How To Build A Claude Cowork .Skill For Your Fiction Writing Voice
This is the most insane feature I've discovered using Claude so far. And every fiction writer should be using it.
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Dear Fiction Writer,
In last week’s newsletter, I referenced a video of Brandon Sanderson talking about the rise of AI and how to think about using it as a fiction writer.
To summarize the video (if you didn’t watch it):
AI is efficient, but it deprives you of the real journey—which is learning how to write the stories you want to tell (and believe are worth telling in the first place).
When you rely too heavily on AI, and “outsource” all your thinking & creativity, yes you create an end-product but the product isn’t the true goal.
The true goal of being creative is giving yourself the opportunity to grow and express yourself.
You are the art.
In many ways, I wholeheartedly agree with Sanderson here.
Even just in the past few years, I’ve started to notice how many people don’t want to learn as much. How people just want to skip to the end. “Just give me the prompt,” is something I hear often. And I can see the ways AI has impacted our writing program, Ship 30 for 30, in the sense that a lot of people don’t even want to bother improving their ability to write because “AI can just do it.”
I don’t think we as a society understand the long-term implications of this behavior change.
To be clear:
I am very pro-AI
I am pro new technology
I tend to look at everything through a lens of abundance (not scarcity)
And I believe there is way, way more opportunity in the world than any one of us can fathom. We aren’t nearly as “in-competition” with each other as we think
…and yet…
I can’t help but wonder what happens to a society that doesn’t want to “think” anymore. We’ve already seen the impact short-form video has had on our attention spans. What is the impact of technology that doesn’t require you to have to think deeply about problems, or sit and stare out a window while your brain reaches for the next word?
I don’t know yet. But if I’ve learned anything in my 35 short years here on planet earth, I know that once a snowball of behavior change starts… there’s no stopping it.
AI is here. And people are already “thinking” less.
Now, I actually believe this presents and interesting opportunity for creative people.
If AI encourages the average person from “thinking,” then one of the most valuable skills of the future is simply… thinking!
Aka: not letting your brain atrophy.
I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to skill acquisition. And so no matter what new technology comes out, I tend to default to finding ways to practice that are intentionally difficult. Because I want to build my skills in harder-than-normal environments (the same way a marathon runner trains with ankle weights), rather than practicing new skills in easier-than-normal environments.
And so the future of creativity, I believe, is going to come down to each individual person’s ability to discipline themselves.
AI is like a digital painkiller.
Amazing, life-changing technology to solve immediate problems.
But addictive and dangerous if used all-day, every day.
(I sound like my parents back when I was a teenager playing World of Warcraft for 12 hours per day lol.)
How To Use AI As A Fiction Writer In 2026 & Beyond
I don’t believe either extreme is true.
I don’t think you should be anti-AI. But I also don’t think you should use it for every single task—especially when it comes to writing.
I believe there is TREMENDOUS benefit in practicing writing the old fashioned way. Because the bottleneck to using AI is not “your knowledge of how to use AI.” Your bottleneck to using AI to its maximum capacity as a writer is to be able to articulate how you do what you do.
If you can articulate it clearly, specifically, and objectively, you can use AI to leverage your existing knowledge.
But if you can’t articulate it clearly, specifically, and objectively, then what you’re actually doing is the opposite of leverage. You are deferring all the thinking and decision-making to a robot.
And that’s where your brain’s atrophy starts to kick in.
So, why am I sharing all of this with you?
Because I have been using AI a lot in my own fiction writing processes, building systems, using it to help me brainstorm and draft V1 chapters, etc.
And Fiction Writing With AI is something I plan on sharing a lot more here.
But I want to be clear:
I am not saying you should use AI for everything.
I am not saying you should defer your “thinking” to AI.
I am not saying that using AI inherently makes you less creative.
Etc.
I believe these are reductive ways of looking at this new, incredible technology.
Instead, I encourage you to view AI as a tool—just a really-powerful tool, like a lightsaber.
And it’s your job to learn how to wield it.
So, let’s begin the learning process!
Claude Cowork: A No-Code AI Agent
Let’s start at the very beginning.
Claude is an AI model built by Anthropic. Think of it like a nerdier version of ChatGPT.
Each model (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Manus, etc.) tends to be “better” at different types of tasks. And for whatever reason, Claude is the best for writing. I wish I could tell you why, but that’s above my pay grade. All I know is, of all the different models I (and every other writer I know) have experimented with, Claude wins every time.
But Claude can do a lot more than just “write.”
