Bad news, delivered well
Rung 3 of 10 · Context + audience
1 · Learn the move · Context + audience
Delays and backorders aren't the crisis — the badly delivered version of them is. Tell the AI who's reading: a homeowner living in a torn-up house, washing dishes in the bathtub, who hears every vague sentence as 'it's worse than he's saying.' Bad news lands in a fixed order: the fact, the new date, what it does NOT affect, and what you already did about it. Buried bad news reads as hidden bad news.
You are writing to an anxious homeowner mid-renovation. Deliver this bad news in order: the fact in the first sentence, the new date, what stays on track, what I already did about it. Use only my facts and dates. No 'unfortunately' pile-ups, no blaming, no minimizing. Under 130 words. [the news]
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
The Okafors' quartz countertop cracked at the fabricator; the reslab pushes the install nine days, and they've been without a kitchen sink for three weeks already. Write a prompt for the email that delivers it straight without lighting the relationship on fire.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.