Using AI to Start your Writing Process

Artificial Intelligence can help you develop ideas for writing.  This statement comes with a disclaimer – you need to have some of your own ideas first, and you need to hone what AI gives you to align with your own ideas.  However, understanding what AI can and cannot do may help you develop ideas for writing.

Use AI to help you decide on and narrow your topic

If you have a vague idea about what you want to write about, AI can help you narrow and specify your ideas.

Let’s say that you want to write about the concept of conformity.  Ask AI to create different perspectives on a broad topic such as this one as a way to focus your ideas. You could choose just one perspective to write about using your own ideas, or just seeing the variety of perspectives could help you create a new narrow perspective to write about.

Prompt given to ChatGPT

Provide different perspectives on the topic of conformity that offer different ways of approaching and narrowing this broad topic for a college essay. (4/28/26).

AI’s Response

“Conformity is a broad topic, but it becomes much more interesting (and essay-worthy) when you approach it from a specific angle or tension. Here are several distinct perspectives you could use to frame a college essay, each offering a different direction and kind of argument:

1. Psychological Perspective: Why People Conform

Focus on how and why individuals conform.

• You might draw on ideas from social psychology, like peer pressure, fear of rejection, or the desire for belonging.
• Explore concepts like groupthink or obedience to authority.
• Possible angle: Is conformity a rational survival strategy rather than a weakness?

2. Ethical Perspective: When Is Conformity Wrong?

Examine conformity as a moral issue.

• Consider moments when conforming means going along with injustice or harm.
• You could analyze historical or contemporary examples where people followed the crowd despite ethical concerns.
• Possible angle: At what point does conformity become complicity?

3. Cultural Perspective: Conformity Across Societies

Compare how different cultures view conformity.

• Some cultures emphasize collectivism (group harmony), while others emphasize individualism.
• You could explore how expectations differ in education, family roles, or workplace behavior.
• Possible angle: Is conformity always restrictive, or can it strengthen community?

4. Educational Perspective: Conformity in Schooling

Look at how educational systems encourage or discourage conformity.

• Standardized testing, rigid curricula, and grading systems can reward “right answers” over creativity.
• Alternatively, some classrooms encourage independent thinking.
• Possible angle: Does the education system produce critical thinkers or compliant individuals?

5. Identity Perspective: Conformity vs. Authenticity

Focus on the tension between fitting in and being oneself.

• Explore how people adjust their behavior, appearance, or beliefs to align with social expectations.
• This works well with personal experience.
• Possible angle: What is lost—or gained—when individuals conform to fit in?

6. Power and Authority Perspective

Analyze how institutions or leaders use conformity.

• Governments, corporations, and social systems often rely on conformity to maintain order.
• You could examine propaganda, workplace culture, or social norms.
• Possible angle: Who benefits from conformity, and who is disadvantaged by it?

7. Resistance Perspective: Nonconformity and Change

Shift focus to those who resist conformity.

• Social movements, innovators, and activists often challenge norms.
• Consider whether change is possible without nonconformity.
• Possible angle: Is nonconformity necessary for progress, or does it create instability?

8. Technology and Social Media Perspective

Explore how modern platforms shape conformity.

• Algorithms, trends, and online validation (likes, shares) can pressure people to align with popular views.
• You could also discuss cancel culture or echo chambers.
• Possible angle: Does social media increase conformity while giving the illusion of individuality?

9. Evolutionary Perspective: Conformity as Survival

Take a long-view, biological angle.

• Humans evolved in groups where cooperation and conformity increased survival.
• This can complicate the idea that conformity is purely negative.
• Possible angle: Is conformity an innate human trait rather than a social flaw?

10. Paradox Perspective: The Illusion of Individuality

Explore contradictions within conformity.

• For example, people often conform to be different (fashion trends, subcultures).
• This creates a paradox where individuality itself becomes standardized.
• Possible angle: Can true individuality exist within a culture that markets uniqueness?”

A variation of the prompt used for this example might be to simply ask AI to generate different questions about your broad topic to help you narrow it.

Use AI to evaluate the strength of your working thesis assertion

Ask AI to evaluate your working thesis using key parts of the thesis sentence explanation from this text.  Note that you can ethically feed the explanatory portions that are not attributed to outside sources into AI since the explanatory portions all have creative commons designation.

For example, your prompt might be something like this:

Evaluate this working thesis sentence [insert your working thesis sentence here] in terms of these criteria:

In addition to having a topic and an angle, a good thesis sentence needs to be:

• debatable – otherwise, you simply have a topic and not an angle or claim
• supportable with reasons, examples, and evidence – otherwise, you may information that’s not logical
• appropriate in scope – otherwise, you may be making a claim that’s too broad to support logically within a short essay, or a claim that’s too narrow to be supported with more than a few sentences or paragraphs

An excellent thesis sentence also:

• includes an arguable issue or concept that can be analyzed with some complexity
• sets that issue or concept in an interesting context

Use AI to help you create an outline

You can feed your working thesis and supporting ideas into AI and ask it to create an outline.  Know, though, that the quality of an outline depends on both what you feed into AI in terms of ideas and the quality of your prompt.

What AI does well is organize information into groups and order those groups logically (if asked).

What it does not do well is read your mind – you first have to know the points you want to make. Understand that AI is very generic and may not create an output aligned with your own or the writing assignment’s intentions, so you always need to evaluate and work with any AI output.

Use AI to help you evaluate an outline

Once you have an outline, you can write a simple prompt asking AI to evaluate whatever you want evaluated in the outline.  For example, you can ask:

• Is the working thesis [labeled as such in the outline] a strong thesis?
• Do the major sections of support all relate to and develop the assertion that the working thesis makes?
• Are there other possible supporting ideas that relate to the working thesis?
• Are there places where additional details might be needed?
• Are the main supporting ideas in a logical order.  If so, why?  If not, what would be a more logical order and why?

As always, you need to apply your own analysis to whatever AI offers, since it may or may not be accurate.  Understand that it’s useful for raising ideas and issues which you can then work on yourself, to ensure that you’re saying what you want to say in your writing.