Why intros are harder than they look
So I’ll just say it — writing a solid blog intro is the thing I procrastinate most. It’s not the body. It’s not even the title. The introduction is where you have to somehow slide into the reader’s mind like, “Hey, I know why you’re stressed and I’m going to make it better.” If you mess up the tone or the pacing or… use the word “insight” three times in a row (I’ve done it), people click away. Fast.
When I started automating writing tasks a while ago, I stubbornly skipped intros. I didn’t think AI could get it right anyway. Turns out I was being dramatic (not wrong, but dramatic). Now I bounce between a handful of tools — some free, some half-broken, some surprisingly helpful — and craft something that sounds like me, but 2 minutes faster 🙂
Here’s every free AI tool I’ve actually used that helped me get unstuck when writing intros that needed to convert skimmers into readers.
Quillbot is weirdly good at trimming rambling
Okay confession time: I tend to overwrite on the first draft. My intros are usually three paragraphs of backstory before I get to the point. Quillbot has this one feature — Summarizer — that somehow extracts just the part where I finally made sense. Like, I feed it a long intro I wrote half-asleep, pick “short paragraph” as the output, and suddenly there’s something actually usable at the top.
It’s not magic. Sometimes it picks up on the wrong emphasis. But when I need to keep a human tone but just get to the point faster, this helps a LOT. Especially if I’ve got a grocery tab open, a half-eaten wrap beside me, and a client Slack pinging me about something unrelated.
Also: the free tier is decent. You can’t summarize huge chunks at once or tweak settings beyond a point, but I’ve gotten usable copy out of it without paying. (Pro tip: Paste your messy intro draft into Notion, clean it slightly, then run it through Quillbot for tighter phrasing.)
CopyAI does tone weird but nails callouts
Most AI intro generators try too hard. Like, there’s an epidemic of intros that start with “In today’s fast-paced digital era…” That is always the sign to delete.
But CopyAI does something a bit different. Even the free version has this Blog Intro tool, and if you give it a strong title with proper context, it spits out multiple versions surprisingly quickly — usable callouts, question hooks, problem setups.
Here’s the trick though: reinterpret what it gives you. I don’t copy and paste what it says verbatim (way too generic). But I often take one line and reframe it in my own chaotic tone.
For example, if CopyAI says:
“Are you struggling to capture attention in the first paragraph?”
I rephrase it as: “Tired of writing intros that feel like beige wallpaper?” 😛
Other times, it gives me better transitions than I’d write. Or phrases that hint at a benefit I forgot to mention — those subtle psychological nudges that keep people reading. That matters more than I gave it credit for.
WriteSonic gives you structured mess to polish
I don’t like when AI tries to sound like an influencer. WriteSonic can sometimes drift into that territory, but with the blog intro feature, it has a unique little edge — it often splits its outputs into benefit-driven angles.
When I wrote a piece on abandoned carts in ecommerce, I gave WriteSonic my title and a quick summary. It returned:
– “Discover what’s causing your customers to leave.”
– “Learn how quick fixes can recover lost revenue.”
Too formal in tone for me, but those are two clear storylines.
So I just took the first one, made it semi-jaded, and wrote my own:
“You know that sinking feeling when someone clicks ‘Add to Cart’ and then disappears forever? Yeah. Let’s fix whatever scared them off.”
WriteSonic spurred that. That’s why I still crack it open when I’m too inside my own head.
ChatGPT but only if you boss it around
Honestly, most people either overuse ChatGPT or expect too much. I only use the free tier (GPT3.5) when I already know what I want to say but can’t nail the pacing.
You have to be bossy:
You: “Write me a short blog intro for a post about migration from Universal Analytics to GA4. Needs to sound slightly annoyed but hopeful, like a tired digital analyst explaining it to a non-technical boss.”
It spits something rough. I chop it up, maybe keep 60% of a sentence. Then rewrite.
The trick here is not the generation — it’s the weird alternate phrasing it gives me that I wouldn’t think of in my typical writing voice. That makes it feel less like talking to myself and more like having a slightly naive assistant I need to fix 🙂 but it does help.
Also: don’t ask it for multiple versions unless you’re really blocked. The third result is always just a scrambled version of result one.
ZimmWriter is a gem for intro variants fast
This one’s lesser known but kind of fantastic. ZimmWriter uses OpenAI’s API but adds a ton of ways to specifically generate structured content. What I love is that the Blog Introduction module gives you four slightly different emotional takes — without sounding like a second grader wrote them.
Sometimes one is too short. Another sounds like a grumpy Redditor. But in between all that, I almost always find at least one starting line worth stealing.
It’s also the fastest tool I’ve tried — near-instant outputs. I’ll often open it in the middle of writing, paste my draft, click “rephrase intro” — and before I notice, it rewrites the paragraph like it’s the new opening of a memoir I didn’t know I was writing.
ZimmWriter has a free trial that limits how many generations you get, but I used it over several weeks without upgrading and only tapped out because I got greedy.
Rytr gives better rewrites than fresh intros
Rytr’s interface is simple enough that I actually recommend it to AI skeptics. No buried menus. Just type what you want, click “generate,” and it gives you a couple drafts. But real talk — I think Rytr is stronger when you give it a draft you already wrote and ask it to rework just one section.
Half the time it tries to sound too confident — like, weirdly declarative phrases that don’t fit my tone. That said, it’s helped me rewrite a line in a way that drops a smile or adds a little tension, depending on what I need.
Example:
Original: “In this post, we’ll discuss top free Zapier alternatives.”
Rytr: “Looking for better Zapier alternatives without spending a dime?” ← still a little basic, but easier to riff on.
It’s not my go-to for blank-page moments. But if I have a first pass done and want five weird ways to rephrase the first two sentences, it’s usually spot on.
How I actually combine these in real life
Honestly, I’ve never written a blog post intro with just one tool from start to finish. The way I usually do it is some strange combo of:
– Start mumbling ideas into Notion (just typing nonsense to get momentum)
– Dump raw into Quillbot for summarizing or smoothing
– Run a prompt through ZimmWriter or Rytr to get a twist I didn’t expect
– Chop two of the outputs into half a sentence each
– Rephrase a line in ChatGPT with a very specific tone cue
It’s messy. It’s not elegant. But I end up with an intro that 1) doesn’t sound like an SEO template and 2) actually mirrors the emotional state of whoever found the article trying to Google a fix.
It also helps me stop obsessing over the first line and instead just keep rolling. Because nothing stops a blog from being published faster than waiting two hours for the perfect hook ¯\_(ツ)_/¯