Set a target line count and see which lines are carrying the song — and which ones are just standing there.
Cutting a draft under time pressure is where writers do the most damage, because they cut by feel and feel is unreliable at 2am. The lines that feel important are often the ones that explain, and the ones that feel disposable are often the ones with the image in them. This tool scores every line on how much work it is actually doing, then shows you the weakest ones in order.
Run it and the cut list shows up here.
Why some lines are load-bearing and some are not
A line earns its place in four ways. It can introduce a rhyme sound nothing else uses, so removing it flattens the scheme. It can carry the hook phrase, which is the one thing you cannot cut. It can hold a concrete object nobody else mentions, which is usually the only image the listener will remember. Or it can sit at the rhythmic centre of the verse, matching the syllable count of everything around it.
Lines that do none of those things are passengers. A worked example: eight lines where three of them begin with the same pronoun, two are pure vocables, and one restates the opening line with different adjectives. That is six lines doing the work of three. Cutting them does not shorten the song so much as remove the padding around it — and the version that survives is almost always the one that reads better a week later.
How to use the result
- The tool never cuts line 1 and never cuts the line carrying the hook, however low it scores. Openings and hooks are structural; if they are weak they need rewriting, not removing.
- Read the reason before you accept a cut. “Uses only words already used 3+ times” is a strong signal. “Syllable count far from the median” might mean the line is deliberately irregular, which can be the best thing in the verse.
- If a rhyme-end appears on only one line in the whole draft, that line is load-bearing for the scheme. Cutting it leaves an orphan, and you will need to re-rhyme something else.
- Cut in one pass, then leave it alone for a day. Successive passes almost always start cutting lines that were holding the song together, because by then the padding is gone and everything left looks cuttable.
Questions people ask
- How does it decide what the hook is?
The most repeated phrase in the draft, one to three words. If nothing repeats, it falls back to treating the first line as protected. You can always put the hook line back — the trimmed draft is in an editable box.
- Why is a pure vocable line penalised so heavily?
Because “oh” and “yeah” lines survive cuts by accident. They feel like part of the rhythm, and when you remove them the melody usually still works. Keep one if the tune needs it; four is a habit.
- The score disagrees with my instincts.
Good — it is a rule-based score, not a reader. It counts rhyme uniqueness, imagery, repetition and syllable fit. It cannot tell that your fourth line is the one that makes the whole verse land. Use it to find candidates, then overrule it freely.
- Can I cut by percentage instead of line count?
Set the target to whatever line count the percentage works out to. The output shows both the before and after counts so you can check the arithmetic.
What this tool does not do. It scores lines against four mechanical rules and cannot tell whether a line is good. It will happily recommend cutting the best line in your song if that line repeats a word and runs long. The syllable counts come from a spelling-based counter that gets words like “fire” and “hour” wrong. Nothing is uploaded; everything runs in your browser and works offline. See the site disclaimer. Written by Nico, who builds these tools and writes about writing at WrittenTone.