Reading time: 3.26

814 words

Hey Reader,

^^Helluva first line, right?

Not mine, obvs — it’s the first line of The Crow Road by Iain Banks, a story about “a perfect murder” and a mystery to solve.

A first line like that is what’s known as a “hook” — the thing that grabs you by the eyeballs and reels you in, much as you would catch a fish.

There are many factors that go into making something readable and clickable, but the hook is pretty important — for emails, blog posts, social media posts, videos…

Any content you can think of really.

Including books.

Books contain many hooks: the title, chapter titles, first line of each chapter…

Writing them is an art, and getting good at writing them means writing a lot of mediocre hooks, a few terrible ones, and a bunch of reasonable ones.

That’s good because it means we can be silly and play with our words.

What’s better is that this is a skill you can learn.

You probably already know a fair bit about writing an effective hook, even if you don’t know you know…

But wouldn’t it be cool to do it on purpose? On tap? With a few formulas you know you can use when you get stuck?

And how much fun would it be to bring a post or an email or a blog post that perhaps didn’t do as well as you hoped — and workshop it to give it a brilliant hook?

We can do that together on Thursday August 21 at 11am BST in my Tasty Hooks workshop.

You in?

It’s just £25 and you get the replay to keep forever and ever until the heat death of the universe.

Book here:

Go and book the workshop, quick. I’ll wait.

Are you back?

Excellent — in this week’s Goodie Bag I’ve gathered for you the following:

Polly Adler, celebrity bordello owner

​Polly Adler was sent to the US as a young Russian-Jewish girl by her parents, to avoid the gathering wave of pogroms. She went with her cousin who abandoned her halfway through the journey, leaving Polly to brave the new world alone. You can read her story here, but what stood out for me is her remarkable resilience and entrepreneurial nature. She hung with the theatre crowd and turned New York’s underbelly into her cash cow. GOOD FOR HER.

Kenyan country music

Where would you expect to hear country and western music outside Nashville? Nairobi, maybe? Well, YES actually. Since the 1920s when locals first heard Jimmie Rodgers, Kenya’s music lovers have enjoyed the genre and brought their own unique pizzazz to country music. Hundreds of Kenyan cowboys gathered in Nairobi on July 26 to celebrate International Cowboy Day. Check out this photo essay here.

Lies about exercise

Apparently we were lied to about exercise — who knew? (Me. I knew. They lie to us all the time to extract more money from us. Like — oh these stretchmarks are ugly, here’s some expensive cream because they’re unnatural. Or — oh you’re too fat, here’s a pill to make you thin. Etc.)

Anyway, I loved this article by Erin Nystrom called You were lied to about exercise in which she breaks down how unspeakably shitty the messages we get about exercise are. Read it here.

The illusion of rudeness

In this TEDx Talk, Richard Burnell gives us a new perspective on rudeness — what people mean when they’re “rude” to us. Are they really being rude? Is it personal? Almost certainly not, most of the time. This reframing gives us an opportunity to spread kindness rather than strife, and be less stressed about other people’s behaviour.

Which I know is something I need to hear again and again.

This origin story for DryRobe

You may or may not have noticed I’m currently obsessed with surfing, and I’ve asked for a DryRobe for Christmas. I went to have a mooch on their website, and found their origin story — and it’s so cool! It started as a homemade Christmas gift from a mum to her surfing-mad teenage son, back in the 1980s.

​Check this out.

What I’m reading

Currently devouring lots of back issues from The Art of Noticing. It’s a great read and a fab source of ideas and inspiration and mini adventures.

What I’m writing

My next stand-up comedy set on August 29 woooooo! It may involve potatoes.

Word of the week

exsibilate

verb meaning “to hiss a poor performer off the stage.” Please keep your fingers crossed that this does not happen to me at my next gig aargh. But what a word.

Quote of the week

—Richard Powers, The Overstory

Happy Friday, frand. Have a wonderful weekend.

Do something kind. Do something adventurous. Do something worth writing about.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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