Video of the Day1:06:53Kallaway · Tutorial
How to Master Storytelling (Beginner to Advanced)
A 67-minute masterclass that rebuilds storytelling around brain chemistry instead of the story arc you learned in school.
October 14thThe argument in one line.
A hook works when the visual, spoken line, on-screen text and audio all point at one clear idea, then a contrast between what the viewer believes and what you offer opens a curiosity loop they can't close without watching.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You post Reels, TikToks or Shorts and your retention graph falls off a cliff in the first two or three seconds.
- You run a business that uses short-form video for leads and want a repeatable way to write hooks instead of copying viral templates.
- You write scripts for other creators and need language to explain why one hook works and another doesn't.
- You already know hooks matter but keep defaulting to vague openers like "this is the craziest thing I've ever seen."
SKIP IF…
- You want a copy-paste list of viral hook templates; this deliberately teaches the psychology and process instead.
- You make long-form YouTube only and want title and thumbnail strategy; the focus here is the first seconds of the video itself.
The full version, fast.
Strong hooks come from a curiosity loop, not a clever line. The core formula has three moves: a context lean that names the topic and pulls the viewer in, a scroll-stop interjection (usually "but"), and a contrarian snapback that sends them in an unexpected direction. Viewers process video as visual, then audio, then visual again, so the hook should be built backward from a key visual, with the spoken line, on-screen text and sound all aligned to it. Pick one of six formats (fortune teller, experimenter, teacher, magician, investigator, contrarian) based on which creates the biggest contrast with that visual. Then check for the four failure modes: delay, confusion, irrelevance and disinterest. If no strong visual exists, the idea may not be worth making.
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00:00 – 00:44
01 · Intro and roadmap
Promises a full hooks masterclass and previews the four sections: six tips, six formats, six power words, four mistakes.
00:44 – 08:59
02 · The three-step hook formula
Context lean, scroll-stop interjection, contrarian snapback, shown on the Vegas Sphere video, a mortgage example, and the hook of this video itself.
08:59 – 11:04
03 · Visual hooks
Three to five words of bold on-screen text plus a visual with just enough motion to hold attention.
11:04 – 13:15
04 · Building common ground
Lead with a benefit or pain point, and use cult hopping: wrap unfamiliar ideas in a known brand, celebrity or cultural reference.
13:15 – 15:23
05 · Speed to value and staccato sentences
Front-load the first hit of value before the attention timer runs out, and keep hook sentences short.
15:23 – 19:35
06 · Formats 1-3: fortune teller, experimenter, teacher
Future-vs-present framing, peer-to-peer demos, and teacher-to-student lessons, each with a three-step recipe.
19:35 – 24:29
07 · Formats 4-6: magician, investigator, contrarian
Visual or verbal stun guns and visual pacifiers, the hidden-secret reveal, and the explicit against-conventional-wisdom take.
24:29 – 28:42
08 · Any idea fits any format; the four hook components
A backpack review rewritten six ways, then the four components (spoken, visual, text, audio) and why alignment drives comprehension.
28:42 – 34:40
09 · The key-visual-first process, with a hit and a miss
Five-step process starting from the visual, illustrated by a 15M-view floor-plan video and a sub-100K generative-world-model video.
34:40 – 39:11
10 · The six hook power words
Subject, action, objective, contrast, plus optional proof and time words, built up on a 0-to-100K-subscribers example.
39:11 – 47:30
11 · Power words in four real hooks
Life-size floor plans, washing bread, Hormozi's marriage hook and "listen to 13 year olds" broken down word by word.
47:30 – 53:00
12 · Mistakes 1 and 2: delay and confusion
Topic arrives too late, or arrives in tangled wording. Fixes: cut the fluff lines, write simpler and more direct sentences.
53:00 – 54:50
13 · Hooks training pitch
Mid-roll pitch for a paid short-form hooks training and 400-video hooks database.
54:50 – 56:51
14 · Mistake 3: irrelevance
Say you and your instead of I and me, and frame the hook around a pain point the viewer already has.
56:51 – 1:00:50
15 · Mistake 4: disinterest and the two types of contrast
Curiosity loops come from contrast between current belief and your alternative, stated outright or implied.
1:00:50 – 1:01:30
16 · Outro
Subscribe ask and a pitch for one-on-one coaching in Short Form Academy.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A hook should let the wrong viewer leave in the first line; tricking non-buyers into watching hurts more than it helps.
- The single word "but" works as a stun gun between the setup and the payoff of a hook.
- Viewers take in a video as visual, then audio, then visual again, checking the picture to confirm what they just heard.
- Eyes process 10 to 100 times more information per second than ears, so the visual decides the hook more than the script does.
- If you can't find or manufacture a strong opening visual for an idea, the right move is often to not make that video.
- Short-form gives you about four seconds before attention collapses; long-form YouTube gives you one to two minutes.
- Anything after the viewer clicks away might as well be a black screen, so the best material belongs at the front.
- Hook sentences should be short and staccato; vary rhythm later in the video, not in the first lines.
- Every video idea can be framed through any of six hook formats, so the choice depends on which framing creates the biggest contrast with your visual.
- Wrapping an unfamiliar topic in a familiar brand or celebrity reference makes viewers feel smart instead of lost, which keeps them watching.
- "If you struggle with acne, try these three things" beats "three trends in skincare" because one solves a need and the other is a nice-to-have.
- Swapping "I've struggled with" for "if you've struggled with" removes the viewer's doubt about whether the video applies to them.
- Adding the single word "again" to a growth claim turns it into proof that you've done it before.
- Vague openers like "this is the craziest thing I've ever seen" give zero context, so viewers can't decide to stay and most leave.
- A curiosity loop is a chain of question, partial answer, new question; the hook only has to open the first one.
- Contrast can be stated (A versus B said out loud) or implied (only B said, because the viewer already knows A).
Build the hook from the visual, then add contrast.
WHAT TO LEARN
A hook holds viewers when everything on screen points at one clear idea and a contrast with what they already believe opens a question they need answered.
02The three-step hook formula
- Open with topic clarity so the right viewers lean in and the wrong ones can leave without hurting your metrics.
- Use a contrast word like but or however as a one-line pause before the real payoff of the hook.
- The snapback has to deliver something genuinely interesting; a contrarian setup with nothing behind it makes viewers churn and distrust you.
03Visual hooks
- Put three to five bold words on screen that say what the video is about, choosing words that can't be misread.
- Choose an opening shot with moderate motion; too much overwhelms the context and too little lets viewers drift.
04Building common ground
- Lead with the benefit, as in better sleep, then introduce the solution, so skeptics stay to hear you out.
- Compare complex or niche topics to a familiar brand or celebrity so new viewers feel oriented instead of lost.
05Speed to value and staccato sentences
- Assume about four seconds of attention on short-form and one to two minutes on YouTube, and place the first payoff inside that window.
- Write hook sentences short and dense, then let sentence length expand as the video goes on.
06Formats 1-3: fortune teller, experimenter, teacher
- Fortune teller hooks contrast today's reality with how the future will change and suit news and product launches.
- Experimenter hooks show a live demo peer to peer, while teacher hooks explain a method someone used to solve a known pain.
07Formats 4-6: magician, investigator, contrarian
- A magician opener, like a signature phrase, sound or visual pacifier, can stack on top of any other hook format.
- Investigator hooks promise a secret the viewer doesn't know, while contrarian hooks state outright what you believe that most people don't.
08Any idea fits any format; the four hook components
- Any single video idea can be written as all six formats, so test several angles before committing to one.
- Spoken words, visuals, on-screen text and audio must all say the same thing, or comprehension drops and viewers leave.
09The key-visual-first process, with a hit and a miss
- Start every hook by listing the visuals you have for the first three to five seconds, then write words to match them.
- Abstract phrases like the future of storytelling are hard to show on screen, so prefer concrete claims you can picture.
- If an idea has no strong visual and you can't manufacture one, drop it and move to a better idea.
10The six hook power words
- Check each hook for a clear subject, an action, an end state and a contrast between the starting point and that end state.
- Add proof, like the word again, or a time limit, like in 90 days, when you need extra credibility or urgency.
11Power words in four real hooks
- One phrase can serve as both the end state and the contrast, which keeps strong hooks very short.
- Proof and time words can move to the second or third line when they don't fit naturally in the opener.
12Mistakes 1 and 2: delay and confusion
- If the topic first appears in line three, cut the first two lines so the subject lands within one to two seconds.
- Write hooks at roughly a sixth-grade reading level in active voice, and rewrite any line that could be read two ways.
14Mistake 3: irrelevance
- Frame hooks with you and your rather than I and me so viewers don't have to wonder whether the video applies to them.
