August 17, 2026

I shot my brother when I was six

Did you click into this because of the subject line?

Then the hook did its job.

Your college essay should do the same.

Give it to a stranger and watch if they read the whole thing or glaze over it.

Any other feedback is secondary to that first reaction, because it tells you how engaging your writing is to a random person.

Grammar, topic, figurative language, all of that comes second to whether they kept going.

An admissions officer is a tired adult on their 40th essay of the day.

The only thing between them and lunch is your first paragraph.

You get a few seconds.

Make them count.

I wrote down every hook structure I use with my private clients in the hook guide. More on the mechanism here.

P.S. It was a Nerf gun.