In the real-world, I have a selection of tried-and-true “stories” that I know play well in different settings. Happy hour stories guaranteed to draw a few laughs. Date stories that pierce the “hedged” conversation topics of early engagements and either A) kick off a round of increasingly irreverent banter or B) lead to a nervous laugh and “I might need to head home soon.” “New friend” stories that cause my existing friends to groan after they’ve heard them 15 times, but the new entrant finds wildly entertaining. Podcast stories that I tell on shows.

I know which of these stories flop in which situation, and how to lengthen, shorten, and otherwise adjust these stories in-flight.

I also have “written” stories, many of which appear in my book, Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties. Written stories are a bit different than spoken stories because you can edit them. You can change verb tenses, add and remove context to shape the reader experience.

There’s more pressure on a written story, particularly when told in a book, than a live story. If a live story flops, you can adjust accordingly in the next conversation. But a book is permanent, meaning that every story in the 60,000+ words must delight the reader and move the book forward. Live stories are perfected over the course of multiple conversations. Written stories are perfected over the course of multiple revisions.

I think it’s more helpful to both explain the reasoning behind a specific story within the context of a broader work, rather than discuss “storytelling” in the abstract.

So let’s take the opening passage from my book.

(The actual passage is in black. My comments on the “reason” behind the structure and other choices are in red. Nathan will leave a few observations in blue.)

Chapter 1: The Opportunity Cost of Everything

Every young person should blow up their life at least once.

Not in an “I developed a substance-abuse problem and had to go to rehab for a few months” way, but in an “I’m willing and able to uproot foundational aspects of my life and try something new” way.

I’ve blown up my life twice.

The first time was in May 2021, when I was twenty-four. The second time was in January 2025, when I was twenty-seven. Most of what you will read over the next ~250 pages relates to my life experiences and reflections between those points, but for now, let’s focus on that first instance.

What happened in May 2021?

It was 8:18 p.m. on a Friday evening in Atlanta, Georgia. I was supposed to meet friends for dinner in twelve minutes at a tapas restaurant twenty 20 minutes away, and I was going to be lucky if I made it there by nine. The reason for my delay?

Work, obviously.

If you’ve ever worked in a job where your responsibilities, schedule, and expectations appeared to defy the laws of logic and sensibility, this story might hit close to home. I was a financial analyst for America’s largest logistics company, and for the third Friday in a row my eyes were glazing over as I worked well into the night to update a deck reflecting some trivial change in UPS’s hypothetical financial situation seven months out.

More specifically, I was halfway through the twelfth revision of an Excel model that showed how UPS’s Q4 2021 operating profit in North America could be $4 million lower if jet-fuel prices increased by $0.27. Or something like that. Who cares. The details, like the model itself, don’t matter all that much.

Which was the problem.

This is ridiculous, I thought. I glanced at the time on my phone: 8:18 p.m.

My coworker, Michael, was trying his best to remain upbeat on the other side of the Zoom call, but we were caught in a prisoner’s dilemma where we both knew that our current predicament was neither necessary nor important. Yet neither of us was willing to voice those opinions aloud. So, instead, we sat at our respective desks, going on hour eight of expressing the feigned cheerfulness that plagued pandemic-era remote work.

I had, at this point, updated cell E11 no fewer than fourteen times, and I glanced at the ceiling fan in the reflection of my Zoom camera, wondering if it could support my 225-pound frame. That would have added some excitement to Michael’s evening, anyway.

Why was I, for the third Friday in a row, going on hour 8 of updating this spreadsheet? Because UPS’s finance department required all teams to submit their weekly reports every Friday. This mandate ignored two small, but for my team, critical details:

(1) Eighty percent of the inputs my team needed for our models came from other groups that didn’t submit their reports until Friday, which meant that we couldn’t make any meaningful progress on our reports until, well, Friday.

(2) There weren’t any pressing reasons that implored us to turn our work around on Friday. We were modeling airline-fuel prices seven months in the future, not stopping terrorist attacks. Time was absolutely not of the essence.

Not that any of that mattered to my director. So after spending Monday through Thursday sending around trivial emails, scrolling Reddit, and moving my mouse every six minutes and forty-five seconds to remain “active” on Slack, I would speed-run an entire week’s worth of work between ~12 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. every Friday.

