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This video I uploaded got 34 million views, whilst this one only got 30,000. Why? Well, it's all because of the first couple seconds. Your hook is by far the most important part of any YouTube short. And after thousands of hours and
Learn how to write irresistible YouTube Shorts scripts with perfect hooks and psychological tricks to keep viewers watching till the end.
Key Takeaways
- The first few seconds determine whether viewers will watch or scroll past your Short.
- Hooks must be direct, relevant, and lead clearly to the payoff without unnecessary content.
- Psychological triggers and curiosity gaps keep viewers engaged and watching till the end.
- Visuals paired with a strong script enhance viewer retention.
- Understanding and applying these techniques can significantly increase video views and virality.
What the video covers
- The hook in the first few seconds is the most critical part of any YouTube Short to capture attention.
- A perfect intro gets straight to the point and teases the payoff to keep viewers engaged.
- Every word in the intro should lead directly to the video’s payoff without adding fluff.
- Using controversial or highly relatable topics can create strong hooks that attract viewers.
- Supporting hooks help maintain interest by subverting expectations and building curiosity.
- Psychological manipulation techniques, like making viewers feel smart by proving their assumptions wrong, increase engagement.
- Not all videos need a supporting hook if the story itself is inherently interesting.
- Setting the scene with timeline and location in sentences 3 and 4 helps develop context and lead to the payoff.
- Visuals and fast-paced clips complement the script to reinforce the message quickly.
- Overdelivering on viewer expectations is key to making videos go viral and satisfying the audience.
Chapters
- 00:00Importance of the Hook in YouTube Shorts
- 00:46Writing Intros That Lead to the Payoff
- 01:23Avoiding Fluff and Maintaining Viewer Satisfaction
- 02:03Examples of Effective and Ineffective Hooks
- 03:43Using Controversy and Familiar Figures to Hook Viewers
- 04:38Supporting Hooks and Subverting Viewer Expectations
- 05:10Psychological Manipulation to Boost Engagement
- 05:48When Supporting Hooks Are Not Necessary
- 06:33Setting the Scene and Building Context
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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billions of views, I finally figured out how to make the perfect intro. I'm going to start by telling you the three most important tips for writing your hook.
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And then I'll break down each individual sentence in a script, pretty much showing you how important every single second is. The number one most vital part about writing your intro is that you need to get straight to the point.
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You are literally fighting for attention every time you start a YouTube short because it doesn't require attention for people to watch your video. They just scroll, see it, and they'll only decide to watch you if you've provided enough
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information for them to stick around to the end. Secondly, everything you write in your intro has to lead up to the payoff of your video. We'll talk about this in a sec, but pretty much every single word I write in my scripts is so
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calculated to the point that I know it's going to happen in the next 30 seconds, so I can lead them perfectly into it.
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So, if you don't tease the viewer and really make them interested in what you're saying, these brain rock kids are going to scroll off your video before they even have a chance to watch it. But that's why lastly, it's so important to
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not add any extra fluff or things that don't contribute to what your video is actually about. The whole point of your short is to make the experience satisfying and good to the viewer. And if you're not giving them what they
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want, aka the satisfying point of the video where they think, "Okay, I clicked on this and I'm happy," you're going to see your attention dip like this, which is exactly what you don't want in order to make your video go viral and start
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making you some money. The algorithm can immediately detect when a viewer gets bored from your video. And all it takes is one bad sentence. So that's why I'm about to take you through every sentence of a typical script, one by one, and
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give you the best advice I know on how to perfect each word. Oh, and at the end, I'm going to get a YouTube Shorts expert making over $20,000 a month to critique my advice to see if what I'm
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about to teach you actually works. I'm pretty confident I will. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's pretty good. That's a good one.
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Like I said, the best hook catches your audience's attention instantly with either super eye-catching visuals or even psychological triggers that can pretty much guarantee they are going to be interested. For example, the reason why this video shown in the intro did so
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well is because it's extremely controversial. I mean, literally, just watch the first few seconds.
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Have you ever wondered why Asian people have such small eyes? At first glance, what's being said in that intro sounds insane, but if you think about it, we're adding a controversial figure in the first couple seconds that almost everybody can
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recognize. It's interesting. A lot of people will have wondered this before, been too afraid to ask about the topic, but now we're literally giving them permission to be curious about it in a funny and enticing way. Whilst you watch
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this though, compare it to the video that completely flopped. Have you ever experienced a weird feeling that something has already happened before, even though you know it hasn't?
