I am going to tell you a story about King Napoleon.
And I need you to trust me on this.
Because after I told this story to my team, the deliverables I got from them were completely different.
Better, Sharper, More engaging.
If you are a founder, a creator, or anyone building something online, this story will change how you think about hooks forever.
Let me set the stage first.
If you are going to meet somebody and talk with them, the first three minutes are crucial.
You have to convince them why they should listen to whatever you are going to say for the next hour.
If you are writing an article, the first few lines are everything.
If you are creating a reel or a video, the first three seconds decide whether someone keeps watching or scrolls away.
I have generated more than two million followers online for my company.
And I have obsessed over the first three seconds of every single reel.
Because that is where the decision happens.
That is where attention is won or lost.
But here is the problem.
Most people do not understand what those first three seconds are supposed to do.
They think it is about being clever. Or being funny. Or showing something flashy.
But it is not.
It is about creating a specific emotion in your audience.
And I am going to make you feel that emotion right now with a story.
There lived a king called Napoleon.
King Napolean
The entire country praised him for his glory, his victories, his leadership.
And then something interesting happened.
The king was about to have a baby.
The whole country was looking forward to it.
Everyone was wondering the same thing.
Will it be a boy or a girl?
This was not just curiosity.
This was a matter of the future.
If it was a boy, he would rule the nation after the king.
So the whole country was waiting for that moment.
Now, to make the moment even more interesting, the king decided to do something clever.
He announced that on the day of the birth, the kingdom would launch cannons into the sky.
If it was a girl, they would launch one hundred cannons.
If it was a boy, they would launch one hundred and one cannons.
Simple. Clear.
Everyone understood the signal.
So when the day came, the entire country gathered.
They stood outside their homes.
They looked up at the sky.
And they started counting.
One. Two.Three.
The cannons kept firing.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
People were still calm.
Fifty. Sixty.
Now the tension was building.
Seventy. Eighty. Ninety.
Hearts were starting to pound.
Ninety-five.
Ninety-six.
Ninety-seven.
Ninety-eight.
Ninety-nine.
And then the hundredth cannon launched.
And then…
Silence.
Pure silence.
Everyone held their breath.
The whole country was frozen in that moment.
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
They were all thinking the same thing.
"Is that it?"
"Or is there one more?"
The suspense was unbearable.
And then, after a few seconds that felt like forever, the one hundred and first cannon launched.
The whole country exploded in celebration.
They jumped. They cheered. They screamed.
Not because of the cannon itself.
But because of the emotion they felt in that silence.
That gap between the hundredth and the hundred and first cannon.
That is the feeling your hook should create.
That is the emotion you want your audience to experience in the first three seconds of your content.
the art of creating “anticipation tension”
Let me explain why this works.
The emotional peak does not happen when the hundred and first cannon launches.
It happens in the few seconds after the hundredth cannon.
In that silence.
The entire audience holds their breath, imagining what is going to happen next.
That exact emotion—a mix of curiosity, tension, and expectation—is what great hooks deliver.
You made people lean in.
Not because you gave them the answer.
But because you made them want the answer.
This taps into a psychological phenomenon called the curiosity gap.
When humans sense there is information they do not know but could easily find out by continuing to watch, read, or listen, their brains demand closure.
That urge to close the gap keeps them hooked.
It is not a choice. It is automatic.
Your brain literally craves resolution.
And if you do not get it, you stay.
Now let me give you a framework to apply this.
You can verify whether your hook has that "Napoleon silence" effect by checking three things.
1.Does it make people naturally want to see or hear what comes next?
Not because you told them to.
But because they cannot help it.
2.Can your hook stand alone and still make people curious?
If you remove everything else from your video or article, does the hook still pull?
3.Do the first three seconds raise a question instead of giving an answer?
Most people make the mistake of answering too quickly.
They give away the punchline in the hook.
But the hook is not the punchline.
The hook is the promise of the punchline.
If yes to all three, you have created a curiosity gap that demands resolution.
Just like the audience waiting for that hundred and first cannon.
This is not just theory.
I use this in everything I create.
And I told the Napoleon story to my team.
Then I asked them to come up with a new hook for my newsletter.
Before this, our newsletter hook was:
"Whatever got you here will not take you there."
It was okay.
But it was not pulling people in the way I wanted.
After the Napoleon story, my team came back with this:
"I had to bury my million-dollar formula."
Look at the difference.
The first hook tells you something.
The second hook makes you ask, "Why did he bury it?"
"What was the formula?"
"What happened?"
That is the curiosity gap.
And the results were immediate.
More opens. More reads. More engagement.
I felt amazed at how much clarity one story gave my team.
So let me repeat the core lesson.
Your hook is not about being clever.
Your hook is not about being loud.
Your hook is about creating the silence after the hundredth cannon.
That moment where your audience cannot move.
That moment where they have to know what comes next.
If you can create that moment, you win their attention.
And in today's world, attention is everything.
Quick Hack: You can copy this newsletter and paste it into any GPT to generate hooks for your writing. Try it and see if the GPT understands the kind of hooks you want to create.
I did this myself—and it came up with this hook: “A formula I never wanted to teach my team.”
If you’re reading this newsletter, that means it worked 😉
Feel free to reply and let me know if this has been helpful for you. I’d genuinely love to hear from you.
Thank you, Agnel John