Four years later, I still get frustrated thinking back on the inefficiency of it all, but that is, unfortunately, how corporate bureaucracies work.

I did eventually make it to dinner, and after delivering apologies for my tardiness, I settled in for a fun night with friends. However, as I got ready for bed that night, my frustrations from earlier that evening gave way to late-night introspection.

Although I was irritated that my plans for the last three Friday evenings had been disrupted, it wasn’t the inconsiderate timing of my deadlines that really bugged me. The real issue, which had been gnawing at me for weeks, was that these tasks didn’t really matter. And more importantly, they were crowding out things that did.

The lie that you’re told as a twenty-two-year-old on the cusp of graduating from college is that your career will be this exciting journey where you might make a difference in the world. But the reality of my situation as a twenty-four-year-old financial analyst eighteen months into his career was that I was spending my Friday evenings copying numbers from fifteen different emails to paste them in Excel spreadsheets to generate new numbers that I would then copy and paste in another email to someone else.

I’m sure that the poor soul on the receiving end of that email couldn’t have cared any more about my fuel-price projection than I did, yet his job was probably to copy and paste my numbers into some other spreadsheet to generate some other numbers before sending his numbers to someone else, and the cycle would just keep going and going until I would send a new number the next week.

It was so fucking stupid. And for what, $60,000 a year?

Still, I don’t mean to sound pretentious. I was a twenty-four-year-old guy with an email job I could do in my sweatpants, and spending a few Fridays working late thanks to my boss’s inconvenient scheduling preferences shouldn’t have been the end of the world.

Lying in bed that night, however, I realized that my Friday-evening fire drills weren’t outliers in their irrelevance. They simply highlighted a truth that I had spent the last eighteen months attempting to suppress: The last year and a half of my life had been a complete waste of time.

Thanks to COVID-19, every single day since starting my job in February 2020 had looked the same: I would roll out of bed, throw on some sweatpants, make a pot of coffee, respond to a few emails, manipulate Excel sheets and PowerPoints, send those models and decks around to my team, further revise those models and decks, feign interest in Zoom calls, and move my mouse to appear “online” regardless of how much work actually needed to be done.

I wasn’t being compensated for my skills; I was being compensated for my obedience. And as I stared at my ceiling, one thought wouldn’t stop ringing through my mind:

You’re wasting your time.

And once that thought materialized, it metastasized like a cancer. My mind was racing:

You’re not just wasting your time. You’re wasting your life. Is this just how it is? Move numbers around on reports at the mercy of someone else’s schedule for the next forty years? What’s the best-case scenario here? Maybe after twenty years, you get to be the guy in charge of everyone else’s reports instead? Just trading hours and days and weeks and months and years of white-collar bullshit for a check? That’s how we’re spending the next forty years? How stupid is that?

So before I go any further, I want you to know that if you’ve ever asked yourself these same questions, you’re not crazy.

If you’ve found yourself fighting back tears after a miserable workweek where you struggled through projects that you couldn’t care less about, you’re not crazy. If you’re sick of living at the mercy of Slack pings and Teams notifications, you’re not crazy. If you dread checking your inbox on Monday morning, you’re not crazy. If you’ve ever taken a good, hard look at how you’re spending your days and asked yourself, What’s the point of it all?, you’re not crazy.

You’re just beginning to notice the opportunity cost of your time.

More on this later.

In the weeks following my Friday-evening crash-out, I tried to ignore those thoughts. You just need to stick it out at UPS for another year, I told myself. And sticking it out, really, would have been the logical decision. It was May 2021, and I had already been accepted to business school at Columbia University in New York with plans to matriculate in August 2022. The “correct” path forward would have been to suck it up, stick around for another year, cop a promotion and a pay bump along the way, stack some cash, quit the following spring, and enjoy some time off before beginning graduate school.

But another twelve months of passive existence would have been a long time to “stick it out,” and with each additional day of Zoom calls, Excel revisions, and pointless meetings, that voice in my head grew louder.

You’re wasting your life, Jack! Is this really how you want to be spending your days, Jack?

But what was I supposed to do? Just quit? And then what? Around the time that my internal turmoil reached its fever pitch, I ran into my boss at a bar.

Okay, class. Let’s review. This story was the opening ~3-4 pages of Young Money. This story served a few purposes:

• Catch the reader’s attention. IMMEDIATELY. Without a strong opening sentence, and a passage that quickly builds off that sentence, you lose the reader. The first few paragraphs create momentum.

