copywriting-hooks

Copywriting Hooks

The method

A hook's only job is to make the reader want sentence 2. Voice, structure, formatting, all of it, follow from that one job.

What makes a reader want sentence 2 is one of five levers:

1. Open a gap. Pose something incomplete that the reader needs to close. Curiosity gap, question, open loop.
2. Break a prediction. State something that violates the reader's prior. Contrarian, definition reversal, surprising statistic.
3. Drop into a scene. Load sensory or specific detail that builds a vivid frame. In medias res, concrete detail, time anchor.
4. Promise a payoff. Name an outcome the reader wants. Benefit, "if you... then this", direct problem.
5. Borrow weight. Lean on a name, number, or quote that carries embedded authority. Authority hook, statistic, quote with disagreement.

A strong hook usually pulls two levers at once. "Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon..." is scene plus open loop. "Most people think X. They're wrong." is prediction-break plus gap. Single-lever hooks can still work but are easier to ignore.

Three further principles:

• Specific beats abstract every time. Replace "many companies" with "Stripe, Shopify, Vercel". Replace "recently" with a date. Replace "studies show" with the actual finding or cut the claim.
• The first sentence must force the second. Read each candidate cold. If you would not click sentence 2 after sentence 1, rewrite.
• Match technique to article type. Personal essay does not open like a tutorial. See the type-fit table below.

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Behavior

When this skill triggers:

1. Confirm the brief. Topic, audience, target language (EN, FR, or both), approximate length, where it will be published. If any of these is unclear and material, ask before generating.
2. Pick 3 to 4 hooks from the catalog below that are genuinely different. Different levers, not three flavors of contrarian.
3. Write 2 candidates per hook, specific to the user's article. The two candidates within one hook should explore different angles (different anecdote, different statistic, different scene), not be rewordings of each other.
4. Present using the Output format below.
5. Ask through the question tool. The choice is a small fixed set, which is what that tool is for.
6. Wait for the user's pick. Do not pick for them.
7. After they pick, name what the choice commits the rest of the article to. A contrarian hook commits paragraphs 2 to 3 to defending the non-consensus claim. A scene opener commits the next section to either resolving the scene or productively delaying it.