How I turn one idea into a week of posts with Claude

Most weeks I don't sit down and write five separate posts. I write one, then I break it apart.

Here's the version I run every Monday morning. It takes about 20 minutes.

Start with one idea you'd defend

Not a topic. An idea with an opinion in it. "Batching content" is a topic. "Batching content fails because you run out of ideas by Wednesday, not time" is something I can defend for a week.

I write two or three sentences on it in a plain note. No formatting, no polish. If I can't explain it in three sentences, it's not ready yet.

The prompt I paste in

Then I give Claude the note and this:

Here's a rough idea I want to post about this week. Give me five angles on it, each one a different post. For each angle, tell me the hook, the one point it makes, and who it's for. Keep them distinct. Don't repeat the same point five ways.

The "don't repeat the same point five ways" line matters. Without it I get one idea with five hats on.

What I do with the output

I skim the five angles and usually keep three. The other two are either too close to something I've posted or too thin to hold a whole caption.

For the three I keep, I ask Claude to draft each one in my voice, and I paste in two or three of my old captions as examples. The first drafts are about 70% there. I fix the opening line, cut anything that sounds like a press release, and add one specific number or example from my own work.

Why this beats writing five from scratch

When I wrote posts one at a time, every session started cold. Half the time went to picking what to write about. Doing it this way, the hard part (having a point of view) happens once, and the rest is editing. Editing is faster than writing for me, and probably for you too.

The catch: the core idea has to be good. Five angles on a weak idea is still a weak week.