your first line decides whether anyone watches the rest. on a short, you get about three seconds before the thumb keeps moving. a great take with a weak opener dies in those three seconds, and you never see why in the analytics. so the hook is the part of the script worth the most work.
cut the throat-clearing#
most clips open with the same dead air. "hey guys, welcome back to my channel." "so in today's video i wanted to talk about." "before we get started, make sure to."
none of that is a hook. it's you warming up on camera while the viewer leaves. the algorithm reads the swipe-away and shows the clip to fewer people. you paid for the throat-clearing twice.
the fix is blunt. delete the first sentence you wrote. then look at the second one. if it could also go, delete that too. the real opener is usually buried a line or two down, where you stopped introducing and started saying the actual thing.
a hook opens on one of three things: tension, specificity, or a claim. it makes a small promise the rest of the clip pays off. that's the whole job.
a few hook patterns that work#
these aren't a formula. they're shapes you can borrow when the blank page is winning. say them out loud before you keep them. if it sounds like a headline a person would never speak, rewrite it.
-
the contrarian. state the thing everyone in your niche agrees on, then disagree. "everyone says post daily. i posted once a week for a year and grew faster." it works because the viewer expects the usual advice and you snapped the pattern. don't fake the disagreement. if you secretly agree with the crowd, this hook reads hollow and people feel it.
-
the specific number. vague is forgettable. specific is sticky. "i tried this for 30 days" beats "i tried this for a while." "this saved me 40 minutes a morning" beats "this saved me time." the number signals you actually did the thing instead of summarizing a blog post. pick the real number, not a rounded one. 40 minutes is more believable than an hour.
-
here's what nobody tells you, done honestly. the lazy version of this is a lie. you promise a secret and deliver common knowledge. the honest version earns it. you genuinely know something non-obvious about your topic, and you lead with it. "nobody tells you that the lavalier mic matters more than the camera." if the next 20 seconds back it up, the hook was a contract you kept. if they don't, you trained that viewer to swipe past your face next time.
-
the cold open, mid-action. skip the setup entirely. start in the middle of the thing. instead of "today i'm going to show you how i edit," open on "this is the cut that took me three hours and i almost deleted it." you're already inside a story. the viewer leans in to figure out the context you withheld.
one warning on all four. a hook writes a check the body has to cash. an opener that overpromises gets the view and loses the trust. you want the swipe-away rate down AND the follow rate up, and only an honest hook moves both.
put the hook first in your markdown#
here's the part that ties craft to the prompter. the hook should be the literal first thing your eyes hit when the script loads.
open prompter reads the markdown file you already wrote. so write the script so the hook is line one. not a title. not a heading that says "intro." not a stage direction. the first words on screen should be the first words out of your mouth.
something like this:
everyone says you need a fancy camera. you don't.
here's the three-dollar fix that did more for my videos
than any lens upgrade.
## the rest of the script
- point one
- point two
the body can use headings, bullets, and bold for your own structure. open prompter renders all of that and strips the scaffolding it shouldn't read aloud, like frontmatter and [b-roll: ...] cues, at display time. your file is never touched. but the top of the file is sacred. that's your three seconds. give them the hook clean, with nothing above it to read past.
a small habit that helps: keep a running markdown file of hooks that worked. when one clip lands, paste its opener into the file. over a month you build a personal bank of openers in your own voice, sitting in the same folder open prompter already reads.
then deliver it like you mean it#
a perfect hook read in a flat, obviously-reading voice still dies. the words are only half of it. the viewer can hear when you're tracking text instead of talking to them.
the trick is to know the hook cold so you can look at the lens and say it, not read it. memorize the first line. you wrote it, it's short, you can hold one sentence in your head. then let the prompter carry the rest.
this is where voice tracking earns its place. it listens to your delivery and scrolls to keep your spot, so you set your own pace instead of racing a fixed scroll speed. you slow down on the hook for emphasis, the page waits for you. you speed up through the easy part, it keeps up. nothing leaves the phone. here's how the READ and FEATHER lines tune that feel.
deliver the hook a hair slower than feels natural. land it. then go.
the next clip#
write the hook last, after you know what the clip is actually about. you can't promise the payoff before you know the payoff. draft the body, find the one sharp thing in it, and pull that to line one.
then read it back out loud once before you record. if the first sentence makes you lean in, it'll do the same to a stranger holding a phone. if it doesn't, you already know which line to cut.