40 hook ideas for YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Reels

A good hook for a short video is the first sentence and the first image together, and it makes one specific promise the rest of the video keeps: a strange fact, a rule, a question, a contradiction or high stakes. Below are 40 hooks in eight types, written for faceless channels where the narration has to do all the work. Use them as patterns, not word-for-word: swap in your own topic.

What makes a hook work

• It's specific. "A war that lasted 38 minutes" beats "a crazy history fact".
• It opens a loop. The viewer needs the rest of the video to close it.
• It matches the first image. Say "the door was open" and show the open door.
• It starts immediately. No greeting, no title card, no "in this video".

1. The strange fact

1. "In 1932, Australia declared war on emus, and lost."
2. "Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid."
3. "Australia is wider than the Moon."
4. "There's a piece of land in Africa that no country wants."
5. "Your fridge doesn't make cold."

2. The rule

6. "If you ever take a babysitting job with one strange rule, follow it."
7. "Never answer a call from your own number."
8. "The Stoics had one rule for every worry."
9. "There's one rule every lock in your house follows."
10. "In ancient Sparta, there was a rule about babies that sounds unbelievable today." (Check the history before you tell it.)

3. The question

11. "Why does ice float when almost every other solid sinks?"
12. "Why do onions make you cry, but garlic doesn't?"
13. "How does a plane weighing hundreds of tons stay in the air?"
14. "Why does the back of your fridge feel warm?"
15. "Why did Medusa turn people to stone?"

4. The contradiction

16. "Medusa wasn't born a monster."
17. "Pandora's box was actually a jar."
18. "Napoleon wasn't short."
19. "Mount Everest isn't the point farthest from Earth's center."
20. "The microwave doesn't heat food from the inside out."

5. The stakes

21. "He had one stone and one chance."
22. "She had ten seconds to decide."
23. "If the cable snaps, this is what stops the elevator."
24. "One typo almost started a nuclear war."
25. "The ship was found sailing with no one aboard."

6. Start in the middle of the story

26. "At ten, something knocked on the basement door. From the inside."
27. "The key was still in her hand when they found her."
28. "The letter arrived forty years late."
29. "The farmer's horse ran away the day before the harvest."
30. "By the time the guards noticed, the paintings were gone."

7. Speak to the viewer

31. "You've been using your phone's flashlight wrong." (Only if it's true.)
32. "You suffer more in your head than in real life."
33. "You've probably walked past this a thousand times."
34. "Think about the last thing you dreaded."
35. "You know this story. You don't know how it ends."

8. The countdown

36. "Three wars that lasted less than a day."
37. "Three Greek gods who were worse than the monsters."
38. "Three countries you can walk across in an afternoon."
39. "Three everyday things invented by accident."
40. "Three lessons Marcus Aurelius wrote only for himself."

Hooks to avoid

• "Hey guys, welcome back." The viewer is gone before you say why they should stay.
• "Did you know…" followed by something unsurprising. The pattern only works if the fact is genuinely strange.
• Reading the title. "The history of the Eiffel Tower" is a label, not a hook.
• False promises. Clickbait that the video doesn't deliver trains people to swipe your next video too.
• A slow first image. A logo or black screen wastes the first second.

How to test hooks

Write five hooks for every video and pick the strongest. After two weeks of posting, check your analytics for how many people keep watching past the first seconds, and look at which hook type your best videos used. Make more of those. The faceless video script template shows where the hook fits in a full script.

Let the hook be written for you

Tayang writes a hook-first script for your niche every day, illustrates it with the opening image matched to the first line, narrates it (27 languages, word-by-word captions, music) and posts a 1080x1920 short to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels. You can approve each video before it goes out.

For topics to hook, see 50 faceless content ideas.

FAQ

How long should a hook be?

One sentence, usually spoken in the first two or three seconds.

Should the hook be on screen as text too?

Yes. With word-by-word captions it will be, which helps viewers watching on mute.

Can I reuse the same hook type every time?

Using a few types consistently is fine and can become part of your style. Rotate between them so videos don't feel identical.