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Most people think turning readers into doers is a tough nut to crack

The secret is the element of surprise. For Digital Writers, this is key. Because when you present something “unusual” to a reader, guess what happens? Their brain gets surprised, it wakes up and says, “Whoa! I haven’t seen that before. Let me see if it’s dangerous.”

Attention won.

Then when you wrap it up in a relatable story, it becomes a slippery slide that guides the reader into whatever action you want them to take. Sound like a sneaky trick? It’s not.

Copywriters call it the “Hook-Story-Offer Framework.”

The Hook-Story-Offer framework is a copywriting technique found in Russell Brunson’s best-selling book, Dotcom Secrets.

There are 3 parts.

• A Hook to draw the reader in.

• A Story to highlight a relatable change.

• An Offer, or invitation, to apply the change.

In other words, you capture attention and then compel the reader to do more.

And today, we are going to walk you through an easy 5-step formula for writing an “unexpected” hook to grab your reader’s attention and then leverage that attention into action with a personal story.

The reason this framework is perfect for beginners is because all you have to do is share what happens to you during the day: walking the dog, eating breakfast, sitting in traffic, and so on. Then, draw a connection to anything you want to sell. That’s it!

First we’re going to build the hook, and then we will use ChatGPT fill in the rest.

Here we go!

Every reader wants to know, “What’s in it for me?”

You need to be clear on the promise you are making to the reader. Because if the reader doesn’t know what they get in return for reading and how it will make their life better—they aren’t going to read!

So, what are you offering?

Write it down.

Find the opposite of “normal.”

This is a technique I learned from “Big Al” Schreiter in his book "Hooks!" If you are looking to improve your single-sentence openers, this is a resource to add to your library. Here is the question Big Al poses:

Where “wouldn’t” the reader expect to experience the benefit?

• My diet support group meets at Pizza Hut. (losing weight)

• I thought Vitamin C was supposed to make you feel better? (immunity)

• I have no friends. That’s why I go to work. (making friends)

Remember your job is to prod the reader’s brain by breaking their expectations.

Let me ask you, what comes to mind when you think about slimming down? Probably something like, exercise, counting calories, or eating a better diet. These have been written about a 10,000+ times.

Which means the reader expects it—and moves on.

The easiest way to do this is to pull out a thesaurus and make a list of opposite for your benefit. Let’s take weight loss for example. What’s the opposite of loss? Gain, increase, profit, etc. Choose one of these words and see what ideas it triggers for you.

For example:

Make your list.

Which one do you want to read?

• Hook #1: How to lose 10 lbs in 4 weeks

• Hook #2: Amazing break-through formula for diet and weight loss.

• Hook #3: My chubby cat found a better solution to my weight problem.

None of them are bad, but let’s take a closer look.

Hook #1 has a clear promise, lose 10lbs in 4 weeks. It’s click worthy, but I’ve seen it before. Hook #2 feels salesy. I’m skeptical, but I might click because I can’t resist learning about a new break-through. Again, I’ve seen it before and I am pretty sure what I’m going to get.

That brings us to Hook #3—the chubby cat weight loss solution

What do you notice? There is a story. It’s personal. It’s relatable and I want to hear what happened. And maybe I can learn something from this person with a chubby cat! Which is why this hook works—even if it is a little clever.

You can frame your hook as a personal story with first person language.

• I…

• My…

• How I…

Then bolt on your benefit and setting.

We could improve Hook #1 like this: “How I lost 10lbs in 4 weeks sitting in a pizza hut.” It breaks expectations. It promises a story about the benefit of losing weight. And it’s clear what you will get from reading it.

That’s it!

So, what did we learn from our 3 examples in the last step?

• All 3 hooks “work.” They open a loop. And the reader will want to close it.

• Each hook frames an expectation in the reader’s mind based on past experience.

• Hook #3 raises an unexpected twist with a story and thus wins the click-me contest.

HOWEVER, there is a risk.

And the risk is you overdo “clever.” The chubby cat is close because it’s hard to believe someone’s cat will give you a new solution to losing weight. But because the benefit (remember step 1) is on target, I still want to know more. The trick is to make sure the reader does’t have to make too many mental leaps to understand the relationship between the benefit and the setting.

So, before you ship your work, ask yourself:

If the answer is yes, congrats you’ve written a solid unexpected story hook!

After you’ve gone through the exercise of thinking about the benefit you are promising the reader, open a new ChatGPT window and train ChatGPT on what you just learned.

Because once you know how to do this, you can train someone else to do it for you. That “someone else” used to be a human. But now you can train your Digital Intern—ChatGPT.

Here’s the prompt:

ncG1vNJzZmivop7BpsPIrZ%2BaoV6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6hpqijXajBsL7YZqafnpWneq6twqGgp51dqbWmecSaqqKdo6k%3D