• Establish my voice. Irreverent. Ironic. Dark humor, at times. You know you’ll see more of that. We describe the scene from the perspective of the author. What is seeing in the world around him? What stories is he telling himself? By paragraph five, the reader has a feel for both the author’s tone and his point-of-view when writing.

• Resonate with readers who have had similar experiences. This book isn’t for everyone. That’s fine. But you want to tell a story with such precise details that the specifics of Excel sheets, fake Slack activity, and prisoner’s dilemma Zoom calls have some readers nodding their heads in agreement. Whether they’re living that existence now, or it took them back a few years, they’re now invested in my story because it, in some ways, reflects their own.

• Context and vulnerability. A good story, particularly when told about the author’s own life, gives the reader a peak into “who” the author is, enabling them to better understand the book not just on the merit of its words but as the perspective of the person who write it. Don’t hedge when talking about your own life. Show your vulnerabilities so the reader will take you seriously. “I don’t have it figured out. This is my story. This isn’t self-help slop, it’s a human experience.” The story has stakes.

• Transition to the “broader theme.” A lot of “non-fiction / self-help” follows the same cookie cutter pattern of “random historical anecdote is force-fit against lesson the writer wants to convey.” I think that structure is stupid. And it’s also why “self-help” is getting destroyed by AI: LLMs can do that just fine on their own. But if you tell a personal story to show how one’s own experience led to their revelation, the “idea” that you want the reader to understand feels natural, like talking to your friend at the bar. And that’s precisely how a “good” story should feel: like a conversation at a bar, two drinks deep, with a friend.

I don’t have any particular “rules” when it comes to telling stories, other than this: Any good story must entertain the reader. That entertainment might mean they laugh, it might mean their heart starts beating out of their chest. It might mean they nod in agreement, or they find themselves muttering, “what the hell is this guy talking about?” but they won’t be “bored.” If the reader is bored, you’re cooked. The reader needs to react. And that reaction is what compels them to turn another page.

And a great story? It provides a lesson that was never explicitly stated. The reader “figures out” the point on their own by virtue of reading about the author’s experience. That’s what stories are: a connection via shared human experiences.

Anyway, thanks for reading. And check out my book: Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties.

Jack

So he wrote the second draft in English, his second language.

When asked about this, Murakami said, “I could only write in short, simple sentences. However complex and numerous the thoughts running around in my head, I couldn’t even attempt to set them down as they came to me.”

If you’ve read a Murakami story, you know he doesn’t keep his stories simple. But the language itself often is.

He goes on, “The language had to be simple, my ideas expressed in an easy-to-understand way, the descriptions stripped of all extraneous fat, the form made compact, and everything arranged to fit a container of limited size.”

We often view stories as one whole when they operate on many levels. I find it helpful to break them into:

• Whole

• Act

• Scene

• Paragraph

• Line

Then I can break apart my drafting. The whole story arc might be good while the words themselves are bad. Or, in the worst scenario, the words may be good while the whole is bad.

Every line can technically work while still adding up to a story that makes no sense at all.

Murakami, I believe, is getting after a similar idea. By simplifying the line level, he tells a better overall story.

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Takeaway 1:

Constraints drive creativity.

For Murakami, he put a constraint on the sheer number of words he could use. I lived in Spain. If I wrote a story in Spanish, the vocab would be that of a fourth grader (this is likely an insult to the fourth grader). But damn it would be simple.

If you’re struggling with a story, give yourself a constraint. The one I like is word count.

Let’s say I’m at 6,000 words and the story or scene doesn’t feel right. I’ll say, okay this has to be 4,000 words or less.

Often, that constraint forces me to identify the actual thread driving the story, and the new draft pops in a way previous ones never did.

Takeaway 2:

The modern world has an obsession with efficiency. We sacrifice thought, care, and craft at the altar of efficiency. There’s infinitely more writing and ‘content’ today than ever before, and I’m not even just talking about AI, but how much of it really makes you think?

In Novelist as a Vocation, where this story comes from, Murakami says, “One opposite of imagination is ‘efficiency.’”

Drafting a story in your second language may be the least efficient process for getting words on paper. But if you read Murakami, you feel the thought put into each word.

