The Art of Conversational Authoring
Source: Educating AI / Nick Potkalitsky Substack
Author: Mike Kentz
Original source: https://nickpotkalitsky.substack.com/p/the-art-of-conversational-authoring
Published: 2025-06-29
Source type: essay
Private backup: the full article text is archived in the private repository at archives/articles/nickpotkalitsky-substack-com-the-art-of-conversational-authoring.source.md. It is not published on the public Quartz site.
Summary
This article reframes effective AI interaction as “conversational authoring” rather than prompt engineering. It argues that productive AI use draws on traditional literacy and fiction-writing skills: character design through role prompting, scene setting through context prompting, and narrative construction through step-by-step reasoning. AI literacy is presented not mainly as a technical skill but as communication, reading, writing, and creative thinking. For educators, the framing offers a bridge from familiar composition and creative-writing pedagogy to AI-era interaction design.
Pull quotes
AI Interaction as Literacy
“working well with AI is primarily a communication and writing skill, complemented by reading skills when analyzing AI outputs through a critical lens.”
Conversational Authoring
“Perhaps AI interaction represents a new form of creative writing—one where the “story” emerges through collaborative dialogue rather than individual authorship.”
Prompting as Scene Construction
“This structural approach creates what constitutes a narrative arc for collaborative reasoning – establishing the scene (the policy question), introducing complexity (multiple perspectives), developing tension through conflicting evidence, and progressing toward resolution through reasoned synthesis.”
A Collaborative Act of Storytelling
“In essence, every conversation with an AI becomes a collaborative act of storytelling—one where both human and artificial agents participate in the ongoing construction of meaning, context, and relationship through conversational authoring.”
Big ideas
- Students need to bring the purpose; AI should not supply it for them
- AI literacy has to be taught inside real subjects
Claims
- Prompting AI is a literacy practice, not just a technical trick
- AI literacy should teach students what to do with AI, not just what to think about it
Key evidence and examples
- Role and persona prompting are compared to fiction writers’ character development.
- Context prompting is compared to scene setting and environmental storytelling.
- Stepwise prompting is compared to narrative and plot construction.
- The article contrasts a vague school-phone-ban prompt with a structured multi-stage inquiry into arguments, counterarguments, evidence, and synthesis.
Education relevance
Highly relevant for AI literacy instruction, writing pedagogy, composition, creative writing, classroom prompting routines, and teacher professional learning.
Durability note
The examples of AI interaction may date, but the literacy framing is durable because it treats prompting as reading, writing, scene-setting, and collaborative meaning-making rather than as a narrow technical trick.