tell-them-something-newlisted

Cuts opening sentences that recap what the recipient already knows about themselves, their company, or their own work. Implements Konrad's rule 2 ("begin with something they don't know — tell me a secret about the future") and Kramon's rule 4. Use when a draft opens with flattery, a summary of the reader's accomplishments, restating their stated thesis, or reciting biographical facts they already have. Triggers on "they already know," "rewrite the opener," "stop with the flattery," "first sentence is weak," "secret about the future," "tell them something new."
kalyvask/winning-writing · ★ 4 · Data & Documents · score 77

Install: claude install-skill kalyvask/winning-writing

# Tell them something new Source: `points/cold-email-rules.md` rule 2, `points/core-rules.md` rule 4, Konrad's "tell me a secret about the future" guidance. ## The premise The most-failed sentence in cold writing is the opener. The default move is to recap something the recipient already knows: their job, their accomplishments, their stated thesis, their company's recent press release. **They lived it.** Telling them about themselves wastes the 15 seconds you have. The fix isn't a different recap. The fix is a sentence that contains *new information* — a secret about the future, a number they don't have, a contradiction in their own data, a connection between two things they hadn't linked. ## What "they already know" looks like These are the seven flavors of opener-failure. Cut them all: ### 1. Flattery about their accomplishments > ❌ *"You've transformed industry after industry — Google Maps, the Like button, Salesforce, OpenAI."* He knows. He lived it. The reader's first thought is: *get to the point.* ### 2. Their own stated thesis, recited back > ❌ *"I've been thinking a lot about your point that 'agents are the new product surface' — it really resonated."* He said it. He doesn't need to hear it again, with adverbs. ### 3. Public biographical recap > ❌ *"As the CEO of a $2B AI company and the chair of OpenAI's board…"* His title is in his email signature. His company's valuation was the lede of last week's TechCrunch piece. Useless. ### 4. Recent news they we