There is also this thing called Claude Code, which is basically an AI Agent that allows you to code (build platforms, connect apps, create automations, literally anything you want) with extreme leverage. My developer friends swear by it, and every day it seems like some new feature is being shipped that allow developers to build more, faster.
The problem is… you need to know how to code.
And I have no fucking clue how to code (and I don’t plan on learning any time soon).
But Claude also recently launched another component of its platform, called Claude Cowork.
Claude Cowork is basically No-Code Claude Code.
Meaning:
You aren’t just “prompting” Claude in a chat window. Cowork is an AI Agent.
But it doesn’t require you to code anything. Nothing. It operates completely in plain English.
And, being an “Agent,” Claude Cowork can do a lot more than just give you answers (like every other AI model).
Claude Cowork can literally control platforms and documents on your behalf, and work with you.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Claude Cowork .Skills
Since Claude Cowork is an “Agent,” it is significantly more powerful than just a basic AI chat window. (Funny how just in the past ~4 years, the chat function of AI has become “basic.”)
And as an AI Agent, Claude Cowork can actually “understand” task chains.
Meaning: every time you do something—or a series of somethings—Claude Cowork isn’t just aware of the information you’ve shared with them, but is now learning HOW you just instructed it to help you. It remembers the steps. It can synthesize the takeaways. And, it can summarize an entire chat window’s worth of conversation into what’s called a .Skill.
A .Skill is a file.
For example, let’s say you just spent 2 hours chatting back and forth with your bestie Claude about how you construct Sci-Fi/Fantasy Outlines. Not how to create outlines “in general,” but how YOU outline, the decisions YOU make, the structure YOU use, etc.
(Remember: you can’t automate what you can’t articulate!)
Well, at the end of those 2 hours, wouldn’t it be great if Claude could “remember” everything you just talked through and clarified… forever?
Yes. It would. This is called Leverage.
And now, Claude can remember. All you have to do is crystallize all the information and export it as a .Skill file.
How To Build A Claude Cowork .Skill For Your Fiction Writing Voice
I have been using Claude for 2+ years now.
And when I started playing with Claude Cowork a few weeks ago, it felt like my brain was melting. It’s insanely cool.
🚨 In 2 weeks I’ll be co-running a Claude Cowork Bootcamp on all of this:
Everything you need to know about using Claude Cowork
How to get setup
How to create and save .Skills
Etc.
You can join the waitlist by clicking here.
Enrollment opens next week—Monday, February 16th.
And Claude Cowork Bootcamp kicks off Monday, February 23rd through Friday, March 6th.
It’s gonna be a ton of fun!
Now, if you are a fiction writer, then one of the simplest use cases for building a .Skill for yourself is to crystallize your writing voice.
Because once it’s saved as a .Skill, Claude can “reference” and use that .Skill at any point in the future. You don’t even need to prompt it. Claude will use your .Skill based on the context of the conversation, as-needed.
Meaning you can even create different .Skills for different types of writing voices.
Your Fiction Voice
Your Non-Fiction Voice
(This is what I did.)
Or, more specifically:
Your Sci-Fi/Fantasy Voice
Your Mystery/Thriller Voice
Your Romance Voice
Etc.
Pretty cool, right?
So, let me walk you through how I did this for myself—so you can do the same.
Cole-Fiction-Voice.Skill
Again, a .Skill is just “context” saved as a file (that AI can reference at any point in the future).
So if you use AI, or plan on using AI to do a lot of a specific type of writing—whether it’s fiction or non-fiction—then it’s worth investing some time into crystallizing your writing voice into a .Skill.
Now, obviously this is a bit of a rabbit hole (and yes, there are “right” and “wrong” ways of doing this). But for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to give you a high-level crash course on how this works.
Step 1: Download Claude’s Mac App (if you haven’t already).
While Claude (the chat function) works in-browser, Claude Cowork does not.
So you must download the desktop app to use it. (*And they just released this for Windows as well!)
Step 2: Ask Claude Cowork to walk you through a .Skill building exercise for your writing voice.
If you’re someone like me—who has spent 10+ years thinking about & refining “the rules” that make my voice, my voice, then you can probably skip straight to instructing AI on what you want.
But if you don’t have clarity around the rules of your voice, then I’d encourage you to tell AI you aren’t sure… and ask for some help! Claude Cowork will very naturally ask you questions and help you make some decisions here.
Either way, start a conversation.
If you want to see the level of detail I go into, I’m sharing a PDF of my own “voice guidelines” here to show you. A gift for being a paid subscriber! And yes, I wrote every word of this—because I wanted to crystallize my thinking as much as possible, to then train AI on “me.” Not just let AI figure it out on its own.
