My Masterclass on Better Storytelling
I have dozens of texts, DMs, and emails from people I sent Crypto Confidential to saying:
“I couldn’t put it down.”
“I read it in a day.”
“It read like a thriller.”
“I wasn’t interested in crypto but I loved it.”
These messages mean the world to me. My number 1 goal for the book was to write something extremely fun and exciting that snuck the knowledge in along the way. Something that would be entertaining even if you knew nothing about crypto and had little interest in the industry beforehand.
__I succeeded, but I only succeeded because of an _____extremely ___deliberate effort to become as good of a storyteller as possible.
That’s most of what I spent the last two years on, and David Perell was kind enough to interview me all about everything I learned for his How I Write podcast.
We covered an incredible amount of ground in this interview, and I can guarantee that if you listen to even part of it you’ll come away knowing how to tell better stories in your writing, speech, jokes, anywhere.
Here are the timestamps in case you want to skip to a specific topic:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:12 Ways to get Better at Writing (this is gold!)
00:12:15 Getting Published
00:16:40 "The Grammarly Problem"
00:21:50 Writing Commercially Viable Books
00:26:30 How to Write for Different Audiences
00:30:05 No Writer is Perfect
00:32:45 Promise, Progress, Payoff
00:36:05 Adding Conflict and Suspense (also gold)
00:38:25 Losing $100 Million
00:40:20 How to Tell Great Stories
00:45:15 Writing Better Dialogue
00:49:00 Intention and Obstacle
00:52:28 Writing Examples: John Steinbeck
00:56:30 What is Good vs Not Good Writing
01:04:30 Learning from Big Problems
01:09:55 TikTok for Book Marketing
01:16:00 Dealing with Insecurity
01:22:20 Fire round!
01:22:30 Using All 5 Senses
01:23:50 Keep the Inner Enemy in Mind
01:25:55 Stimulus, Internalization, Response
01:28:55 Antagonists Need a Clear Motivation
01:32:10 Four Components of a Story (Braiding)
01:34:15 Writing with AI
I highly recommend you check it out. And don’t forget to order Crypto Confidential if you haven’t!