How to write a hook for a short-form video
The hook is the first one to three seconds of a video, and it decides whether the rest of it exists. Most hooks that work are not clever — they are one of a few shapes, executed cleanly.
A hook is a promise, not a summary
The hook's only job is to make the next three seconds necessary. It does that by opening a gap — a claim that needs proof, a question that needs an answer, a situation that needs a resolution. A hook that summarizes the video closes the gap instead of opening it, and the viewer leaves satisfied at second two.
That is why “three tips for better sleep” underperforms “I fixed ten years of bad sleep by changing one thing.” The first is a table of contents. The second is a debt the video now owes you.
The four shapes that keep working
The cold claim. A specific, slightly implausible statement of result: “I went from failing to a 96% in two weeks.” The number does the work — round it and it dies.
The direct address. Name the exact person watching: “if your closet is full but you wear the same three outfits…” The narrower the address, the harder it lands with the person it names.
The interrupted confession. Start mid-thought, as if the camera caught you: “I never believed the smartest people are the laziest ones. Then class started.”
The repeated warning. “How many times do I need to show you this” — it manufactures history with a stranger, and it works because it implies a track record.
Spoken, on-screen, or both
A hook lives in two channels: what is said and what is shown. On silent videos the on-screen text is the hook, and it has to survive being read in under a second. When both channels run, they should not duplicate — the text names the situation, the mouth makes the claim.
Steal the shape, never the words
When a hook works, what worked is its shape: claim-then-timeframe, address-then-condition. The words belong to their niche. “How I passed my NREMT in 70 questions” and “How I got a 1550 on the SAT” are the same hook wearing different clothes — which is exactly why a format transfers between niches when the topic does not.
- Question hooks: asking one a viewer can't scroll past — open questions, closed questions, and holding the answer until the turn.
Do it with lynxr
lynxr does the reading half of this for you: paste a public TikTok or Instagram link on the homepage and it extracts the format — hook, beats, turn, close — and rewrites it for the company you make content for. Free to start: 25 scripts, no card.
Keep reading: what a video format is · the parts of a script · turn a video into a script · the glossary.