- Tie the hook to a pain point the viewer already feels; need-to-have problems hold attention better than nice-to-know trends.
15Mistake 4: disinterest and the two types of contrast
- Curiosity comes from the gap between what the viewer currently believes and a faster, better or cheaper alternative you present.
- Use stated contrast when clarity matters most and implied contrast when the audience already knows the default option.
Terms worth knowing.
- Context lean
- The opening one or two lines of a hook that make the topic obvious and give the viewer a reason to care, such as a benefit, pain point, shared reference or surprising fact.
- Scroll-stop interjection
- A short pivot line, usually starting with a contrast word like but, however or yet, that halts the viewer's assumption right after the setup.
- Contrarian snapback
- The hook line that turns the viewer in an unexpected direction while staying on topic, such as revealing the audio, not the screen, is the impressive part.
- Curiosity loop
- A repeating cycle where the viewer forms a question, gets partial context, then forms a new question, which keeps them watching to resolve it.
- Cult hopping
- Using a well-known brand, celebrity, movement or cultural reference as a comparison so an unfamiliar topic feels familiar and approachable.
- Visual pacifier
- A low-effort on-screen activity, like applying makeup or stacking cups, that holds the viewer's background attention while they listen to the main point.
- Key visual
- The single strongest shot available for the first three to five seconds, which the rest of the hook's words and text are written to support.
- Comprehension loss
- The drop in understanding that happens when what the viewer sees, hears and reads don't match, which leads them to scroll away.
- Staccato
- A musical term for short, clipped notes; applied to writing, it means short, punchy sentences that pack meaning into few words.
- Speed to value
- How quickly a video delivers its first useful or entertaining payoff after it starts; shorter is better for retention.
Things they pointed at.
02:34linkVegas Sphere video (8M views)
10:35channelColin and Samir Ray-Ban Meta glasses video
17:19toolChatGPT agent
17:43channelMrBeast
43:30channelAlex Hormozi marriage hook (6.3M views)
52:09toolChatGPT or Claude clarity-rewrite prompt
Lines you could clip.
00:44
“You are driving down the highway at 70 miles an hour. I need you to see something, stop, turn around, and come back the other way.”
26:07
“The difference between 500 and 500,000 views is unlocking max alignment between those four things.”
13:59
“Anything you make after they click off might as well be a black screen because they're not going to see it.”
28:42
“If you don't have a good visual, you need to really think, should I make this video?”
34:13
“There's always more ideas that you could make.”
56:51
“Learning about trends in skincare is a nice to have. Solving my acne problem is a need to have.”
Word for word.
Read-along
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metaphoranalogystory
In this video, I'm going to break down exactly how to make your hooks better than 99 % of people. We all know hooks matter a ton, but there's way too much noise on the internet about this. So this is going to be a masterclass on hooks and it should answer every single question that you have on how to make them.
First, we're going to start off with the six easiest tips for improving your hooks immediately. Then I'm going to break down the six best hook formats and the six power words, the specific words you can use in each hook that works super well. At the end, I'm going to break down the four biggest hook mistakes that I see in the hundreds of videos that I review every single week.
And I promise you, once you're done watching this video, you will know immediately what to do to level up your hooks. By the way, if you don't know me, my name is Callaway. I have 2 million followers.
I've done billions of views and content is all. I do all day long. All right, first, we're going to start out with the six fastest ways to improve your hooks immediately.
All right, tip number one is actually the mega tip. It's my full three -step hook formula. And this is how I look at social media.
. I need you to see something, stop, turn around, and come back the other way. So how do I get you to do that?
The way I do that is by building a curiosity loop. And this is one of the base commandments in storytelling. If you want to tell a great story, you need the viewer to watch the first line and feel so compelled that they can't dream of doing anything else than watching the second line and the third line and so on.
The domino effect. This is the curiosity loop. And the deeper the loop, the more curious you are, the more I've hooked you.
So the question is, how do I do that in just three or four sentences? And the answer is that I built a formula that does this every single time. It's three steps.
The first step is what I call the context lean. In the first line or two, I need to do two things. One, I need to be super clear about what the video is actually about.
Topic clarity. And this is so you as the viewer can self -select in or out based on your interest. If I'm talking about investing and you don't care about investing, I actually don't want to trick you into watching the video because you're not my target viewer.
But if you do care about investing, I want to signal this to you as soon as possible. So I need to give you immediate context about the topic. The second thing I need to do is get you leaning in.
Context, lean. The more you lean in, the more curious you are. These are the easiest ways to get somebody to lean in.
Establish common ground, reference a benefit or pain point they may have, use a metaphor to simplify a complex idea, or tell them something so interesting it blows their mind. You need them to be connected and feel like what you're talking about relates to them in some way. Let's go through an example of one of my videos.
This is the sphere video I made that got 8 million views. I want you to just watch the first two lines. The tech in the Vegas sphere is insane.
Biggest screen ever built, 20 times bigger than an IMAX. Right away, I'm telling you exactly what the context of the video is, the sphere and the tech inside. And I'm getting you to lean in by talking about the screen, showing it and referencing to how much bigger it is than an IMAX, something you may have known.
Now, this is taking the show you something interesting to blow your mind route of the options. And of course, not everyone is going to be interested in this video, but if you've heard about the sphere or care about tech in venues, you're going to be leaning in. Okay, so that's step.
one. Now, step two is what I call the scroll stop interjection. This is a single line .
I need you to start leaning in and then immediately I need you to stop being able to move forward like you ran into a window. And the best way to do this in practice is by using a contrasting word. I like to use the word but, but you could use things like however, yet, although, therefore, on the other hand, things like that.
And this is more just meant to be a setup line for the haymaker that's coming in step three. But in order for them to accept the haymaker, you need to stun them first. Now, back in the sphere example, let's watch both the context lean and the scroll stop interjection together.
The tech in the Vegas sphere is insane. Biggest screen ever built, 20 times bigger than an IMAX. But get this, the screen is actually the least impressive part of the whole thing.
So at this point, I've kind of stunned you, right? I first established context and got you leaning in about how interesting the sphere is, talking about the tech and the screen. But then I stunned you and told you the screen is actually not impressive at all.
At this point, you're like, what could possibly be coming next? The screen looks huge. I can see it in the visuals.
And this is the curiosity loop that is building. what is coming next is replacing any thought that could be distracting you and send you anywhere else. All right, time for step three.
This is the haymaker. I call it the contrarian snapback. Now, the contrarian snapback is a sentence that goes in the opposite direction of the initial lean.
It's still on topic, but it snaps the viewer back on a different path. And the bigger the shock, the bigger the snap, the better the effect. So let's finish this fear example now with all three parts.
The tech in the Vegas sphere is insane. Biggest screen ever built, 20 times bigger. than an IMAX.
But get this, the screen is actually the least impressive part of the whole thing because the most impressive part is the audio. This is going to blow your mind. At this point, I've got you hook, line, and sinker.
I established context immediately. I got you leaning in the case that you were interested in something about the screen or something new you hadn't seen before. Then I stunned you and , snapping you back in a different direction.
Instead of talking about the screen, now I'm talking about the audio. That is the snapback. At this point, you are fully hooked and fully curious about what comes next.
You can't dream of doing anything else other than learning how this audio is more impressive than the biggest screen ever built. That's hook, line, and sinker. Now, it turns out if you go back and you analyze best performing content from any creator across any medium, a lot of it follows this exact same formula.
And it doesn't just have to be the big news style, entertainment style, video type content. If I'm making content as a real estate agent and I'm purely looking to drive leads to my real estate practice, pure B2B, I could say something like this. There are three massive mistakes people are making with their mortgage.
The average person pays an extra $12 ,000 per year. Now, most people think it's because of high interest rates, but it turns out it has nothing to do with that because the biggest waste of money is actually coming from... See what I did there?
Now, I don't know anything about real estate. I don't know what the right answer to that is, but just that hook setup, even without me knowing any context, I can get you leaning one way and then the other. And if you're a real estate agent and you make content in that format, I guarantee that would drive so many leads.
It would build you as authority in your category. That's what you wanna do. That hook format works every category, every space.
And if you don't believe it works, I'm gonna do a magic trick because I use this same psychology formula on you for the hook in this video. And if you're still watching, that proves it worked. Let me show you exactly what I did.
So I started off by saying this.
Today, we're talking about hooks. If you want your videos to perform better, you have to make better hooks.
So right away, this was me giving context on exactly what the video is about, hooks, but also creating common ground and getting you to lean in around the benefit of making better videos if you figure out how to make better hooks. This started building the curiosity loop in your mind. Now, if you watch just those two sentences and you don't really care about making videos or making content, then that didn't really apply to you and you've probably bounced anyway.
