·3 min read·Guides
Text Hooks for Reels, TikTok and Shorts: 40 Short Examples That Stop the Scroll
The on-screen text at the top of a short video decides whether people stay. Why two to six words work best, eight hook patterns with 40 examples (claims, questions, numbers, stakes, story openers), where to place the text, and mistakes that make viewers swipe.
A text hook is the short line shown on screen over the first seconds of a Reel, TikTok or Short. Keep it to two to six words, so it can be read in about a second, and make it name the surprising claim, the stakes or the question the clip answers, for example "Never eat carbs naked", "Why he quit at 30" or "This cost me $40,000". It must be true to the clip. Place it near the top, in a bold font, and let the spoken first line carry on from it rather than repeat it word for word.
We make Boostlix Clipper, which finds the moments worth clipping in a long video and exports them with captions. Free trial, no card needed.
On Reels, TikTok and Shorts, the first second decides most of the outcome. Before anyone hears the first sentence, they read the text on screen. That line, the text hook, should be short enough to read at a glance and specific enough to make someone wait for the answer.
Why short wins
A viewer reads at most a few words before deciding to stay or swipe. A 40-word quote of the opening sentence will not be read at all; "Never eat carbs naked" will. Aim for:
- Two to six words, about 40 characters at most
- One line, two at the very most
- No full stop, no hashtags, no quotation marks: they slow it down and look like a caption
- True to the clip: tease the real payoff, never promise one that is not there
8 hook patterns, 40 examples
Adapt these to what your clip actually says.
1. The bold claim
- Never eat carbs naked
- Your body isn't against you
- Fruit sugar is still sugar
- Cheap leads are expensive
- Most diets fail on day three
2. The "why"
- Why he quit at 30
- Why sugar makes you tired
- Why your Reels stopped growing
- Why nobody reads your emails
- Why this startup almost died
3. The "how"
- How she paid off $40,000
- How to stop overthinking
- How pros start every stream
- How I got my first client
- How they built it in a weekend
4. The number
- 5 almonds change everything
- One rule for every meeting
- 3 mistakes new clippers make
- 90 seconds to a better hook
- $9 a month, no regrets
5. The question
- Is breakfast really that bad?
- Do you need a glucose monitor?
- Is clipping still worth it?
- Would you take this deal?
- Can AI pick better clips?
6. The stakes or the warning
- Don't sign this contract yet
- Stop doing this on Shorts
- This mistake cost us everything
- Read this before you quit
- Check this before you renew
7. The story opener
- He didn't see it coming
- The day I got fired
- She said no. Then this happened
- We almost lost the channel
- Chat voted. Big mistake
8. The reveal or "nobody tells you"
- Nobody tells you this
- The real reason it failed
- What the label doesn't say
- The part they cut out
- What a spike actually looks like
Where and how to show it
- Near the top of the frame, below the app's top strip, so it does not compete with the captions in the middle.
- Bold, high-contrast font, bigger than the captions. Short hooks can be bigger still.
- For the first three seconds in a normal clip, or for the whole clip when the video sits in the middle of the frame with a band above it (the podcast-style "landscape in frame" layout).
- Different from the caption style, so the eye reads it as a title, not as speech. See the best fonts and caption styles for pairings.
Mistakes that make people swipe
- The full opening sentence as the hook. Too long to read; the captions already show it.
- Vague hooks like "Wait for it" or "Watch till the end". They promise nothing.
- Hooks the clip does not pay off. Viewers leave early, which tells the platform the clip is weak.
- Repeating the spoken line exactly. Use the text to add context or state the payoff instead.
Write them faster
Our free video hook generator writes eight opening lines from a short description of your clip, with the reason each one works, and the YouTube Shorts title generator writes short, searchable titles.
If you cut clips out of long videos, Boostlix Clipper writes a two-to-six-word headline for every moment it finds, shows it on screen over the first seconds (or above the video for the whole clip in the landscape-in-frame layout), and has a Suggest button for four more options with different angles. Headlines of four words or fewer are drawn bigger. A few of the examples above, such as "Never eat carbs naked" and "Fruit sugar is still sugar", are the kind it produces from a real podcast.