There’s a one minute segment from Steve Jobs’ 2007 iPhone launch I come back to again and again. It’s the first 90 seconds, and it goes like this:

“This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once and a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. You’re very fortunate if you get to work on one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these to the world. In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry.”

In a perfect world, your opening few lines wouldn’t matter. People would stick around for your main point. They wouldn’t mindlessly reach for their phone. But, alas, here we are and you’re likely reading this because something about the first few lines pulled you in.

I don’t blame ya. That’s how I operate too. With a book, with a video, with a tweet, with a presentation. It’s all the same. Think of it this way.

The beginning of your story is like a door. If someone’s on the threshold debating whether to enter, you need to give them a reason to take that step. If they walk away, you’ve lost them. But get them through, get them to take that first step, and you’ve got them into your world and they’re unlikely to turn around.

Jobs uses three hook techniques in those first six sentences. And no, don’t worry, you don’t have to be Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone to use these ideas. Let’s take a look, line by line.

Make a Promise

To make his promise, Jobs does two things:

1. Costly Signaling — Jobs and Apple poured two and a half years into this thing. We appreciate effort and often equate it with value.

2. Raising The Stakes — They didn’t just create a new product, they’re starting a revolution.

Put yourself into the year 2007. What phone dominates the market? The Blackberry. And what company has never, in its 30+ year history, launched a phone? Apple.

Yet Steve Jobs walks on stage and promises the audience that he and Apple built a product that will “change everything.”

Give an Invitation

Steve already made his promise. He follows it up with this brilliant rhetorical trick.

Jobs extends the idea of being part of something extraordinary, not just to himself and Apple, but to the audience as a whole. Notice the use of the words “you” and “your.” Nowhere else in this paragraph are they used.

It's a subtle invitation to feel privileged about witnessing this moment. To become a part of the team starting a revolution, not just someone on the outside looking in.

Leverage Juxtaposition

The promise has been made. The audience wants to be part of the revolution. Now, Jobs wants to make them believe the impossible is possible. So he puts the iPhone and Macintosh side by side.

This comparison serves two purposes. First, it positions the iPhone within Apple’s lineage of ‘revolutionary’ products. Second, it defines what Jobs means by revolutionary. A product that won’t just transform Apple, but the entire phone industry.

Pulling it together

Is this the only way to structure a hook? Of course not.

But I love how much mileage Jobs gets out of six highly intentional sentences. When you focus on story, you can do a lot with very little.

You and I aren’t Jobs, but we don’t need to be. What matters is knowing how to open your story (or essay, presentation, etc) in a way that makes your Reader actually want to pay attention.

When I started writing professionally, I struggled with openings. I and clients would lose readers before even getting to the main points. I resisted using hooks. I’m stubborn like that. But once I realized hooks aren’t about cleverness or click bait, my approach and results changed.

I obsessed over the fundamentals of story and eventually distilled my approach into five distinct steps focused precisely on crafting real-life stories.

If you're interested in tapping into these fundamentals, version 2 of my course, Storytelling: Zero to One, launches March 19th. You'll explore practical tactics like:

• 4 × 4 Story Design

• Conflict Crafting

• The Story Equation

• Hooks, Loops, & 11 Other Rhetorical Devices to Bring Your Story to Life

• And much more

Interested? Click here to join the waitlist.

Thanks for reading and have an awesome Wednesday,

Nathan

PS. I’ve shared this before. It’s one of my favorite examples of someone using story in the real world.

Trivia — A Sentence I Wish I Wrote

Here’s one of my favorite pieces of description ever written.

“The night was shining with stars. They were at the top of the Montée de Villejuif, on the plateau from which Paris is a dark sea shimmering with millions of lights like phosphorescent waves; and waves they are, more thunderous, more passionate, more shifting, more furious and more greedy than those of the stormy ocean, waves which never experience the tranquility of a vast sea, but constantly pound together, ever foaming and engulfing everything.”

Nathan’s Notes

Two ideas on writing & story, plus one random one:

1. An interesting thought on world building in fiction

2. Good video on internal conflict

3. I’m a basketball nut, and this is the best podcast on the NBA by far