writing-hooks — gotchas for hooks, in my voice

writing-hooks — gotchas for hooks, in my voice

A companion to two other skills, not a replacement. Run it last.

• avoid-ai-writing — general AI-isms (em dashes, vocab tiers, filler, structure).
• motion hook skills (hook-writing, hook-tactics, hook-voice-patterns) — hook angle and triggers.

This file is the third pass: the specific tells those two miss, plus how my hooks should sound.

The principle

The hook is the most surprising true thing you already wrote, moved to the front and tightened. Don't manufacture it. If you have to invent drama, you buried the real finding.

Read-aloud test: would I say this sentence to another engineer? If it sounds like ad copy, cut it.

Assume the reader is intelligent and patient. Avoid trying to sound insightful. Avoid concluding sentences that feel quotable. Every major claim should emerge from reasoning rather than assertion.

Voice

• Terse, technical, first person. State the finding flat.
• No clickbait personas, no manufactured stakes.
• Plain words over business-speak.
• One concrete claim per line. Cite the specific thing.

Gotchas (kill these in hooks)

Each one is a tell we actually hit, with the fix.

Throat-clear before the point — soft setups that delay the point to fake anticipation: "One thing that reliably helps:", "The thing that…", "Here's what works:", "What I found is:". Cut the setup, lead with the point.

• Before: "One thing that reliably helps: specifying an output format."
• After: "Specifying an output format helps."

Business-speak — lever, move the needle, unlock, supercharge, leverage. Use the plain verb.

• "One lever that works" → "Specifying an output format helps."