But if you're at this point right now, I guarantee it's because you're trying to figure out how to make videos to perform better. So this built common ground with you, which is my target viewer. Okay, so that's step one.
So context about the video and I got you leaning in. So now what's next? The next thing I said was this.
But here's the thing. I'm not going to give you a list of 25 proven viral hooks because that's not what you need. This is the scroll stop interjection, the stop sign, the red light, the stun gun.
And this stops you in your tracks because I'm reiterating what you've typically heard in the past. Typically, you see creators talk about the list of the 40 best proven hooks and then they give you the list. But you know this isn't the answer.
I know that's not the answer. So I'm using that embedded... Belief in your head that you know, it's not the answer to stun you into waiting to see what comes next This is just the setup line to give the contrarian snapback But it works especially well here because you and I both know that conventional wisdom doesn't work And so i'm playing on that embedded subconscious belief Okay, so so far you've stopped the car and you've exited off the highway.
Now, how do I get you to turn around? That is step three So what did I do next? This is the last thing I said what you need is to understand the psychology behind why those hooks work And then the tactics for how to use that psychology in your own stuff And this is the contrarian snapback because most people have heard the word psychology whether you study psychology or not You've heard the word psychology and you have a suspicion as I delivered it that that actually would result in some surprise or secret information That's way deeper than the conventional wisdom you hear that and you believe that to be true So I've snapped you back off the conventional wisdom back to this psychology frame, which is what I'm talking about.
So when I say, hey, if you want to achieve X, don't do Y, do Z. And if you want to achieve X, you're going to listen. It works every time.
The key though is that you need Z to actually be compelling, which in this case, I think it is. This is actually the formula I use and I know it's proven to work. If you just do this game, but then you don't actually have anything at the end of the rainbow, people will just churn and you're a fraud.
So this formula works in all types of videos. It's not just short form, long form, and it works everywhere else. Any type of content in conversation, in life.
This is base psychology 101. Context lean, scroll stop interjection, contrarian snapback. Now implementing this in every different video and every different use case, that's what takes reps and practice.
That is not easy. All right, so now that we walk through the base psychology and the formula, which is really important to cover up first, let me go through some extra things that'll really help you sauce up your hooks on top of that foundation. Because I promised six, and that formula was technically just one, so here's the other five.
All right, the second thing is visual hooks. I say this a lot, but visual hooks are so, so, so critical in the video. I cannot overstate the importance.
Visual hooks are probably 100 times more powerful than just spoken word hooks. And it's because people read faster than they can hear, or that they can visually comprehend a full video scene.
I've said this on many other videos, but if you just put title text, your videos will do so much better. So step one is put three to five words on the screen in a big, bold font that helps build that context lean. If you can speak it in one to two sentences, can you write three to five words and distill that message down?
A good example of this is in my video about life -size floor plans. This video got like 15 million views. Check this out.
These are called life -size floor plans. I use the text future of home design and life -size floor plans with arrows to quickly establish the context and I used future of home designs instead of life -size floor plans at the beginning because life -size floor plans is kind of the name of the thing and I didn't want to risk misunderstanding.
That is how critical and in detail I get with these visual hooks. That's how important they are. Now the second piece of the visual hook is the visual itself.
You want the most compelling visual possible with enough motion to hold their attention. It's like when a deer sees something out of the corner of their eye in their woods. They're going to stop and they're going to look and they're going to see it.
You want that same effect with your visual. Too much motion and you're going to overwhelm them and it will miss the context. Too little motion and you're going to bore them and they may churn.
You need just enough motion. Sometimes this motion could be a girl in a Get Ready With Me putting their hair up, kind of leaning forward and leaning back. That sometimes is just enough motion to stun the viewer into holding and watching for more.
This famous Colin and Samir video about the Ray -Ban metas, this has 60 million views. The reason this went so viral, in my opinion, is because the initial clip has the perfect amount of rapid motion and then him in the mirror. That motion holds and allows them to talk about the point, which eventually convinces them that the Ray -Ban metas are cool.
So motion is so critical. in the visual hook. The combo of text on screen plus the motion in the video plus the spoken word, that combo is way more powerful than just the spoken word.
Now, the third and fourth tips are about helping you build that common ground that I talked about in the context lean. The third piece is also based psychology. It's that people like hearing things that they're already interested in, but they're open to hearing new perspectives on it if they think that new perspective will unlock a benefit or solve a pain point that they have in the category.
So if you make a video about magnesium, as a supplement. An average way to write that hook would be something like you should be taking magnesium because it's one of 21 core building block minerals.
It's kind of decent, but it requires a previous understanding about magnesium and doesn't really talk about a benefit or pain point. A better context lean here would be something like if you want better sleep, you need to be taking magnesium. This leads with the benefit of talking about better sleep and then introduces magnesium as a potential solve.
Even if someone is against supplements or against magnesium, they will likely wait and hear you out because their desire to solve the pain of not sleeping well is so strong. When you're writing hooks, you always want to think about what the benefit or pain point solve is to the target viewer and then work that in if you can.
All right, now the fourth piece to building the common ground is cult hopping. And I've talked about this before. When people hear something that they've heard before, it unlocks a comfort in their subconscious.
And the opposite is true. It sounds weird, but if you hear a bunch of stuff you've never heard before, you start to feel dumb and you don't like that feeling, so you bounce away. This is why if you tried to listen to an advanced physics lecture and you've never taken a physics class, you would likely feel super dumb and not want to listen to it.
So when you're making videos about complex or niche topics, you need to find a way to wrap the unknown idea in something that is known, some common layer. And one way to do this is what I call cult hopping. This is taking a known brand or a celebrity or a movement or some cultural reference and using it as a metaphor or a comparison around your point.
For example, if you make videos about complex tax planning, maybe you talk about how Taylor Swift's financial advisor would plan her estate around the heiress tour earnings she just made. Or maybe you just reference her in a group of celebrities when you talk about the elite level of wealth that you serve. Using these references is a really easy way to establish that common ground and it's subconscious, but it creates comfort for the viewer.
And you don't need to make your full piece of content around that celebrity or brand, but this will help you draft off the credibility and the popularity of something that already exists when you're still smaller and growing. All right, tip number five is to compress speed to value. And this is a saying I use a lot, especially when I'm talking about short form video.
When you make a piece of content, you should feel like you have a timer counting down in your head before that content explodes and no one pays attention to it. For short form, that timer is about four seconds. For YouTube videos, that timer is maybe one to two minutes.
So you need to find a way to compress the time to demonstrate initial value to before that explosion line. And that applies to both educational and entertainment content. The best way to do this is to give a little hit of value right at the front, either in the hook or right after the hook, because you don't want to bury your best stuff.
Think of it like this. Anything you make after they click off because they're not going to see it. You should front load the value as much as possible.
You're not going for full completion. Your super fans will watch the full video. You want to front load the value as much as possible to eke out an extra 30 seconds at a time.
Now, I find that as long as that first hit of value is unique and helpful, they will typically stay around long enough to give you a chance to show yourself. hit a value. That same logic that we apply with a curiosity loop should apply to this value loop.
Give context immediate value. Give context immediate value. Front load that as much as possible.
Ideally, you can inject that first hit of value within the hook. That's when you're really masterful. But if you can't do it in the hook, do it right after the hook to keep them.
All right, now the sixth super tactical tip is to make your hook sentences staccato. And if you don't know what staccato means, staccato is a type of note in music that is short. That's staccato.
Now, I talked about in my storytelling video, which I'll link at the end of this, how it's good to vary the length of your sentences to create a diverse rhythm. And that is true for the whole video. But for the hook up front, you want to compress short sentences as much as you can.
And the reason why you do this is because shorter sentences force you to achieve max clarity. It increases the density of value per word at the beginning. And when time is at a premium at the beginning of the video, you want to increase density value per word as much as you can.
Go shorter initially. and then expand to medium and longer as the video extends. All right, so that covered the six fastest ways to improve your hooks right now.
Next, we're gonna break down the six hook formats that tend to work over and over in every single niche. To get these, I literally analyzed thousands of the top hooks and these six kept coming up over and over. So if you don't know how to approach your hooks, just pick one of these six hook formats and do this.
All right, let's dive in. All right, now the first hook format is called the fortune teller. And it's all about positioning the present against the present.
future the creator is using some scenario or question to build curiosity about how the future might change so this could mean saying something like that new microwave is going to change cooking forever or that little blue light is going to impact traffic moving forward here are a couple other examples of the fortune teller hook in action we're witnessing one of the largest breakthroughs in marketing this is the future of animation And this fortune teller hook format works super well because the human brain is designed to constantly think about the future.
So it's playing into that. So the tactical steps for using this hook format would be A, establish what the current reality is. B, figure out how the future might change based on the video subject.
