# How to cut a product story opening without losing the point > Where an opening actually starts, which sentences to delete, and how to keep the reader, the job, and the product in the first breath. - Canonical: https://hedpress.com/blog/how-to-cut-a-product-story-opening - Markdown: https://hedpress.com/blog/how-to-cut-a-product-story-opening.md - Site: Hed Press (https://hedpress.com) Published: 2026-11-02 ## How do you cut a product story opening? Find the first sentence that names the product and the reader’s job, and delete everything before it. Then cut any sentence after that which repeats the headline or starts with the company. The point is the first sentence that can stand alone. ## Most openings start one sentence too late The draft begins with the market, the year, or the founder’s feeling. The story begins at the sentence you would text a colleague. Move that sentence to the top. The earlier sentences were a warmup for you, not for the reader. If you cannot find that sentence, you do not have an opening yet. You have notes. Write one line with the product, the person, and the job, and only then decide what else is allowed to follow. ## A word budget for the first breath Twenty-five to forty-five words is enough for the point. That is one or two sentences. Past that, you are in the second beat: a limit, an example, a thing the product does not do. Those can stay if the point is already on the page. Count words, not lines. A narrow column makes a short opening look long. The reader’s patience is about new information, not about how tall the paragraph is. The opener cut on this site marks the sentence where you cross the budget. ## Delete echoes of the headline If the headline said “a morning brief for support leads,” the first sentence should not say “Fieldnote is a morning brief designed for support leads.” That is the headline again, with “designed” added. Start at the next fact: what the brief contains, or when they read it. Echoes feel thorough in a draft and redundant on a page. The headline already spent the reader’s first glance. The opening has to pay them with something new, or they will not spend a second glance. ## Keep one concrete object When you cut, do not cut the only noun a person can picture. Incidents, a queue, a standup, a six-line brief — one of those should survive. Abstract leftovers (“clarity,” “alignment,” “visibility”) are what remain when every object was treated as optional. If the concrete object was in sentence four, move it up rather than keeping four sentences. Cutting is rearrangement with a delete key. The object is the reason the job is believable. ## Company voice is the usual leftover “We built,” “our mission,” “we’re thrilled.” Those sentences survive cuts because they feel like the author’s place in the story. They are not the reader’s place. Remove them unless the sentence also contains the reader’s job. Most do not. A single “we” can stay if it is attached to a fact: “We pull the last 24 hours from the help desk.” A paragraph of “we” is a launch note. A product story is about the person who will use the thing. ## Stop when a stranger can retell it Hand the first two sentences to someone who has not seen the product. If they can say who it is for and what it does, stop cutting and stop adding. More detail is a later section. If they ask “what is it,” you cut the wrong sentence or you never wrote it. Put that answer back in the first line. An opening that needs the rest of the article is not an opening. It is a throat-clearing. ### Is a one-sentence opening too short? Not if it has the product, the person, and the job. A second sentence should add a fact, not restate the first. ### What if the story needs context? Context follows the point. A reader who knows what the product is can use context. A reader who does not will not wait for it. ### Should I cut examples? Keep one example if it is the concrete object. Cut the second and third. One picture is proof. Three pictures are a list. ### How does this relate to the headline? The headline promises. The opening keeps the promise and adds one fact. If they say the same thing, one of them is wasting the reader. ## Elsewhere on this site - [Today](https://hedpress.com/) - [Trending](https://hedpress.com/trending) - [Categories](https://hedpress.com/categories) - [Tags](https://hedpress.com/tags) - [Search](https://hedpress.com/search) - [Pricing](https://hedpress.com/pricing) - [Submit a product story](https://hedpress.com/submit) - [Get published](https://hedpress.com/get-editorial-backlinks) - [Editorial publications](https://hedpress.com/editorial-backlinks) - [About](https://hedpress.com/about) - [FAQ](https://hedpress.com/faq) - [Free tools](https://hedpress.com/tools) - [Blog](https://hedpress.com/blog) - [Contact](https://hedpress.com/contact) - [Privacy policy](https://hedpress.com/privacy) - [Terms of use](https://hedpress.com/terms) - [Disclaimer](https://hedpress.com/disclaimer) - [Editorial policy](https://hedpress.com/editorial) - [llms.txt](https://hedpress.com/llms.txt)