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The concept isn't interesting. The visuals are kind of ass. And at first glance, they should be super obvious why the first video got so many more views than this one. I think an even better example is this video I uploaded on Slam
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Dunk that got over 12 million views. Do you know why Mr. Beast turned down $1 billion?
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The hook is perfect and it's almost guaranteed to catch the viewer's interest. $1 billion is a ton of money and you're immediately left wondering why he declined it. The first sentence's only job is to tell the viewer exactly
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what they need to know in the most direct way possible. There simply is not a way to give a viewer this information faster, but at the same time, we showed tons of clips of Mr. Beast on the screen
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in super fast pace to give the viewer that visual information as well. The best thing about this Mr. Beast intro as well is that everyone pretty much knows who he is. And so using him as much as possible in the video whilst relating it
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to the context of what we're talking about is going to get everyone's attention to stay until after the intro.
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But now that you've got their attention for the first few seconds, what do you actually do now? Not having a good supporting hook is like getting a girl's attention and then having no idea what you're going to say to her. It's just
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going to be awkward. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience here. So, once you've established what the video is about and actually hooked the viewers into the first couple seconds, you can't let them escape. You've got their minds focused on you, now you need to keep
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them. You want to subvert the viewer's expectations, add context, and make it even more interesting for them than they initially thought it even could be.
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Overdelivering on viewer expectations is what makes videos go viral. That's why the word clickbait is so famous. You click a video because you think there's going to be something and then there isn't and then you want to click off.
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But what if you hook the viewer in with something insane, but then make the rest of the video even crazier? In this example, the supporting hook poses two of the most possible reasons as to why Jimmy might have declined so much money.
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It guesses what the viewer might be thinking, but then tells them they're totally wrong. This sends them into a frenzy of wanting to actually figure out what's going on. And this is the type of psychology that you want to be using in
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your videos. Don't give them what they want right away. Make them fight for it.
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Make them think they're right, but they're actually wrong. There's so many tactics you can be using that we're going to get into later. But for now, let's continue. This specific part of the script creates a huge amount of
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interest as the answer that the majority of people were thinking gets completely ruled out. And so now they're left wondering what the reason really is, and they're sure of the fact that it's going to be something that they didn't already
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know, which is what actually gets them excited. I'm not going to lie, this is psychological manipulation, but it works way too well. You're not just making them curious, you're making them actually feel smart at the same time.
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You tell them they're wrong, then make them feel as though they need to prove their intelligence by figuring out the real answer and watching to the end.
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It's addictive, and there's a way to exploit this even more as you go through the video. It's also important to remember that not all videos necessarily need a supporting hook, as sometimes a story is just interesting on its own.
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One of our most popular videos on Slam Dunk didn't have a supporting hook at all. The concept of a YouTuber going to an uncontacted tribe just spoke for itself.
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This YouTuber discovered a forgotten tribe of people and recorded it. Last week, the YouTuber YBS Young Bloodoods uploaded a video called Living on the Forgotten Islands of Vanuatu.
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So, we didn't need to waste time selling the viewer further. So, congratulations. You've got the viewer's attention, something 99% of shorts creators will never be able to do. So, don't fumble it. The next few sentences are just as
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important as this when you set the scene. Going into sentences three and four is super important because this is where all goes into setting your actual scene for your video. At this point in the script, I'll set a timeline or a
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location. I then go into actually developing the context of the video and slowly lead into the payoff. I'm not the
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a podcast and admitted he received a billion dollar offer from a private company. We then quickly explain the details of the offer, adding context to what we just said, saying things like it included all 18 of his channels and all
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of his companies. There's no real reason to waste time on explaining these details too in depth because the viewers likely already know. And if they don't, they can figure it out from the simple context that you provide them. So don't
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insult your audience's intelligence by overexlaining really simple things. It won't help your attention and it might actually kill your video. And now in just two more sentences, the viewer pretty much has all the context they need to actually understand the story
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that you're telling in your YouTube short. And if we did things right, they should actually be even more curious now. But we're not done just yet. We then spend maybe one or two more sentences actually selling the stake of
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the video, saying that if Mr. Beast accepts the offer, he'd be the world's first YouTube billionaire and the youngest self-made billionaire of all time. So why the hell would he turn it down? This is crucial because now we've
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just turned curiosity into an investment. It's not just why did he say no anymore. It's why did he give up becoming the youngest self-made billionaire of all time. It's a completely different much stronger type of interest for the exact same topic all
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because we wrote it in a very specific way. It's basic human psychology for them to now want to keep watching. And you can even slowly tease the viewer and give them hints as to what the payoff might actually be at the end. Or as I
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actually put it phrased in my course video specifically, edge them, but don't make them come. Yeah, I don't know what the 17-year-old version of me was doing.