And C, frame a question or statement teasing that new future as a possibility. And this format is great for breaking news, product innovations, really anybody that's trying to build authority or interest around knowing the future of some topic. And again, I'm going through all six of these base formats first so we can build that baseline before going deeper tactically into how to actually write the hooks.
And I'll go through that in a minute. Okay, now the second hook format is called the experimenter. And this one is all about the creator showcasing how something works using a demo or experiment.
And specifically, this is angled as peer -to -peer. It's one friend showing another what they learned or came across. So the contrast that's being built is coming from, I used to do something this way.
I figured out some method or format. Let me show you how now I'm doing this thing this way. And here are a couple examples of the experimenter format in action.
Does anything look weird about this shot to you? I actually don't have a camera in my hands. I'm recording with these glasses on my face.
These are the Ray -Ban Meta smart glasses and they're about to change the way that we create. This right here is the brand new ChatGPT agent that literally controls your browser and does tasks for you. And this is an 11 step process and we're going to see if it does it.
Now, I especially love the Colin and Samir one because Samir is actually showing how the glasses work in the hook as well. He doesn't have to use the hook to tee it up in the future because the glasses camera is the subject itself. And that video did 50 million views for a reason.
And a lot of Mr. Beast videos fall into this hook category as well. He doesn't always explicitly explain them as experiments, but he's basically doing human experiments and then letting you watch in real time to see what happens.
So the tactical steps for using the experimenter hook framework are to a establish the base pain point that needs solving. B, show that you solved the pain point or tried some new method or tool with an experiment. And then C, walk through why that new experiment or solve is different and help solve the pain point better.
And this format is great for product demos, new frameworks. It's also great for B2B trying to showcase how your tool or product works. This is also the same hook framework where those people that make the elaborate outdoor structures, camping or building a log cabin by hand, this is the same format they're using as well.
All right, let's keep going. Now, the third hook format is called the teacher. And this one is simple.
to the experimenter, except that instead of going peer to peer, it's going more teacher to student. And instead of showing things with a live experiment, it's more showing them by framing a lesson. So it's kind of like, I'm the teacher of this topic.
I just saw somebody who solved X with Y method. Let me break that down and explain to you how they did it. Again, the contrast is coming from you're failing at this thing.
I found a new way to do it. Let me explain how to do it so that you can start winning. And here's a few examples of the teacher format in action.
Three things you can learn from Aritzia. Here's how I got this shot. I made this econ brand a million dollars in 12 hours using something called the product drop method.
And again, these are all teaching setups. So it's either the creator tried something and extracted the lessons and is now teaching it, not live experiment, but teaching the methods, or they studied someone else who solved that thing and then is now teaching those lessons back. Either way, it's show by teaching.
And so the tactical steps for using this one would be A, establish the base pain point. B, show that you have a solve through some set of learnings or method. And then C, walk them through why the process or steps worked because of your solve.
And this format is super good for anybody who's trying to build authority in the category or become an expert to then sell that expertise. Okay, now the fourth hook framework is a little bit different than the other five. It's called the magician and it can be used as a precursor or in combination with the rest of them.
Now the magician is, basically a stun gun. It's strategically using visuals and or language like, hey, look at that, to visually force the viewer's attention to a specific thing in the visual.
And it's usually something outlandish or just rhythmic and visually pops to stop the scroll. Now, there are a ton of amazing examples of people who do this. China, China.
What's up, MTV Chris? Yo, check this out. So President Trump just ordered the resurgence of a 1980s plan for nuclear war in space.
Let me explain. So this can either be executed with some visual stun tactic, like what Carl Shakur uses, the kind of snap click, or it could be the spoken words themselves, like look at that crazy thing, and really forcing the attention. My favorite example of this is the neon sign guy, who starts out as Trump with the wig, makes a joke in the voice, and then throws the wig off and immediately starts talking about the neon signs.
I've been using this on my own videos for the last 30 or so, where I start all the videos saying, check this out really quick, and I roll into the first line with it. Check us out this, check us out this, check us out this, check us out this. It just gives that.
kind of unique signature pattern that people recognize audibly when they hear it. Another great way to achieve the magician is with something called a visual pacifier. Now, this is an activity that the subject is doing passively, which holds just enough of your subconscious attention to let you focus on the thing.
This could either be like Alex Earl doing her makeup or this guy in this example stacking the cups. It's the same psychological reason why people make those GTA gameplay videos, the split screen, and you see the car driving through the course on one end, and then the clip on the other.
It holds just enough subconscious attention to get you to focus and not churn on the main thing. And I say this format is different because you can combine the magician with any of the other five. A lot of people stack them.
So they use the magician immediately as a visual stun gun and then layer on one of the other five below. So tactically to do this, you either want to find some visual, some sound or some signature thing that you can tie to your videos to kind of stun that's atypical and stops that scroll. All right.
Now the fifth hook format is called the investigator. And this one is super common with this format. You're basically trying to create contrast against some unknown secret or some fine.
that you found in your research that nobody knows about. So the contrast is today, you don't know the thing, I show you the thing, now you know the thing. Very simple.
Almost all of my personal short form videos fall into this category. It's kind of unearthing some tech or AI thing about the future potentially that people don't know about. And there's a ton of amazing examples showcasing this format as well.
So this is one of the sneakier marketing campaigns I've seen. Central C's brand sells out in seconds. And what's crazy is that it's not just because he's a rapper.
This is a secret Japanese city built at the base of Mount Fuji. But it's not just any city. So the tactical steps, if you want to use the investigator, would be to tee up the fact that there is some secret that they don't know and then frame it against their current reality, which is not knowing.
And the communicated contrast in this one is pretty straightforward because the base case is they don't know, and then you tell them something they know. Some of these don't have to be super cheeky. They could be pretty straightforward, but inherently they'll still grab and create that interest.
This format is great for people to use who are trying to be at the leading edge of their field or showcase that in a research capacity, they're finding the deep insights that most people don't know. Okay, and the sixth and final hook format is called the contrarian. And this one is actually the easiest to understand where exactly the contrast sits.
The contrarian hook literally has the creator come out specifically and say what they believe about the topic that is different than the conventional wisdom. And the difference between this one and some of the others is that a few of the others kind of slyly try to hide that contrast in the framing. Whereas this one, immediately you come straight out and just say, you're doing your branding wrong.
You should be doing it this way. It's very direct. Here are a few examples of the contrarian in practice.
so i think this is probably the most important thing that you need to be doing if you run a brand that you are probably not doing and this is having one -on -one conversations with your customers you have no creative ideas because your space sucks to live in this guy is a multi -millionaire from his clothing brand and the weird thing is their best sellers are almost never in stock Now of the six hook formats, this one is the most direct at creating that contrast.
And it's really easy. The tactical steps would be figure out what you believe that most people don't believe and then say it explicitly. This is great for the smarty pants expert use case or somebody that's trying to frame themselves as a contrarian in a crowded space.
Okay, so there we have it. Those are the six hook archetypes. The fortune teller, the experimenter, the teacher, the magician, the investigator, and the contrarian.
Now I'm gonna tell you a secret. you don't actually have to figure out which one of the six works for your video. Because the truth is every single video idea could be manipulated to use any of the six hook formats.
For example, let's say I made videos reviewing backpacks and this new interesting backpack just came out that I wanted to make a video about. how would I go about using all six of these in different ways? So for the fortune teller, I may say something like, this backpack is going to completely change the way millennials travel.
For the experimenter, I might say, I just took this backpack 7 ,000 miles across the world, but it has three major design flaws. For the teacher, I may say something like, if you're traveling internationally this summer, this is the best way to pack your backpack. For the magician, I may do a rapid match cut with a bunch of different backpacks to visually stun them.
And then with the voiceover saying, which of these backpacks is the best for a guy in their 20s. For the investigator, I may say something like, I can't believe this company isn't marketing this one flaw in their bag.
And then for the contrarian, I may say something like, everybody loves this bag, but if you use it every day, it is so overhyped. And see, so you can pick any of those hook directions with every single video topic. And so the real question is, how do you decide?
If you're staring at the blank page and you're trying to write a hook, which of these is the best one for you in any given scenario? And this really gets into the second part of the video, which is tactically, how do you actually write a banger hook that crushes every single time.
Because that's where the sauce really lies. So let's walk through that. I'm going to break the whole thing down right now.
All hooks are made up of four components. The spoken hook, which is what you say. The visual hook, which is what you show on the screen.
The text hook, which is what you write in text on the screen. And then the audio hook, which is the sound and sound effects that you play in the background. and this is the big secret right here the difference between 500 and 500 000 views is unlocking max alignment between those four things so if you say one thing verbally but then the visual even slightly different that creates misalignment and then the hook is not as effective to nail the hook you need all four of these things to line up perfectly And the reason this matters is because of comprehension.