Takeaway 3:

Every storyteller, no matter your medium, has odd habits that might not work for anyone else.

I try my best to share fundamental ideas to help you become a better storyteller, but all I can talk about is from my experience, and my brain won’t work like yours. I need to know the ending before my stories start to click. Maybe you don’t, maybe you have to find your ending… at the end

Branson Sanderson writes best at 1am. Murakami drafts in his second language. Stephen King doesn’t use outlines.

There’s no way to know if these things are right for you than to try them. Discard what doesn’t fit, keep the rest. Do what works for you.

— Nathan

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PS. I’m back from a summer newsletter break. Reply ‘story’ and it’ll help me avoid the dreaded spam folder.

PPS. My friend Jack Raines wrote the non-fiction book of the summer, and he sold more than 2k copies in week 1. Really happy for him. The book’s great.

You owe your Reader.

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked onto a dim stage and said, “This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years.”

For the next three minutes, Jobs reflected on the history of Apple, the evolution of phones, and the limitations of current smartphones. He dropped hint after hint about a “revolutionary product.” The audience leaned forward, waiting for the reveal.

Meanwhile, the Hunger Games begins with, “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”

From a technical perspective, these openings do drastically different things. Jobs uses costly signaling to tell you -- hey, I’ve invested so much time into this, it must be valuable!

While Suzanne Collins gives you a small mystery -- who, or what, typically warms that side of the bed?

But to focus on the surface-level mechanics misses the crucial point. There’s a deeper narrative principle at work, what I call Narrative Debt, and both Jobs and Collins are masters.

In previous newsletters, we’ve talked about promises, curiosity gaps, and open loops as storytelling tools. They’re useful, yes, but I think they’re incomplete.

Let’s step back for a moment. What’s really happening in a story?

Every story is a subtle negotiation between you — the storyteller — and your Reader. You raise questions and make promises. Then, in return, your Reader invests their attention, trust, and, most importantly, time.

But here’s the catch. Those promises aren’t free. Each one creates an obligation, an invisible expectation in your Reader that you’ll deliver a satisfying payoff.

This obligation is what I call Narrative Debt.

And it leads directly to the first principle of managing Narrative Debt: Always Be Owing.

Principle 1: Always be Owing

When I graduated with student loans, the loan provider sent emails every month. But now that I paid it off, I get zero emails.

Readers behave similarly. If you owe them nothing, they have very little reason to stick around.

In story, you always want to owe the Reader.

• Every desire creates a debt. Will they get it?

• Every investment creates a debt. Will it pay off?

• Every fear creates a debt. Will they overcome it?

Always. Be. Owing.

Both Jobs and Collins knew this. Notice how they deliberately withhold information to create Narrative Debt:

• Hunger Games: “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”

  • Small debt → Who usually keeps the bed warm?

• Jobs: “This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years.”

  • Big debt → What’s he been secretly working on?

Readers won’t wait forever for you to pay off your debt. Narrative Debt decays over time, and the size of the debt dictates how long they’ll stay patient.

Principle 2: Debt Sizing & Time Decay

Once you’ve created Narrative Debt, your job is to delay paying it off as long as possible without losing your audience.

Which begs a crucial question:

• How do you know when to pay it off?

Let’s extend our two examples.

Hunger Games

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim’s face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.

This functions as cascading debt.

• Cold bed? (Paid in 2 sentences: Prim left)

• Why’d she leave? (Paid in 3 sentences: bad dreams)

• Bad dreams about what? (Paid immediately: the reaping)

• What’s the reaping? (This one... she makes you wait)

• What kind of world beat her mother down? (Again, she makes you wait.)

Small debts, repaid quickly, that build to the larger, delayed debts that drive the main part of the story.

Jobs’ 2007 iPhone Product Launch

This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. You’re very fortunate if you get to work on one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these to the world. In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry.

Jobs takes on a large debt upfront, promising “a revolutionary product that changes everything.” From there, he methodically unveils the features, paying off the debt throughout the rest of his 80-minute talk.

Same narrative principle. Completely different execution.

Both Jobs and Collins understand debt sizing and time decay.

• Small debt: Pay quickly or interest fades.

• Big debt: Give gradual, carefully timed payoffs.

• No debts: No reason to keep reading.

Time decay simply means readers lose interest if debt remains unpaid too long.

