7 contraband copy techniques I just made up (but you’ll want to steal immediately)

You’ve done the things. You’ve read the swipe files. Your copy is clean. Polished. Optimized. And it’s still not cutting through. It’s good, but not dangerous. It converts, but doesn’t haunt.

This post is for that moment. When you’re good. But tired. And ready to tear something down.

Not frameworks. Not swipeable templates. These are narrative glitches, emotional landmines, and precision-level manipulations. All invented. All illegal. All yours.

1. The Parasite Paragraph

Codename: The ghost in the scroll

It infects the body of your copy. Not in the flow. Not on message. Not even trying to behave, it gets in. A single paragraph, emotionally rogue, that bypasses the brain and goes straight for the soft tissue.

You’re not burnt out. You’re grieving the version of you who thought this would feel like freedom.

It’s not neat. It’s not strategic. It doesn’t convert in a linear way.

It lingers. And that’s the point.

Use the Parasite Paragraph when your copy feels too surgical. Use it when it’s all technique, no terror.

The reason it works? It breaks the trance of “scroll, skim, forget” and replaces it with “what the hell that was?” Kinda resembles the Strange Attractor content, right?

2. The Forbidden Compliment

Codename: The clap no one gave you

It’s not praise. It’s something darker, something dangerously accurate.

You didn’t quit. When everything screamed that you should. And no one thanked you for it. So I will.

This isn’t fluff. It’s recognition. It’s finally. It’s the kind of line that makes people cry in silence and click the link while wiping their face.

Use the Forbidden Compliment in the places where the reader expects a sell. Give them truth instead. This technique is especially good in intros, mid-scroll moments, and call-to-actions/adventures that pretend to care.

The reason it works? More than complimented, we want to be understood.

3. The Cinnamon Roll Hook

Codename: Soft weaponry

You could scream. You could punch. You could shove your way into their feed.*) Or, you could disarm them with softness so specific, it knocks the air out of their lungs.

I wrote this just for you. On a day when your inbox feels like chore and your brain feels like gravel.

It’s a hand on the shoulder, a soft place to land in a world made of sharp corners. A friendly gesture on a Monday morning that already gave up. A slow breath in a room that forgot what quiet feels like. A thick-knit blanket in a rowboat in the middle of a storm. A… well, you get the idea.

Use the Cinnamon Roll Hook when your audience is tired, over-sold, and under-held.

The reason it works? In a marketing world obsessed with urgency, gentleness is rebellion.

*) Shove your way into their feed = forcing attention instead of earning it, forcing your way into someone’s attention space through interruption, loudness, or gimmicks.

4. The Alien Anthropologist Lens

Codename: Surveillance tape #437

Pretend you’re not from here. Pretend you’ve just landed and you’re examining human rituals with vague fascination and mild horror.

Apparently, humans trade their email addresses for PDFs and dopamine. Curious. And even more curious that it seems to work.

Use the Alien Anthropologist Lens to deconstruct the obvious. The stuff everyone takes for granted. The offer you’ve been taught to position like everyone else. Then, suddenly, it’s strange again. Suddenly, it’s interesting.

The reason it works? Defamiliarization. You don’t need new ideas, you just need your old ones to feel like they fell through a wormhole.

5. The Rabbit Hole Sentence

Codename: The cliff without the explanation

Write a line that begs to be chased. Then refuse to explain it.

I once wrote a headline that made a woman scream in a supermarket cashier line.

No follow-up. No punchline. Just the fracture in the surface. Let them fall in.

The Rabbit Hole Sentence is the opposite of clarity. It’s precision curiosity with violent restraint.

The reason it works? The brain is wired to close loops. This one stays open. Wide open. They’ll keep reading just to seal the sentence shut.

6. The Coded Transmission

Codename: Signal from the noise floor

You’ve buried something in your copy. A glitch. A leak. A signal that’s not supposed to be there.

It’s not readable. It’s not clear. It’s not helpful. But it hits like a drug someone didn’t name.

There is no CTA here, just static. Just the breath before the ask, the part where you remember this isn’t performance but pressure.

This is not about telling your story. It’s about letting the algorithm know you’re not safe anymore, that you won’t play ball. It’s a phrase that derails the scroll, a pulse under the formatting. A flare that says, “I don’t care if this works. I care if it reaches the right mind”.

Use the Coded Transmission when everything else is calculated. When you want one line to crack open the reader’s sense of what’s allowed. Use it like an encrypted message for the ones who can read between the spacing. A self-destruct line baked into the funnel. A sigil etched into the bones of your sentence structure.

The reason it works? Because something feels wrong, and we are hardwired to follow wrongness until we understand what broke us.

7. The Soft Threat

Codename: Velvet ultimatum

Not a countdown timer. Not scarcity spam. Just this:

You’ll be fine if you skip this. You’ll also still be stuck, and quietly wondering, two weeks from now, what might’ve changed if you’d said yes.

It’s permission and provocation in equal measure. It doesn’t scream. It slips in through the back door and rearranges the furniture.

Use the Soft Threat when you’d rather haunt than hustle.

The reason it works? It evokes consequence without desperation, which makes it the most seductive kind of danger.

These were never tactics. They were escape routes

You weren’t supposed to read this. These aren’t best practices. In fact, they are narrative sabotage and emotional contraband.

But, they are for when the rules stop working. For when the swipe files feel like padded cells, and for when your copy is good but doesn’t sting.

Use them. Break them. Invent better ones.

And when you do, don’t clean them up. Don’t apologize. Keep them contraband.

In confidence,
Johanna from Narrative Spin
Troublemaker, ghostwriter and copy criminal