Comprehension is the degree to which the viewer actually understands what they're seeing and hearing. You can't hook them unless they fully understand and are interested in what they're watching. If your verbal spoken hook is different from your visual hook, which is different from the music in your audio hook, well, that leads to confusion.
And confusion leads to comprehension loss, which just makes it harder for the viewer to stick with the hook. The way to drive max comprehension is to make sure the visual and audio hooks are aligned.
And so how do you do this? The way you do this is to understand exactly how the viewer takes in the video when they're watching. And this gets to the deep psychology, which is my favorite thing to do.
Imagine a subconscious heat map when somebody's watching the video, where are they actually focusing their attention? I'm going to tell you. This is what all viewers do.
The first thing they do is they take in the visual and text hook. They see the visual. They may read the text hook if it's obvious enough in the right place.
And then their ears catch up and they hear the spoken hook after. And after they hear what you're saying, they look back at the visual and they're seeking visual confirmation with what they heard. So it's visual, audio, visual.
That sandwich is how people actually take in videos at the subconscious level. Now, why is this the case? Well, the reason is our eyes process.
10 to 100 times more information per second than our ears. And this is essentially the speed of light versus speed of sound phenomenon. So the viewer is seeing first, then hearing, and then looking back at the visual to match what they heard.
Okay, so tactically tying all this together, what does this actually mean? And why did I spend so much time going through those six hook archetypes? What this means is that the most important part of getting the hook to actually perform well is the visual.
It's not what you say, it's the visual. I call this the key visual. So when you first have your video idea, the very first thing you should do is figure out what visual or visuals you have at your disposal that you could actually slot into the first three to five seconds.
And based on that key visual, you then need to decide which of the six hooks archetypes will create the most contrast and perfectly aligned with what that visual shows. Knowing the visual lets you set up the speech to then set back up to the visual.
This is the golden approach to hooks that nobody talks about at this level. All right, so now I'm going to say it again one more time, but more organized. So the very first step is you need to look at what visuals do you have?
The better the visual, the more you can lean on the visual and the easier it will be to set up the contrast back to the visual. If you don't have a good visual, you need to really think, should I make this video? And if you do want to make it, how are you going to manufacture the key visual with motion graphics or some stock footage to create this interesting thing to look at?
Step two is that once you have the visual, you need to think about what are the most interesting. fact sets or angles, things about the story that you have to work with. And based on those, what has the biggest contrast?
Whichever one has the biggest contrast will inform which of the six hook archetypes that you actually use. Step three is that I would then write the spoken hook. This is gonna be two to four lines and it's gonna follow the context lean, contrast and contrarian snapback approach that I detailed in my other hook video.
I'll link that here. Step four is then what text can I put on screen overlaying the video to support that initial visual and the reconfirmation of the visual after someone hears the speech? And then step five, I'm going to watch it back and gut check with myself, does this achieve max comprehension?
If the viewer goes visual, speech, visual, Are they very clear on what I'm talking about in this video and does that align with where I think the rest of the video will go? If not, I will stop, not move forward and rework the hook.
That is how important it is. All right, now really quick, I just wanna walk through a couple examples of my own content to illustrate what I mean by good and bad hooks. We're gonna show one of each.
The first one is an example of a perfect hook. This video is about life -size floor plans, which is this really cool projected home floor plans in a warehouse. This video did 15 million views.
So the first thing I want you to do is watch this video with no sound we're gonna turn the sound off Just watch the hook visually and I want you to think where do your eyes go? What do you notice and what do you see? So we're gonna play that right now Alright now the first place your eyes probably go is that sliding text that comes across that says the future of home design this first clip with a split screen You don't actually see that well The girl with the arms going up, that was more just a visual stun gun.
The actual hero visual, the key visual that I saw in the idea that I knew I was going to build the whole video around was the next visual in the full screen with the people walking on top of the floor plans. What I did is I put text that said life -size floor plans with an arrow, enhancing the fact that your visual eyeline went directly to that thing.
I wanted to make sure you saw that. And so this was the visual shocker, right? There's embedded contrast here.
Most people have never seen this before. fact that it existed on its own created a large contrast. I knew that visual was a great key visual to build off of.
Okay, so the next thing is I'd actually pick which of the hook formats that I want to go with and then how would I actually write the hook itself? So when I looked at the formats, there were two that made sense. One was the fortune teller.
This is the future of home design. And the second one was the secret keeper. I found this secret about how people are designing homes that nobody knew.
They're close to the same, but slightly different. I went with the fortune teller one because it was just easier to explain and creates more of a shock. This is what the future of home design will look like, right?
So that's what I picked. And then step three was I had to actually write the hook. So context lean, contrast, contrarian take.
So I literally said, check this out. That was my magician scroll stop thing. And then I said, these are life -size floor plans.
You can literally walk through your exact home design before you build it, right? So that's context lean. That is me literally describing exactly what you're seeing.
That is perfect alignment with showing the visual and saying the thing. Then for this one, I didn't actually need a contrasting word. I didn't need to say, but here's what's crazy because the fact that it existed on its own was already contrast enough.
So my contrarian take, which maps to the future hook fortune teller was, I think this is the future of how people are going to design their homes, right? So it's exactly what I'm saying. I picked the fortune teller.
I talked about the future. I set up the context lean, what you're seeing with pure alignment. And then I framed, this is the future of how people are going to design their homes.
That is tailor -made how you build the hook with pure alignment. And this one worked, 15 million views. Now, before we end the video, let's quickly go through one bad example where I made a video, but it didn't work out that well.
It got maybe 100 ,000 views or less, and the hook was just executed super poorly. So I want to explain what went wrong and what I should have done looking back. Okay, so the same thing here.
I want you to watch this video without sound. Just watch the first 15 seconds and tell me where you focus your attention.
So right away, you see the text sliding across again, future of storytelling. And then you see a bunch of these rooms kind of like magically appearing out of nowhere. Just that alone is kind of misaligned.
Future of storytelling is a bit of an abstract concept. And so visualizing that with those rooms, does that really mean future of storytelling? Not really.
So already just in the visual and with the text, there is comprehension loss. Then when you turn the sound on, it gets even more confusing. So I say, this is the future of storytelling.
It's called a generative world model. It lets you turn a single image into a photorealistic cinematic world. Okay, so if you really take that down, future of storytelling, it's so abstract.
It's like, what do you even show for that? Maybe it's a book with a video or a robot coming out of it. Maybe I could have used that.
The problem is nobody knows what generative world model is. Nobody knows what photorealistic world. So I use these crazy terms that I didn't have good visuals to show.
And you can tell immediately, it's just a little confusing. It's not as straightforward as the life -size floor plans one. And so when you watch this, yeah, maybe you're like, oh, those are cool visuals, but you're not actually hearing what I'm saying.
When you don't hear what I'm saying, you have comprehension loss. When you have comprehension loss, you're not purely tied and aligned with the video. And so looking back, maybe what I should have done is gone more explicit.
So these rooms are the future of commercials. And if I had visuals of guys actually using those rooms to film commercials and I could show that perspective, maybe that would have worked. The truth is this video didn't have great B -roll that was easy to explain.
So what I should have done is probably canned the idea, not made it in general. And that's really what you need to decide when you're going through this process. What is the visual?
What is the hook format? Writing the hook? Is there clarity and alignment?
If there isn't, you probably should throw out the video because there's always more ideas that you could make. All right, so that covered the six best hook formats that consistently outperform based on the data. Now to go a level deeper, if you actually want to get really good at the copywriting, there are six power words structurally within the hooks that tend to be core components of all the best performers.
If you understand these six words, not only will you be a better storyteller, but you'll really hone in the craft of hook copywriting. And at the end of this section, I will walk through four live examples using these six words so you know exactly how to make them. All right, let's dive in.
The first word is called the subject clarity word. And specifically, this applies to the subject that matters for the video. It could be you, it could be we, it could be that AI company over there.
When we were all in first grade, we learned the way to write sentences is subject predicate. This is the subject. For example, let's say we had a hook that said this.
If I had to grow from zero to 100K subs on YouTube, here's how I would do it. Let's say that was the hook and we're breaking these down. The subject clarity word in that hook is I.
I'm basically putting myself in the seat as the subject and the viewer is seeing me and trying to replicate the action that I'm talking about. Okay, so that's the first word of six. The hook clearly has to define a subject.
The second word is the action word. And this represents the action that the subject took to create whatever outcome or end state change they were looking for. So again, with that same example that I gave about growing from zero to 100K on YouTube, if I, the subject, had to grow, the action, all great hooks have some subject doing some action.
