passable in English but struggle with denser texts. Even among the most literate populations, people are busy, and those who are up for reading Dickens will just, you know, read Dickens, not you. We have to write for the skimmers as well as the close analyzers.
(Are you skimming this essay right now? Hi! I acknowledge you, and I appreciate you nonetheless.)
Personally, I’ve often described my vocabulary as characteristic of someone “who grew up reading much more than they spoke,” so believe me, I learned these lessons the hard way. My early plays were full of dialogue in complete sentences with grammatically correct syntax—positively cringy to hear out loud. I came into the professional world writing like an English major.
On one notable call with a difficult-to-please client, their brand director reviewed a set of email subject lines I provided and insisted that “people don’t speak this way.” With all the bravado of youth, I responded, “Who specifically do you mean by ‘people’?” (The unspoken second part of that thought? *I* would speak that way.)
A great way to break out of this tendency toward, let’s say verboseness (definitely not a sixth grade reading level word!), is to write for the sort of very short media where every character is precious. Once you’ve condensed your essay’s worth of thoughts and ideas into a 250x300 pixel advertisement or a single line of instructional copy in an app, you start to notice how much of what you want to write on a regular basis just isn’t necessary.
So, how does one “write like a human”? Well, first you have to get anything at all down on paper, which can often feel like the hardest part. But assuming you’ve got that first draft already, here’s my three-step method for turning it into something that sounds like a human wrote it:
1. Can it be shorter? Make it shorter.
“But,” you may be thinking, “that’s not even how people talk! People ramble!” Believe me, I know. If you’re like me and read a lot of podcast transcripts because you have trouble understanding audio-only content, you know just how indirect and meandering people really are when they speak.
As it turns out, though, we’re not trying to accurately mimic real life; written texts are a heightened form of reality. Think about how on scripted TV shows, we never see people go to the bathroom, and characters always jump straight into phone conversations without saying “hello.” When we read, we expect to see the succinctness and clarity of thought we like to believe we express out loud (but absolutely do not, for the record).
Some writers like the adage that your first draft should always be your longest draft, and from there you should only cut. I’m not that extreme, but I do think writing gets better when you go through it with a fine tooth comb, examining every word, phrase and sentence to decide if it helps say what you’re trying to say or if you’d be better off without it. Develop a ruthless inner editor.
(Side note: If you have particularly strong opinions about the Oxford comma or emdashes, you probably use too many. Shorter sentences are easier to understand. Just add a period instead.)
Yes, there’s something to be said for the rhythm of alternating shorter and longer sentences that we find pleasing, and identical syntax in sentence after sentence can also read as robotic. But for the most part? You probably need to go shorter.
2. Can you use smaller words? Use smaller words.
This is often what people mean when they say a piece of writing doesn’t sound like a real person would say it: You’re using words that sound like they belong in a textbook, not coming out of a person’s mouth.
Is there a tinge of anti-intellectual sentiment to this? Sure. But using big words when smaller ones will do also makes a statement about who your writing is for, and who it isn’t for.
Even if the vibe you’re trying to give off is intelligence (you’re writing from the perspective of a college professor, say, or a scientific company), sounding smart is more about confidence than it is your specific vocabulary. If you simply must use an SAT word because it’s the only thing that makes sense for what you’re trying to say, can you at least couch it in enough context that people who don’t know the word can still pick up the meaning?
3. Can you add personality NOW? Yes, but be smart about it.
If you’ve really done your homework and rid your writing of all unnecessary sentences, replaced all overly complex vocabulary and ensured readability above all else…you’re probably left with some pretty boring writing.
So why did I just make you go through all that? This way, when we add personality back in, we can do it intentionally. If we decide to use some weird syntax or bigger words than are ideal for your intended audience, we understand the trade-offs.
Let’s start by thinking about exactly what voice and tone you want to get across. In marketing land, we do this through the creation of brand guidelines. A kind of cliche but still useful framework I like for articulating the tenets of a brand voice is an exercise called “X but not Y.”
Think about the words that best define your character, brand, personal authorial voice or whatever else, and then think about words that are similar but don’t quite nail it for some reason. A very common example of this is “conversational but not casual.” You want to use words that your reader would say in normal conversation so they’re comfortable with you, but you don’t want to fall so deeply into slang that they start to distrust your expertise or professionalism.
Some other examples:
Frank but not rude
Cheerful but not out-of-touch
Cute but not childish
And as much as this is a corporate branding exercise, I think it can be valuable for fiction too. Maybe your protagonist is “self-deprecating but not defeatist” or “boastful but not without reason.” The important part of this framework is the nuance, the space between the two descriptors. I regularly write for two brands, one of which has “passionate” in its voice and tone guidelines and the other of which has “compassionate,” and boy are they different.
Now that you know exactly what kind of personality you want to imbue your writing with, you can start to make decisions about how that will come across. In my novel, one character has a lot of trouble acknowledging her emotions, so she often recognizes the physical manifestations of them (face flushed, hands balled into fists) before she does her actual feelings. Another has dealt with being an ambitious woman in a society that doesn’t really have a place for that by becoming obsessed with finding a good husband, refusing to acknowledge that she could be using her considerable talents in any other way.
As a brand, you might decide to have all marketing copy lead with “you” statements instead of “we” because you want to be customer-focused, or always use contractions to sound more conversational, or express excitement by using lots of extra letters in words (“Yessssss…”) because that makes you sound more relatable to a younger audience.
For funsies, let’s do an “X but not Y” exercise on the Natalie Writes Things Substack newsletter. I would call my voice here:
personal but not navel-gazing: I write from my own experiences, but this newsletter isn’t about me, per se
helpful but not pushy: I like offering tips, but what you do with them is up to you
whimsical but not distracting: Thus all the Eliza pictures
As you may have noticed, everything about “writing like a human” is incredibly subjective. While we writers do our best to be understood by everyone, we know that’s an impossible goal. All we can do is try our best, take feedback gracefully and keep on writing.