This is why Collins has three sentences to answer “why is the bed cold?” but makes you wait chapters to understand a term as ominous as “the reaping.”

Your brain instinctively categorizes smaller debts as needing immediate payoff while it has more patience for bigger debts to be paid over a longer period. When Collins finally reveals The Hunger Games, the payoff lands with maximum impact. Then, of course, she opens her biggest debt yet — will Katniss survive the Games?

Jobs’ “two and a half years” signals massive importance in his first line. After such a promise, he doesn’t need to take on much more debt to keep you around for the next hour, so he shifts more quickly toward payoff.

The “debt arc” might look like this for each story.

I don’t think either method is necessarily superior to the other. Instead, I want to push you to consider what your “debt arc” might look like. Do you take on a huge debt upfront like Jobs? Or do you cascade upwards like Collins?

Principle 3: Narrative Debt Portfolio Management

I’ve noticed great stories tend to focus better than others. They don’t take debt out from hundreds of accounts. Instead, they have a few major credit lines that they constantly draw from.

For example, I’d rather owe $100 for one debt than $1 for 100 debts.

Below is the outline JK Rowling used to plan the fifth Harry Potter. Notice how it only tracks six plot threads (the columns starting with ‘Prophecy’ and to the right). For a story of that size, it’s remarkably focused:

Think of those six columns as lines of credit. Take the Hagrid & Grawp column. It outlines one long subplot thread, which Rowling stretches into months of suspense by creating smaller debts along the way:

• Where’s Hagrid? (Chapter 11)

• Why does he look beaten up? (Chapter 15)

• What’s he hiding in the forest? (Chapter 20)

• Who’s Grawp? (Chapter 30)

One thread. Four months of debts.

I think this points to a kind of ‘Narrative Debt Portfolio Management’ -- finding the balance between no debt and too much debt.

This varies by the length of your story and, like most story principles, you’ll find examples that break it. However, this kind of focus helps avoid the dreaded narrative sprawl that creeps into so many stories.

Think about the different levels of Narrative Debt:

The Major Question is your mortgage. It drives everything. Will Harry defeat Voldemort? Will Katniss survive the Hunger Games? Will Jobs’ product actually ‘revolutionize everything?’ This debt stays open until your final Act and its payoff defines the entire story.

The Subplot Threads are your car loans. They run for multiple scenes, generating smaller debts along the way. They might be romances, secrets, betrayals, or really any other technique you use to create debt.

Scene-level Questions are your coffee purchases. Tiny debts that open and close within the same scene. I like to think of them as the tiny mysteries that keep your Reader moving from sentence to sentence. Who’s at the door? Why did her expression change? What’s that scraping sound?

Look back on the first paragraphs from the Hunger Games for a great example of this.

Mentally run through your debts. Are they varied in size? Is one always open? Do you pay them off at the right time?

The moment you’re debt free is the moment your Reader is free to go.

So ask yourself:

• What am I borrowing?

• How will I pay it back?

• How long can I keep them waiting?

Always be owing.

Thank you for reading.

-Nathan

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Some of this is specific to the piece. But, I think, this line hits home on what goes wrong in so many stories.

Fewer ideas, but better.

Maybe it’s the internet writer in me, but I often underdevelop ideas rather than overdevelop them. Sometimes, this means I need more words. Other times, this means I try to cram seven ideas into a story when focusing on one or two would be more impactful.

I go shallow on many, but deep on none.

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It’s not that ideas three through seven are bad, per se, but more so that they take valuable time and space away from the best ideas. Applied to story, the word ‘ideas’ could be replaced with many things.

Fewer plots, but better. Fewer characters, but better. Fewer themes, but better. Fewer scenes, but better.

My stories get in trouble when I try to do too much.

That leads to one of two things, neither of which you want to happen. One, the Reader gets confused when you bounce between too many ideas, too quickly. Or, two, the Reader gets bored and frustrated because you don’t go deep enough on your best ideas.

And, because I’m not George RR Martin, I can’t yet juggle a dozen competing ideas and come out of it with a 900 page story you don’t want to put down.

When in doubt, simplify the variables in your story. The trick then becomes what to simplify down to.

For me, when I feel like I’m starting to juggle too many things, I use a journal and divide it into categories. Plot points, Themes, Characters, etc, like those listed above. Then, very simply, I’ll write everything that falls into those categories within the section of the story I’m worried about.

