"A perfectly competent character is boring" - Nat Eliason dissects his book's prologue - How Stories Happen #10

Telling stories about your life feels fraught. How do you weave together a story that is deeply personal to you and others, contains the right amount of tension without being too dramatic, and feels both gripping and accessible for your audience?

In the case of our guest today, Nat Eliason, his story is about the moment he went from investing hundreds of dollars to having $10 million of his own money on the line, plus more than $100 million of others under his purview, when the whole system was hacked.

Nat recently published his first book, “Crypto Confidential: Winning and Losing Millions in the New Frontier of Finance,” and in this episode, he dissects the choices he made writing his prologue (which he shared with more than 20 people to get right).

Together, Jay and Nat dissect Nat’s thrilling story, unpacking how he grounded the drama, making it feel authentic and relatable, while still embracing the primacy and recency effects in storytelling. Plus, they discuss strategies for getting more valuable feedback on your creative work, Nat’s decision to focus on such a dramatic moment for his prologue, and how to effectively combine educational or technical concepts into a story in a way that doesn’t lose or bore readers.

Whether you are an aspiring author, give keynotes, write articles, or record multimedia content, this episode will make you look a bit closer at how your favorite stories are told—from the very first hook to a perfectly placed detail to the closing line that makes you realize that although the story was specific … it was profoundly universal.