2026-10-24 · 5 min read

How to write a hook for a short video

The first three seconds decide whether anyone watches the rest. A simple way to write an opening line, with examples you can adapt to any topic.

A hook is the first sentence of your video. Its only job is to make the viewer curious enough to stay for the second sentence. It does not have to be clever. It has to be specific.

A three-part formula

• Name who it is for: "If you film at home with your phone"
• Name the problem or the surprise: "your videos probably start too slowly"
• Promise the next ten seconds: "here is the one change that fixes it"

Put together: "If you film at home with your phone, your videos probably start too slowly. Here is the one change that fixes it." That is twenty-two words and about five seconds, and every part has a job.

What to avoid

• Greetings. "Hi guys, welcome back" spends your best seconds on nothing.
• Throat-clearing. "So today I wanted to talk about" can be deleted every time.
• Promises you cannot keep. A hook that overpromises gets watched once and remembered badly.

Practice it

Write five hooks for the same video, say each one out loud, and keep the one that sounds like you talking rather than reading. Then film only the first ten seconds and watch it back. If you would not keep watching, rewrite the hook, not the video.

The Startell coach builds this into its 28-day plan: a full week on hooks, with drills written around your topic and a score for how quickly you reach your first word.