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But it actually works because in this video we did about Mr. Beast's rich janitor, we kept who it was a total mystery until the very end. But whilst teasing it throughout the entire video, saying that the fans loved him, and the
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comments just kept asking for way more of him. It's possible that the viewers might figure out what the payoff is before it actually happens, but humans want to be 100% right. so bad that most of the times, as long as they're not
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100% of the way there, they'll stick to the end to figure it out. It makes a viewer feel like they're actively solving a puzzle and not just passively watching content that doesn't do anything for them, even though it's
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pretty much the same thing. And that's when in the very last few seconds of the video, you give them exactly what they want. In this case, it was telling the viewers that the janitor was actually Chandler, or in the case of the
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billion-dollar deal, all we simply said is that he denied it because he thought the offer was too low. all of that buildup tension curiosity and questioning to a very simple payoff that still gives the viewer what they wanted
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because we answered the question they had been trying to figure out the entire time. Now, the payoff is obviously the most satisfying part of a video, but it needs to be delivered correctly. Don't just drag it out. Get to the point,
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deliver the answer instantly, and then end the video because the second the viewer gets what they came for, they are clicking off. There is absolutely no reason for them to continue sticking around. But there's actually one more sentence that could skyrocket your
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engagement and viewership, and that is the call to action. This is quite literally the only time you should ever go off topic in a video, but even then, it's best if you can tie it in. For example, when we would make these Mr.
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Beast videos, we would say, "Subscribe if you love Chandler," or "Subscribe if you knew who it was the entire time.
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This way, you're asking them to do something for you that they wouldn't necessarily want to, but because it's tied to the actions that they put into the video themselves, there is a very high chance that they could actually
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engage and give you what you want, therefore pushing that video out even more. And that in a very digestible form is how to write a perfect script. But what does an actual YouTube Shorts expert think? I hit up a guy making over
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$30,000 a month posting faceless YouTube shorts who wanted to stay anonymous for this video and sent him a script that I wrote following this exact same framework. So, I'm about to hop on a call with him and see what he rates it.
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But the catch is he has no idea who I am because I am on a completely fake account. And after I told him who I was, he didn't want his name in the video.
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But this is what he had to say. Yo, can you hear me? Yes, sir.
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I mean, it's a pretty good hook, not going to lie. You stating off right off the get getgo to like popular people and you start off by saying that and stating that I show speed hates Mr. Beast. So,
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you're pretty much creating already uh a plot for the people to make them question, right? And then you continue by stating, "But what could Mr. Beast possibly have done to make the biggest dreamer in the world this mad?" And it's
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correct. You're pretty much reading the thoughts of the people, right? So, you give a little bit of a context. I feel like you see where you put the5 to$10 million the pretty much the how expensive was the I feel like it would
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have been better if you would have added that amount more in the beginning maybe possibly even in the hook not even in the hook but you know somewhere in the first 5 seconds of the video.
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Yeah. So saying something like I should be hates Mr. Beast over $5 million or something along those lines to kind of just get it in early.
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In the payoff and even in the hook I would have stated something like scamming. I know for a fact whenever you talk about scam, specifically when you talk about Mr. Beast, however unethical it might be, you got attached though to
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to it. You know, that's the game that we play. I think one thing that's good in this script is like the rehooks. So like for example, after the context, we say, "Oh, but how did this situation turn into
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speed hating Mr. Beast?" Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. You you pretty much remind the people why they're actually on the video to begin with. Exactly. That's pretty good. I like also how you added that. So, at the end, I'm thinking you're trying to do
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like the loop effect on the video. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. One thing as well is I think for the payoff, I wanted to keep it like as short and sweet as possible because after all the context, I just
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wanted to get straight into what the reason for all of this was because once people get the information that they want, there's no reason for them to be around for a video anymore.
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Exactly. Exactly. That's why the path should always be in the third quarter of the video. So, um yeah, that that would be it to be honest. That would be it.
Topics:YouTube Shortsscript writingvideo hookviewer retentionviral videoscontent creationpsychological triggersvideo engagementYouTube algorithmshort form content