All right, now the third key hook power word is very important. And this is the objective or state change word. And this really corresponds to the end result that the subject took the action to get.
Now, the more shocking this result, the more shocking this outcome or state change, the better. But regardless, you need some result. So in our example, the YouTube growth, zero to 100K on YouTube, the objective or end state phrase is zero to 100K subs on YouTube.
That is the objective or outcome or end state that we're looking for. I, the subject, need to grow an action from zero to a hundred K subs on YouTube.
The objective. Okay. So, so far we've covered the top three words, subject, clarity, word, action, word, and then objective or end state word.
The fourth word is the contrast word. The contrast word is comparing the new outcome, the objective we just accomplished, versus the base state. It is meant to intensify the curiosity going from A to B.
So in our example, in this case, the contrast word also happens to be 0 to 100K subs. The base state was 0. The end state is 100K.
We went from 0 to 100K. That is the contrast. Okay, so these are the four main hook power words.
Now, the last two are optional, and they do really help ratchet up curiosity where they make sense. The fifth word is the proof word. And again, this is optional, but it helps qualify why the viewer should care about your perspective if that matters in the type of story you're telling.
For entertainment content, you rarely need proof, but for education content, you do need proof very often. So in our example that I just went through, if I had to grow from zero to 100K subs on YouTube, here's how I'd do it. In that example, I didn't have a proof word in that hook.
Now, if I wanted to add a proof word, it's very simple. I just add one word, the word again. If I had to grow from zero to 100K subs on YouTube, again, here's how I would do it.
All of a sudden again is proof that I've done it before. Now saying grow from zero to a hundred K and you look down and see that I have the proof is implied, but if you want to explicitly state it, you can use a word to intensify the clarity that I've done it already. Now the sixth and final word, and again, this one's optional too, is called the time word.
Now the time word adds a time constraint or a time component that again helps map urgency or speed to effectiveness to make what you're saying more desirable to hear. So for example, again, in the example we've been working through, I didn't really have a time parameter. However, I could very easily add one.
If I did add one, it would work like this. If I had to grow from zero to a hundred K subs on YouTube in five months, here's how I would do it. Or if I had to grow from zero to 100K subs on YouTube, here's how I would do it in the next 90 days.
You could do it either way for this example, adding that little time modifier helps increase the intensity of the speed to effectiveness, which increases curiosity. Okay, so those really are the six power words, the core components to every great hook. You've got the four main ones, subject clarity word, action word, objective or end state word, and contrast word.
And then you have the two optional ones, the proof word and the time word. And obviously you can tell by now, these can be single words or phrases but it's easy to think of them as like chunks or pieces that you stack together.
All right, now let's go through four tactical examples of real hooks that performed really well. And I'm going to show you and highlight where in the hook each of these components live so you can see a couple different combinations of using these words. The first example we have is from one of my videos and then we're going to go through three other creators that are not me in different niches so you can see different flavors.
So let's play this video and you can hear the hook. Check this out. These are called life -size floor plans.
You can literally walk through your exact home design before you build it. All right, so that was the hook. Ignore the little check this out.
I was just testing something there. So really the hook is these are called life -size floor plans. You can literally walk through your exact home design before you build it.
That was essentially the hook, two -line hook. All right, now this video is more tech entertainment. So I am not the subject.
There's really two. One is life -size floor plans, the entity. These are called life -size floor plans.
That's the subject we're talking about. But really the subject is you. You can walk through your home design, right?
So I would basically highlight life -size floor plans and you as the subject words. Now the action word was can literally walk through. You can walk through, right?
You subject are taking this action. Now the objective or end state words in this case is being able to see your own home design before you build it and actually walk through it immersively. So technically it could be any part of that phrase.
This allows you to walk through your exact home design before you build it. It could be any part of that phrase. We'll just highlight a piece of it.
Now the contrast word is also there as well, before you build it. The base state is you can't see the designs until after you build it. The new state is.
You can with this warehouse life -size floor plan technology you can before, before and after that's the contrast. So here the same phrase is serving as the objective and end state as well as the contrast. And that's what you see very often.
If you're good at kind of writing this in a tight way, you're going to use similar contrasting words that work for the objective or end state piece as well. Now for this video, I obviously didn't include proof because it didn't really make sense in this context, but I do have a pretty subtle time word, right? Before you build it.
I'm emphasizing the time. You have to do it after normally, now it's before. So you could make the claim that that is or isn't a time word.
but I think it counts for kind of increasing the urgency that makes sense for the buyer. And so there's the first example of how I incorporated the four core power words, plus debatably, you could include the time word as well. All right, let's do another example.
Take this video from my friend Ava. She goes by at personal brand launch on Instagram and TikTok. This is a shock value hook.
This is why you should always wash your bread before eating it. Okay, so in this video, she goes, this was a shock value hook. And then she plays the shock value hook example, where in that one, the guy goes, this is why you should always wash your bread before eating it.
Now, this example is a bit sneaky. Ava's doing something very savvy here, right? So her hook, this is a shock value hook, is not really the hook.
The real hook is her going on top of the video that was already validated. This is why you should always wash your bread before eating it. That video got 66 million views or whatever it is.
She's using that as her own hook. So when we analyze this, we look past her first line and we go to the real hook, which is the first hook she played. So let's analyze that line.
This is why you should always wash your bread before eating it. Now the subject in this video is you. This is why you should take some action.
The action word is should always wash your bread. You. should always wash your bread.
Now the objective or end state word here is washed bread. And it's kind of implied, right? They don't say you should always wash your bread.
So you have washed a bread before eating it. That would be redundant. So they delete the actual specific explicit objective word, but it's very well implied.
You're going to wash your bread and you will have washed bread. So that's kind of the objective here they're going for. Now the contrast word here is kind of before eating it, but really it's washed.
The base state is you don't wash your bread. The new reality that they're suggesting is you do wash your bread. No wash, wash.
So it's like you wash it before eating it. That kind of combination is really where the contrast is. Now, this type of video doesn't need a time word or a proof word in the first sentence.
However, the next sentence very well could be, I'm a professional baker that's been doing this for 30 years. That would be proof, right?
So it doesn't show in the first line. And typically that's why time and proof are optional because you can embed them in the second and third lines coming up if you need it. All right, let's do two more quick examples.
This next one is from Hormozy. Now this video got 6 .3 million views, absolute banger from him as well. Let's watch the hook here.
If you find a girl who believes in your dreams more than you do, who makes you want to be a better man, who's willing to work alongside you to get there and is grateful for whatever you have right now today, no matter where All right, now this hook has all sorts of these component words in it. There's gonna be highlights everywhere.
I'll try to break down exactly what he did. Now the subject word here is you, and mostly he's talking to men. So if you read the full hook or listen to the full hook, it's like, if you find a girl that, he's mostly talking to men.
So you, proxy for men. The action word here is find a girl at the kind of beginning and then marry her. If you, find a girl and then marry her.
It's kind of separated, but those are the two actions. Now the objective or end state words are pretty much most of the remaining words. There's kind of a list of different objectives that if you find a girl that does these objectives, you want to marry her.
That's kind of how it's set up. So believe in your dreams, make you a better man, work alongside you, be grateful for where you're at. Like those are the objectives you're looking for.
Now the contrast is embedded in some of these phrases. For example, if she believes in your dreams more than you do, the dreams are the base state. You believe in them X, she believes in them X plus Y.
That's kind of the before and after. This one also has a time word in it as well, where he says right now today. If you find a girl that does these things right now today, you should marry her.
This one doesn't have proof because proof doesn't make sense for this one. All right. Now the last example I want to go through is one from cat GPT.
And this is a different example than what we covered before. All right. This one got 2 .9 million views.
It was a massive outlier as well. Let's listen to the hook. I think if we were smarter, we would listen to 13 year olds more.
Okay. So the hook is if we were smarter. we would listen to 13 year olds more now this one is super simple but it really crushes when you can analyze it with these power words now the subject here is we if we were smarter it's the royal we she's basically talking about her and then the collective of all the people that she represents or she is a proxy as a voice for now the action word here is actually a little bit after the objective it's we would listen so it really breaks down to if we Subject were smarter objective.
We would listen action to 13 year olds more now to 13 year olds more That's the contrast word because if you listen to the first part of the sentence if we were smarter We would listen typically you expect like older wiser, you know smarter people instead She's saying the opposite not saying they're not old wise and smart, but like they're younger So it's not what you would expect which creates that base state new reality contrast That's why her saying 13 year olds was shocking and creates that contrast All right, so that was four good examples from four different creators in different niches, breaking down different effective hooks.
All four of them had the four core power words, and then some of them had a combination of the two remaining words as well. Now, of course, the final question for you as the viewer, after watching this playbook and starting to get your head around these six words is this, how do I actually write my own versions of these hooks on my topics using this framework with the six words?
