Prompting in depth

The advanced brief-writing playbook. Beyond the three-pillar basics in Brief writing strategy, this page covers the structural patterns that make scripts land, the tone references that work across niches, the constraint patterns worth reusing, and the anti-patterns that produce flat output. Read this once you've shipped your first three or four videos and are starting to recognise what works for your channel.

Structural patterns

Five structural patterns work consistently. Naming the pattern in the brief gives Claude a strong scaffold to write into.

Chronological

The default Documentary shape. Linear time, beginning to end, with optional flashback or flash-forward beats.

Best for: history, biography, event reconstructions, scientific discovery narratives. Anything where the chronological arc IS the story.

Brief example: "The development of the Concorde, from the 1962 Anglo-French treaty through the 2003 final flight. Sober documentary tone, slightly elegiac toward the end. Include the 2000 Air France 4590 crash as a major beat without sensationalising it."

Problem-solution

Set up a problem, follow the path to solution, examine the implications.

Best for: science explainers, engineering deep-dives, business case studies, technology histories. Anything where the question matters as much as the answer.

Brief example: "Why does the Sahara have such consistent dust storms, and what does that dust do for the Amazon rainforest 5,000 miles away? Explainer tone, conversational. Lead with the question, take your time on the answer."

Case study

Specific instance, broader principle. Use the case to argue for the principle without explicit moralising.

Best for: business, finance, true crime, science. Anything where one rich example illuminates a general pattern.

Brief example: "How Theranos lasted 15 years before collapse, used as a lens on why technical-due-diligence failure is structurally hard in healthcare investing. True-crime gravitas, no glorification of Elizabeth Holmes. Focus on what the early investors missed."

List with thread

Listicle format but with a connecting thread through the items rather than independent beats.

Best for: ranked sets where the ranking itself tells a story. Counts of mistakes, evolutions of an idea, contrasts between figures.

Brief example: "5 American generals who lost the Korean War, in order of how badly they hurt the outcome. Sober commentary tone. The thread is institutional failure to learn from one error to the next."

Analytical

Argue a position. Marshal evidence, address counterarguments, conclude.

Best for: commentary, literary analysis, philosophy, science topics with ongoing debate.

Brief example: "Argue that the British defeat at Yorktown was inevitable from the moment Cornwallis chose to occupy the peninsula. Sober military-history analytical tone. Address the counterargument that French naval support was the determining factor."

Tone references

Adjectives alone produce vague output. Pair adjectives with a specific reference point. The reference can be:

• A specific show or channel. "BBC Horizon", "Wendover Productions", "Last Podcast on the Left", "The Operations Room", "Lemmino", "Veritasium". Claude knows these and can match the register.
• A specific narrator. "David Attenborough", "Werner Herzog", "Tim Marshall on Polymatter", "John Hodgman". A named narrator imports a whole voice.
• A specific publication's house style. "The New Yorker long-read", "Economist obituary", "FT Weekend feature", "1843 Magazine". For more literate niches.
• An anti-reference. "NOT TikTok hyperbole", "NOT MrBeast energy", "NOT clickbait curiosity-gap framing". Sometimes saying what you don't want is faster than naming what you do.

Mix references: "BBC documentary register, but the digressive feel of a Wendover deep-dive". Claude can blend.

Constraint patterns that work

Constraints are how you steer Claude away from the failure modes you've seen. Patterns worth reusing across briefs:

Fixed beats. "Include the line 'It was a Tuesday.' Do not paraphrase. Include the 1989 fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall speech as a fixed beat near the end." Pipeline preserves these verbatim.

Banned topics. "Don't speculate about the suspect's motive." "Don't speculate about Turing's personal life." "Don't editorialise beyond what's in the historical record." Critic enforces these as blockers.

Source preferences. "Cite primary sources where you can find them." "Reference the actual court records, not subsequent journalism." "Use original 18th-century terminology where the meaning is clear in context." Script generator biases toward these.

Structural cuts. "No cold open." "Open in media res, no setup." "End on the question, not the answer." Outline shape responds to these.

Length tightening. "Pack the opening 30 seconds, don't ease in." "Slow the third act, give the implications room." Per-scene length allocation shifts with these.

Format hybrids. "Documentary format but with a listicle-style midsection of 5 ranked failures." Claude blends.

Anti-patterns by niche

The patterns that produce flat or wrong output, by niche.

History

• Vague time-windowing: "in medieval times" → "in 12th-century Provence specifically".
• Anachronistic moralising. The pipeline knows about this and the critic flags it, but a brief that explicitly says "Don't apply 21st-century moral judgement to 14th-century actors" gets a sharper script.
• Picking the obvious case: "Hitler", "Caesar", "Napoleon". The pipeline does these competently but the angle has to be unusual or the script reads as canonical-summary. Pair with a fresh angle.

True crime

• Speculation about unconvicted suspects. The critic blocks this; the brief should explicitly say "stay within what's been established in court".
• Glamorising the perpetrator. Critic flags it; brief should say "focus on the investigative or institutional story, not the perpetrator's psychology".
• Sensationalised opening hook. "On a dark night..." reads as TikTok. Pair with "Open with the documentary frame, not the lurid one".

Science

• Overclaim. "Scientists prove..." should always be "Scientists report" or "evidence suggests". Critic catches it.
• Correlation-as-causation. Brief should say "name the correlational structure explicitly when the underlying causation is uncertain".
• Treating peer-reviewed and pre-print as equivalent. Brief: "Note when sources are pre-print rather than peer-reviewed."

Finance

• Investment advice. CueTheScene's content policy explicitly bans this. Brief should say "no investment advice claims; this is reporting on what happened, not what to do".
• Hindsight bias. "It was always going to fail" should be "it failed because of these specific factors, which were debated at the time". Brief: "respect the contemporaneous uncertainty".

Tutorial / Explainer

• Dependency-out-of-order explanation. The pipeline's tutorial-niche fragment enforces this, but the brief should say "introduce concepts in dependency order; don't assume the viewer knows X if Y depends on it".
• Skipping the why. "Why this matters" is often the highest-retention beat. Brief: "Allocate the second act to why this matters before the how".

Commentary

• Anodyne both-sides framing. If the brief is an argument, commit to the argument. "Argue X, address the strongest counterargument Y, conclude with Z" beats "Discuss X".
• Editorial position drift. The brief's named angle should appear in the closing as well as the opening; the pipeline sometimes drops the editorial position by the payoff. Constraint: "End with the editorial position you opened with, not a softer summary".

The "polish" pass

Once you've written a brief, the brief-form coach has a "Polish what I've written" button that runs your draft through Claude with a humanise pass. Useful when:

• Your brief reads list-y rather than narrative.
• You've over-specified the structure and want it relaxed.
• You've under-specified and want a richer angle proposed.
• The brief reads as AI-generated (it happens; the polish strips that).

The polish is non-destructive: it suggests, doesn't replace. Accept or reject per sentence.

When to write a custom script instead

If the brief starts feeling more like a script outline (six paragraphs, scene-by-scene direction), you've crossed the line. Switch to Custom script. It's faster, cheaper, and produces a sharper result when you have the full picture in mind.

The brief path is for "I have an angle and a tone, surprise me with the execution". The custom-script path is for "I have the execution, please handle the production".

What's next

Brief writing strategy is the foundations.

Niche examples walks through worked examples.

Building profitable channels covers using all of this in service of an actual channel.

Cheers,
Carl