Some stories lose readers in the middle.
Others never get that chance. They lose them on page one.
Or line one.
Whether it’s the first page of your novel, your strategy deck, or the hook on your posts…the struggle is real.
That beginning has one job. And it’s not the one most people give it.
That’s what we’re uncovering today.
Issue #008
. 🔎
For the past year, I’ve been trying to get better at hooks.
You probably know the moment.
You’re writing a post, staring at the first line, and asking yourself: Is this actually a hook or just a sentence pretending to be one?
You type it. Delete it.
Try another version. Delete that too.
Eventually you land on two slightly annoying lines that feel like they might work…but you’re not convinced.
This week, I realized that something about this problem felt very familiar.
So familiar, I couldn’t believe it took me this long to figure it out.
It’s the exact same problem as staring at page one of your novel.
You write three paragraphs explaining the backstory. Set it all up.
Then you read it back. Delete half of it. Sometimes all of it.
Because deep down, you know the reader doesn’t care yet. And more paragraphs of explanation won’t make them care.
This is not just a hook or page one problem. It shows up in other types of stories, too. Strategy decks (hello 8-pt font slides), e-books, About pages, blog posts, reels. If we write it, we spend way more time walking people how you got to the point…before we ever get to the point.
But if you open a great novel or read a post that instantly pulls you in… you’ll notice something.
That’s not what great writers do.
Did someone forward this? Not subscribed yet? Get upcoming issues of the Making of a Storyteller Brand every Thursday. Subscribe here.
|
🔎 Under the Magnifying Glass
Open almost any thriller and look at the first page. I grabbed one right off my bookshelves from one of my favorite authors, Lisa Gardner.
The book: Catch Me.
The first line: The little girl woke up the way she’d been trained: quickly and quietly.
We don’t know the backstory.
We don’t know the motives.
We definitely don’t know the ending.
But we instantly have questions.
Why was a little girl trained?
What happens if she’s not quick or quiet?
Who trained her?
Our brain immediately starts trying to fill in the gap.
It doesn’t only work in novels.
Imagine walking up to a phone booth.
But instead of coins, the slot says it accepts Coca-Cola bottle caps.
Bottle caps? For what? Does this work?
Why would a phone booth take those?
That question is the whole point.
The booth was part of a campaign by Coca-Cola that allowed migrant workers in Dubai to make a three-minute international call home using a Coke bottle cap.
They didn’t start with a poster explaining it all.
Just the booth.
Curiosity first. Explanation later.
Two completely different stories in completely different places.
Same opening move.
🏛️ The “Rule” This World Runs On
Rule #1: A beginning should create a question before it gives an explanation.
Look at the thriller opening again. We don’t start with the backstory of the little girl or her family. We start with a moment that raises questions.
The same thing happens with the phone booth. You don’t begin with a paragraph explaining Coca-Cola’s campaign.
You see a slot for bottle caps, and the brain immediately wants to know why.
Most weak openings reverse that order. They start by explaining everything they think the reader needs to understand for the story to make sense. The background, the setup, the expertise.
But none of that is necessary.
Because curiosity doesn’t work that way.
The brain doesn’t move forward because it has enough information and wants more. It moves in because something is missing.
That missing piece is actually what starts the story.
A beginning isn’t responsible for explaining the situation. It’s job is to introduce the tension that makes the situation matter. Once that tension exists, the reader will follow through to the explanation, the context, and the deeper layers of the story.
But without that opening question, none of those things have gravity yet. They’re just information.
The story begins the moment a question appears.
🧠 Why Your Brain Calls This Magic
There’s actually a name for the force you felt in both of those openings.
It’s called the information gap theory. The idea is simple: curiosity appears when the brain notices a gap between what it knows and what it wants to know.
The key is in the latter part: what it wants to know.
That gap creates tension. Not emotional tension in the dramatic sense, but cognitive tension. It’s the small, persistent itch in the mind that has to be resolved.
Once that gap is detected, the brain must close it. So we read the next sentence of the novel, watch the full video, or pause at a phone booth that doesn’t make sense.
Your brain is trying to complete the pattern.
And there is a specific reason this works when it works. Curiosity doesn’t appear when information is abundant. It only appears when information is strategically incomplete.
So what does this mean?
Let’s take the thriller novel.
What we do know: The author, the genre, and the general expectations those bring. We know we’re opening a thriller, which means something dangerous is coming. That context is already loaded.
What’s strategically held back is the piece that matters most.
Why that little girl was trained.
What kind of danger requires a child to wake up quickly and quietly.
What will happen if she doesn’t.
That missing piece is the tension.
The opening doesn’t tell you any of that. It just places us in a moment where we feel it. And the absence of information becomes impossible to ignore.
That’s the missing story about beginnings.
Your story doesn’t begin by explaining everything. It begins with the strategic absence of information. Not sharing all of it.
Just enough for the brain to realize something important is missing.
🕳️ Watch Out for The Trap Door
Once you understand that curiosity comes from missing information, it’s easy to swing too far the other direction.
You start stripping away context. You remove the set up, the clues, or anything that might “give it away.”
And suddenly your opening isn’t intriguing. It’s confusing.
Go back to the phone booth example.
The curiosity works because of what was already true before the booth appeared. It was placed in an area of Dubai with a large migrant workforce. The problem already existed. Calling home is expensive. Many workers don’t talk to their families as often as they want.
That’s not backstory. That’s the condition that makes the gap visible.
The context is built in.
If you plopped that same phone booth somewhere else, the moment wouldn’t work. The context is gone. The brain wouldn’t understand the situation enough to see the gap.
And without the gap, there’s no question that pulls the audience into the story.
🧡 One Thing To Do Differently
How can you apply this?
Take a look at something you’ve written recently. A post, a page, a deck, the first scene of a story, and then ask three simple questions.
One, who might read this?
The answer matters more than you think…and it’s not just who you want to read this.
If someone picks up a thriller novel, there is context built in. I’m a thriller fan. I love the genre. I know the ride I’m signing up for. That means the author can drop me into a moment, and I will lean in.
A post on LinkedIn is different.
There are 1.2 billion people with a LinkedIn account. Most of them don’t know you. They aren’t in your world. Your beginning has to provide just enough context for the reader to see why it matters to them and understand the situation they’re stepping into.
Two, what context do they actually need to spot a gap?
They don’t need a play-by-play. They don’t need the full backstory.
But given what they already know, and the story you’re inviting them into, what do you need to include so they can jump into the moment and care about it?
Three, what is the resolution?
In other words, what information will eventually close the gap you’ve created?
That’s the part you don’t lead with.
But knowing it is how you find the missing piece of the story that will make someone curious enough to keep going.
📌 Put This on the Post-It
Beginnings don’t explain your story.
They make the reader need to know the answer.
Until next time,
|
|
|
The office is coming together! And this is where my big desk used to be…and now it’s a dog bed that’s three times the size of both dogs. 😂 But they deserve to be comfortable, too, don’t they?
|
