Good hooks come from volume plus ruthless selection, not from nailing the first attempt. This is the method and the rubric.
The method: generate many, keep one
- Generate 5–10 candidate hooks for the piece, deliberately spanning different mechanisms (curiosity, contrarian, specificity, story, stakes, question…). Forcing variety is what surfaces the strong angle you wouldn't have found by polishing the first idea.
- Score each against the rubric below.
- Keep the top 1–2. Most hooks you write should die — that's the process working, not failing.
- Refine the winner for format and voice.
Writing one hook and shipping it is the single most common reason hooks underperform.
The rubric
Score each candidate 0–2 on each dimension (0 = no, 1 = partly, 2 = yes). The winner is rarely the cleverest — it's the one that clears every line.
| Dimension | The question |
|---|---|
| Gap | Does it open a real curiosity/tension/stakes gap a stranger needs to close? |
| Specificity | Is there a concrete number, detail, or claim — not a vague tease? |
| Truth | Does the content actually pay this off? (No bait-and-switch.) |
| Fit | Does it land inside the format's cutoff / first 3 seconds? |
| Voice | Does it sound like them — fingerprint hit, "never" list respected? |
| Pull | Read cold: would a stranger need the next beat? |
Truth and Pull are pass/fail gates. A hook that scores high but overpromises (Truth = 0) is disqualified no matter how compelling — it wins the tap and loses the trust, and the bounce hurts reach. A hook that doesn't make you need the next beat (Pull = 0) isn't a hook yet, whatever else it does.
Anti-patterns — delete these on sight
- Throat-clearing: "In today's video…", "So I've been thinking about…", "Let's talk about ___." The hook is buried after the warm-up.
- Greetings: "Hey everyone!", "Happy Monday!" — attention donated to the scroll.
- Describing the asset: "Here's a photo of our team at the event." The eye already sees it.
- Vague tease / empty curiosity: "You won't believe this." No real gap, no specificity.
- Overpromise / clickbait: a sensational claim the content can't deliver. Burns trust and bounces.
- Giving away the payoff: the first line answers its own question, so there's no reason to continue. Hold something back.
- Too broad an address: "Attention everyone…" — the opposite of self-relevant.
- Template-by-rote: a swipe-file formula in an obviously borrowed voice. Use the mechanism, write it fresh in their voice.
A fast scoring pass (in practice)
For each candidate, read only the hook (cut to the cutoff) and ask in order:
- Would a stranger need the next beat? (no → cut it)
- Is the content going to deliver this? (no → cut it)
- Is it specific? (no → sharpen or cut)
- Does it sound like them? (no → rewrite in voice)
What survives all four is your shortlist. Recommend the strongest and say why in one line.
