My Masterclass on Better Storytelling

2 Years in 2 Hours

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!