Now, the truth is the actual words you're going to use are going to vary. by topic video to video. There's not like one set word you use for every hook every time.
Here's some guidance to think about which words fit in the buckets, the six different buckets. For subject clarity, this one's pretty straightforward. It's gonna either be I, we, you, or like some subject proper noun that you're talking about.
For the action word, it's gonna be some verb or some adverb that you're using to describe the action. For the objective, it's going to be some end state that you or the viewer would want the subject to end up with or on or resulting in. You want to make this as shocking and non -obvious as possible, but regardless, you have to have some objective or end state.
Now for the contrast, this is really about asking yourself, what is the base state expectation that the viewer believes today? And then what new reality does this objective open up? And then how do we explicitly create that contrast with words?
That's how you want to think about it. For proof, this is really easy. It's just about saying what you or the subject has done to qualify your take or their recommendation so that people trust it more.
And then for time, think about adding some time parameter, months, days, minutes, seconds, something to add the intensity and the speed to result to increase that curiosity. All right, so that covered the six hook power words that really underpin the core of hook copywriting. Next, we're gonna break down the four biggest hook mistakes and exactly what you can do to avoid them.
Every single week, I review dozens and dozens of videos from business owners in my short form academy. These are the four big hook mistakes that continue to come up over and over. So if you just know what these are and how to avoid them, you'll be set.
All right, let's dive in. All right, the first hook mistake is called delay. And the good news is this one is the easiest one to fix.
When I say delay, what I mean is that the context on what the video is going to be about is delayed too long in the video. If you were to visualize a script, let's say it has 13 lines and the third line is the first time you introduce the topic, this is delay because those first two lines are fluff and unnecessary details.
You need to cut those first two lines, move the third line up to the top so your topic introduction can happen in the first one to two seconds. I often refer to this concept as speed to value. You want to increase the speed that the viewer can get to clarity or get to value.
Here's an example of what bad delay looks like. Let's say you start your video with something like this. Guys, this is one of the craziest things I've ever seen.
And when you see it, you're never going to believe it. That is an example of a legit hook that many people try to use when they're beginners. Now in theory, this kind of sounds like it might be a good hook because it's building suspense and curiosity about what that thing is.
You might hear that and wonder, what did the creator see? I have to stick around to find out. But the problem with that sentence and generally hooks like this is that it gives me, as the viewer, zero context on what is coming next.
A crazy thing you saw could be literally anything. So if I have to decide with my time if I want to keep watching, I'm now unable to do it after just that sentence because I don't have the context. The typical chart for short -form video retention looks like this.
It's exponential decay. You see how steep those first two seconds are going down? That viewership falls off like a cliff.
Every second you go without telling somebody what the video is about so they have the information to decide to opt in, a large portion of your viewers are bouncing. Now, certain creators with these vague hooks are able to get some people to stay. If you look on TikTok specifically, it feels like these type of vague open -ended hooks work a lot.
But the people that are staying are only staying because of how the creator looks, the emotion on the creator's face, or the text hook that they're putting on the screen. The spoken words actually add zero value to getting them to stay. So it's not that these types of open -ended vague hooks can't ever work.
It's just that they work way less often. So to recap, hook problem number one is delay. And the fix is to stop delaying the introduction and the clarity of the context on the video.
Use that first sentence in as few words as possible to give the context that the viewer needs to have to decide whether or not to opt in. An example of good rapid context would be something like this. Here are three simple ways to improve your gut health.
Or if you have gut issues, these three remedies will help you immediately. those hooks right away as the viewer, I know exactly what these videos are going to be about. Gut health and herbal remedies that can help me solve it.
There is zero delay in the context and so I can opt in as soon as possible. All right, hook problem and mistake number two is confusion. And when I say confusion, what I really mean is comprehension loss.
So in this case, the viewer is just not understanding or comprehending what you're saying. At this point, you've eliminated the delay, which is good, but the words you're using or the phrasing of those sentences is just not clear and it's confusing the viewer. So the problem here is really just a lack of clarity in your words.
And the reason this is a problem is, again, if the viewer can't assess if this video is actually for them because they're only understanding like half the words you say, then they have trouble deciding whether or not to opt in. Here's an example to illustrate exactly what I mean by lack of clarity and confusion. Imagine I started a hook like this.
These guys built a $30 million empire and the online money they made is most difficult to earn if you don't develop a journaling practice like they did. And this is a bit exaggerated, obviously. Few people actually talk like that, but you get the point of how difficult and confusing it was to actually parse through what I was trying to say.
If you hear just that, you can kind of gather the video is going to be about an online business and maybe something to do with journaling, but you're really struggling to put the pieces together clearly because of the way I framed the sentence. And this is a classic clarity issue.
Instead, for that exact same idea, you could write the hook like this. These guys built a $30 million empire, and their secret for earning money online was their insane journaling practice. See how just changing the words slightly and the way the sentence is ordered makes it way easier to understand what I'm saying?
Essentially, you as the viewer are able to absorb more of the words. Your hit rate for comprehension goes up, and then confusion goes down. Now, the tactics for how to improve clarity is really about becoming a better writer.
You want to use fewer words, but enough that the viewer can't misunderstand you. You want to use simpler words, ideally at a sixth grade reading level.
And you want to use direct active voice instead of passive voice on the sentences so they're easier to understand. The dog jumped versus the jump of the dog. Here are two quick tips for immediately improving hook clarity and reducing confusion.
For the first tip, you could just take the hook you've written and drop it into ChatGPT or Claude with this prompt. I've written a hook for a short form video about X topic. I need help increasing the clarity and the framing of the sentences I used.
I want the meaning to be the exact same, but can you rewrite this in a sixth grade reading level so that there's no misunderstanding from the viewer? This prompt will automatically remix and rewrite the hook for you. You could also just use sandcastles .ai, which is my AI script writing tool.
You just put the topic in and we'll write it for you in a very clear way. All right, the last tip for clarity proofing your hooks would be to do this. When you read just the hook, those one to two sentences in isolation without anything else, ask yourself this question.
Is it possible for the viewer to misunderstand what I'm saying in the wrong way? Is there more than one way these sentences could be interpreted? If so, rewrite the hook so that you eliminate those alternative understanding path.
So there's only the one that you want. All right, now before I go on to the last two hook mistakes, and these ones really are the biggest, I just want to mention something. I think becoming a master at hooks is the single biggest lever you can pull if you're trying to get your content to perform better.
Hooks are the 80 of the 80 -20 in the content flow. Now, if you want to become god tier at hooks and just write bangers every single time without thinking about it, I just filmed the most comprehensive training on short form hooks ever created. So if you make Instagram reels, TikToks, LinkedIn shorts, YouTube shorts, this will feel like a cheat code for you.
What I'm covering in this video right now, it's like one to 2 % of the full hook playbook that I give in this training. In that training, I covered these things in depth. One.
Hook psychology, how do hooks actually work under the surface and manipulate viewers' brains? Two, what is my 10 -minute cheat code hook framework, literally a checklist that you can follow every single time you're going to write a hook that works without fail? And three, what are examples of good and bad hooks from 11 different categories and niches, breaking them down, analyzing why the good ones are good and why the bad ones are bad?
I also built a full hooks database with over 400 different videos. deep tagging across hook format, strategy, visuals, text, audio, all the components. And I built a system for analyzing that database and then coming up with new hooks for yourself.
I literally went out, found the best creators in every niche, extracted their top videos, analyzed their hooks, and then created frameworks and patterns in that database. I also in this training teach the full research method that I use to go look at other videos, extract their hooks. How do I actually do that?
How do you find the top videos? I teach that whole thing. Like I said, my goal was to make this the undisputed god tier short form hooks resource.
So if you like the videos on my channel, and most importantly, the way I break things down and explain things, this training will be the best way to go from zero to 100 on short form hooks. You watch this and you'll be set. You can access it at the link here or in the description.
All right, hook problem number three is irrelevance. And at this point so far, you have solved for the first two. So you've eliminated delay and you've maximized the clarity, getting rid of the confusion so the viewer knows exactly what the video is gonna be about.
Problem number three, irrelevance, means that the viewer is not confident that what's coming next in the video after the hook is going to be valuable enough to help them solve a problem. So they know what the video is about, but they're unclear if it's relevant for them. Now, there are two easy ways to solve this problem.
The first way is to say the word you or your, instead of the words me or I, when you're delivering the hook, most people think you should make hooks like this. I've struggled with skin problems my whole life. The problem is this opens a door in the viewer's mind to question if they see themselves in the creator, because they're thinking this, well, if you struggle with these problems, do I also struggle with the same problems you do?
