Cut to Length Without Losing the Argument
Cuts a piece to a hard word count by removing what is not load-bearing, and says what the cut costs.
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Running it, start to finish
- Paste the draft with the hard target and anything that cannot be cut.
- Make the structural cuts before touching sentences.
- Add the section 4 sentences before reading it back.
What you get back
The output this produces, every time.
- Cuts structurally in a fixed order rather than tightening every sentence uniformly.
- Names the sentences that must be ADDED to hold the shortened version together.
- States what each cut costs, so you can reverse the right ones if the limit moves.
Getting better results
Where this usually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
- Resist sentence-tightening first. It is the instinct and it produces a dense piece that still says everything. Structural cuts produce a shorter piece that reads better.
- Do not skip section 4. It is why cut drafts read as choppy — a removed section usually took a transition or a definition with it.
- Believe section 6. If it will not fit, the piece is doing too much. Cutting further at sentence level will make it unreadable rather than shorter.
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Written for The AI University. Every prompt in this library is original work — authored, tested and revised here, not collected from elsewhere. 365 of them, free with an account.