Been editing short-form for a while now, and the pattern is always the same: creators spend hours on a video and lose 80% of viewers before second 3.

A few things I've learned that actually move retention:

1. The hook isn't the first line — it's the first frame. If the thumbnail-freeze-frame doesn't say something is happening, the scroll wins before you even talk.

2. Cut on action, not on silence. Every cut should either reveal new info or escalate tension. If a cut exists just to remove dead air, you're editing for length, not attention.

3. Captions are a pacing tool, not an accessibility afterthought. Word-by-word reveal timed to speech keeps eyes locked to the screen — it's a retention hack more than a readability one.

4. Sound design carries more weight than people think. A whoosh on a cut, a subtle bass hit on a punchline — these are what make an edit feel expensive vs. amateur.

If you're a creator doing your own edits and stuck under 20% average view duration, it's almost never the content — it's the cut. Happy to look at a clip and tell you what I'd change.