What to actually type in the box

"Just prompt it better." That's the advice everyone gives once you complain that ChatGPT gave you something generic, and it's useless, because nobody follows it up with what "better" actually means. You're not bad at this. You've just never been handed the three things that turn a mushy answer into a usable one.

Here they are. Every prompt that works is doing these three things, in some order:

1. Who you are — the context it needs to not answer like a stranger.
2. What you want — the actual thing, stated plainly, not hinted at.
3. What it's for — who reads the result and what happens next, which is what decides the tone and the length.

That's the whole formula. Not a magic phrase, not a trick word, just three pieces of information a person would also need before writing something for you.