That's what they're questioning in their mind. If the viewer doesn't see themselves in the creator for a number of different reasons, they're going to put less value in the incoming solution. and they'll stop watching.
This is the irrelevance problem. The viewer doesn't feel like what's coming next will be relevant for them. So to solve this problem, all you have to do is frame your hooks using you and your.
So instead of saying, I've struggled with skin problems my whole life, you say, if you've struggled with skin problems your whole life, dot, dot, dot. When you do this, the viewer feels like the video is targeted for them. There's no possible question or misunderstanding because you're saying it's for you, for your problems.
And this makes the viewer hold on longer for the hook. Now, the second way to solve for the relevance problem is to frame your hooks around expected value. There are two types of videos, entertainment and education.
Both of these offer solutions to a pain point. That solution is value. Entertainment offers a solve for boredom.
Education offers us all for a specific problem. If you want your hook to feel more relevant for your viewer, all you have to do is agitate a pain point that they already have so that you can tee up a solution that is for them. For example, can you tell the difference between these two hooks?
The first one is, these are three common trends in skincare. And the second one is, if you struggle with acne, try these three things. Learning about trends in skincare is a nice to have.
solving my acne problem is a need to have. So if you frame the hook around a known pain point and you deliver it using you and your instead of me and my, the video will seem more targeted for the viewer and it will hook them more. Okay, the last hook problem, number four, is disinterest.
And this is the one that most people fixate on the most. At this point, the viewer is clear on the topic, believes there is some relevance or value incoming for them, but the hook still just doesn't grab them enough. This is the curiosity problem.
The hook just doesn't make the viewer curious enough. to want to keep watching. So what you want to do in the hook to solve the disinterest problem is build a curiosity loop.
And everybody talks about curiosity loop, but nobody ever explains what it is. A curiosity loop is when the viewer sees something, asks a hypothetical question in their mind, gets some additional context to answer it, but that spurs a new question, more context, new question, more context, and so on. They keep opening loops throughout the entire video.
That's what a curiosity loop really is. So your job in the hook is to open that initial curiosity loop and start the spiral. What is that initial question that the viewer has where they can't look away?
They just have to wait for more context to answer it. So the $10 million content question really is this, how do you always drive curiosity and build that curiosity loop every single time, no matter what type of video you're making. And the way you do this is by setting up contrast or comparison in the hook.
Contrast is simply the distance between the current common belief of the viewer and some contrarian or alternative perspective that you offer. So for example, if I stay in the hook, this one trick will clear up all your acne in 45 minutes without any side effects. What I'm really doing is creating a comparison in your mind to the current baseline.
You got to wait six months, take Accutane, go through all these side effects versus my contrarian offer. 45 minutes, no side effects, quick solve. That distance is contrast.
What happens when you do this in the viewer's subconscious is that when you frame a comparison, A, something they know and B, something they don't. B triggers the sticky pain point they have from A not solving their pain. And so essentially that comparison acts as a reagitator of that pain point, which gets them curious because they want to solve it.
To simplify all this, if you're not following what I'm saying, it's A versus B. A is what they already believe. B is some alternative that you're suggesting that makes their pain point solved faster, better, or cheaper.
Now, getting good at learning how to create this contrast with words is really the secret to driving curiosity whenever you want. It's honestly the secret to storytelling at a macro level. Now, I'm not going to go too deep into exactly how to build this contrast and curiosity because it really does differ for every scenario.
But what I will say is this, there are two types of contrast. implied contrast and stated contrast. Stated contrast is when you share verbally both A and B explicitly.
So for example, saying something like this, most people solve their acne with Accutane, but I have an herbal remedy that does it three times faster. You're stating Accutane versus herbal remedy, so it's impossible to miss what that contrast is. The other type of contrast, which is way more subtle, is implied.
And in this case, you say what the contrarian alternative is, but you don't reference the base because it's implied. People know what the base solution is. So for example, if I say, if you want to solve your acne, this herbal supplement is eight times more effective.
If the common already knows what the baseline solutions are, nothing, Accutane, whatever they are, then you don't need to say it again because it's implied what their baseline understanding is. Essentially, it's your contrarian take versus the field of all other options.
So you really have two options to create the contrast. You can go stated, which is way more blunt, A versus B, impossible to misunderstand, or you can go implied, which is a little bit more savvy and you don't really call it out specifically. Now, tactically, when you're writing hooks, typically the topic clarity comes in the first sentence and then you set up that contrast in the following one to two sentences.
This is why I consider hooks to really be like two to three lines. They're not always just a single punchy line. Sometimes you can achieve the clarity and the contrast all together in one line.
And if you can, those are the easiest hooks that you can reuse. All right, guys, that is all I've got for this video. As always, I'm trying to push the boundaries for what's available free on the internet in this social media content growth category.
If you're a business owner, and you're focused on using content to grow your business, hopefully you can tell this will be one of the best channels you could possibly watch. Please make sure to like and subscribe.
And also, I've got a bunch of free stuff in the description to help you get going as well. If you want my help one -on -one to scale your content, you either want video reviews, you want my coaching, or you just wanna get my strategy brain to help you figure out how to grow the fastest, that's what I offer in Short Form Academy.
It's specifically designed for business owners to get my one -on -one help. You can go to callaway .co slash academy. or check out the link below for that.
Alright, we will see you guys on the next one. Peace.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title promises a top-1% skill, and the cold open delivers a table of contents instead of a tease: six tips, six formats, six power words, four mistakes. That's the method in miniature. Topic clarity first, then a reason to lean in, then the promise that you'll know exactly what to fix by the end.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:44list
The three-step hook formula
- Context lean
- Scroll-stop interjection
- Contrarian snapback
Name the topic and pull the viewer in, stun them with a contrast word, then snap them onto an unexpected but on-topic path.
Steal forany short-form or long-form video opener
15:23list
Six hook formats
- Fortune teller
- Experimenter
- Teacher
- Magician
- Investigator
- Contrarian
Recurring archetypes found across thousands of top hooks; any idea can be written in any of them, so pick the one with the most contrast against your visual.
Steal forbrainstorming several hook angles for one video
25:44list
Four hook components
- Spoken hook
- Visual hook
- Text hook
- Audio hook
All four must point at the same idea; misalignment causes comprehension loss.
Steal forauditing a finished edit before publishing
28:42list
Key-visual-first hook process
- Find the visuals you have
- Pick the angle with the most contrast
- Write a two-to-four-line spoken hook
- Add on-screen text that confirms the visual
- Watch back and gut-check comprehension
Build the hook backward from the strongest shot, and kill the idea if no good visual exists.
Steal forscripting any video that has B-roll or a demo
34:45list
Six hook power words
- Subject clarity word
- Action word
- Objective or end-state word
- Contrast word
- Proof word (optional)
- Time word (optional)
Structural chunks found in most strong hooks, shown on "If I had to grow from 0 to 100K subs on YouTube again in 90 days."
Steal fortightening a hook line by line
47:30list
Four hook mistakes
- Delay
- Confusion
- Irrelevance
- Disinterest
Diagnose in order: is the topic clear fast, is it understandable, does it feel relevant to the viewer, and does it create curiosity.
Steal forreviewing underperforming videos
59:27concept
Stated vs implied contrast
- Stated: say both A and B
- Implied: say only B, the viewer supplies A
Two ways to create the gap between current belief and your alternative that drives curiosity.
Steal forsharpening the second and third lines of a hook
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
53:00product
“I just filmed the most comprehensive training on short form hooks ever created.”
Placed between mistakes two and three, after the viewer has already gotten substantial free value, and framed as the other 98% of the material; a second softer pitch for one-on-one coaching closes the video.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
- Use Sandcastles to grow 10x faster on social media (try risk-free) ↗
- Sandcastles (social media supertool) ↗
- Sandcastles Tutorials/Demos ↗
- Short-Form Hooks Masterclass (2 hours, 37+: pages of notes) ↗
- Hire my short-form video editors ↗
- shortform.academy ↗
- youtube.com ↗
- youtube.com ↗
- youtube.com ↗
- 1. Deep Channel Analysis (Instructions ↗
- 2. Bullseye Builder (Instructions ↗
- 3. Outlier Video Pulse (Instructions ↗
- 4. Creator Breakout Detector (Instructions ↗
- 5. Hook Machine (Instructions ↗
- kallaway.co ↗
- Hire My YouTube Strategist (Ideas, Titles, Thumbnails) ↗
- Hire My Thumbnail Designer ↗
- Instagram ↗
- TikTok ↗
- YouTube ↗
- LinkedIn ↗
- X ↗
- Threads ↗
- Instagram ↗
- YouTube ↗
- TikTok ↗
Visual structure at a glance.
