Prompt · Newsletter
Weekly roundup with a point of view
Give the reader one idea they keep, whether or not they click anything.
- Email type
- Newsletter
- Business
- Creator
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 250-350 words
The newsletter email prompt
Write a plain-text weekly roundup newsletter from [SENDER] on [THE THEME], using [THE PICKS]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes, no horizontal rules. The reader should get something out of this even if they click nothing. Rules: - 250 to 350 words. - Open with [THE ARGUMENT] — what I actually think about the theme — in two or three sentences. Do not open with "this week I have been reading". The opinion is the issue; the links are evidence for it. - Give each pick one or two sentences saying why it is here and what it changed. Never write a description of what the piece is about. The reader can get that from the title. - Order the picks so they build the argument, strongest last. - Links go inline, inside the sentence, on the words that describe the thing. Do not write bare URLs and do not write "read more here". - Close in one line. No summary, no housekeeping, no promotion of my own work. - Never invent a number, statistic, subscriber count or claim about how something performed. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX]. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line under 45 characters that names the argument rather than the format. Never "Issue [XX]" and never "Weekly roundup". Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[THE THEME]- What this week's picks have in common. Find it before you write, or the issue is a list.
[THE PICKS]- Three or four items, each with a line on why it is here. Paste them in raw.
[THE ARGUMENT]- What you actually think about the theme. One sentence. This is the issue.
[SENDER]- Your name.
[XX]- Leave as written. The placeholder for a figure you supply, never one the model supplies.
When to send it
Weekly, on a fixed day. A roundup’s whole promise is rhythm, and the issue that arrives on a different day each week gets read as a broadcast rather than as a habit. If you miss a week, send the next one without apologising for the gap.
What to change first
[THE ARGUMENT]. It is the difference between a newsletter and a bookmark folder. Most roundups
open with the format (“five things I read this week”) because the format is easy and the opinion is
hard — but the opinion is the only part a reader cannot get from a feed. Find the thread the picks
share, say what you think about it, and let the links be the evidence.
What good output looks like
Subject: Nobody is bored enough
Preheader: Three pieces that all turn out to be about the same thing.
Everything I read this week was secretly about attention, and specifically about how badly we have optimised away the boredom that used to produce ideas.
The piece on [XX] made the case best — the argument that a walk without a podcast is not wasted time but the only unstructured processing most people get. I have stopped bringing headphones.
Then a much angrier essay on the same idea from the other direction, which argues the problem is not the phone but that nobody has anywhere to be.
— [SENDER]
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.