Visually, it becomes easy to see what has become too crowded.

I like this exercise because it works on short or long stories. Heck, it’d even work on an essay like this that isn’t really a story at all. Ask yourself: Am I trying to get across too many ideas? You’ll know very quickly if the answer is yes. And, if you’re like me, you already knew the answer before you started the exercise, but you needed to see it to confirm it. Trust that instinct. “Kill your darlings,” as some might say.

When you scrap one part of your story, you’re giving the other, more important parts of your story space to breathe.

Think of it as a percentage. Now, those better ideas take up a higher percentage of the available pie. Then, when you start to dig deeper on them, their impact compounds even further.

What parts of your story pull you in? Which ones do you keep coming back to? And, conversely, which parts do you struggle to pay attention to? That may be the story’s way of communicating with you. Maybe it’s trying to tell you where to focus.

As my friend said – Fewer ideas, but better.

Have an awesome week.

Nathan

PS. Oddly, I found myself initially resistant to the feedback… despite it being awesome feedback. I think that’s because I don’t work with editors often. I write, and I ship. So it was a needed reminder. Great editors are worth their weight in gold.

A story is a constant swing between good and ill fortune. More than any specific trick or framework, for your story to land it needs to be interesting, and for it to be interesting it needs to involve swings in emotion.

In the early 1950s, Kurt Vonnegut submitted his thesis paper to the University of Chicago’s Department of Anthropology. He says,

“There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes.”

But the university rejected the thesis.

Vonnegut quips it “was rejected because it was so simple and looked like too much fun.” But the idea persisted. Maybe for those exact reasons. Today, it’s one of the most compelling analytical takes on storytelling.

Before you get into the 8 shapes, let me quickly explain how the graphs work. Vonnegut plots stories on 2 axes:

• X: Beginning to end

• Y: Good fortune / ill fortune

Across all 8 shapes, the line never stays flat. Stories live in the constant push between good fortune and bad. The specific shape matters less than keeping that oscillation alive.

Let’s look at the 8 shapes.

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The 8 Shapes of Stories

1. Man in Hole

A character’s doing fine, gets herself into a huge problem, and must overcome it. They end up better than they started.

“You see this story again and again,” Vonnegut says. “People love it, and it is not copyrighted.”

2. Boy Meets Girl

The protagonist finds something wonderful (usually love), loses it, and then goes on a journey to get it back again.

3. From Bad to Worse (Kafkaesque)

The protagonist starts off bad but things manage to get worse from there. Sometimes, you turn into a bug.

4. Which Way is Up? (The Complicated One)

The character(s) goes through a series of seemingly random ups and downs. Often, the overall line slopes up despite the constant zigzag.

5. Creation Story

This represents the idea of coming out of chaos and moving toward order and happiness. The shape slopes upwards but isn’t common in western culture.

6. Old Testament

Characterized by cycles of good fortune and bad fortune, but typically ends in a downward direction. Think of it as a series of ups and downs that finally go down.

7. New Testament

The main character has progressively better fortune until, one day, something horrible happens. Then they have to figure out how to find “off the chart bliss.”

8. Cinderella (Rags-to-Riches)

I’ll leave this description to Vonnegut:

“We’re gonna start way down here. Worse than that, who is so low? It’s a little girl… the shoe fits, and she achieves off-scale happiness.”

3 quick points to pull this idea together:

• “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — so the reader may see what they’re made of.”

• “It’s not accidental that the line ends up higher than where it began. This is encouraging to readers.” (True for 6 of the 8)

• “The shape of the curve is what matters. Not their origins.”

The Line is Never Flat

By far the most important takeaway to help you tell better stories is to avoid the flat line at all costs.

We can debate for hours if there are 8 or 6 or 75 shapes of stories. But if you look at all of them, that line is never flat. The ‘fortune’ of the protagonist needs to always be changing. Moments of humor shine in a dark story, while moments of deep sadness hit hardest when juxtaposed with joy.

Stories are a constant swing between good and ill fortune, and your job as the storyteller is to amplify that swing.

Have an awesome week,

Nathan

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PS. Let me know if a follow up newsletter on how I think about making this oscillation happen would be helpful.

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PPS: Here’s the video of Vonnegut explaining the idea. It’s brilliant.

Hope you enjoy:

1. 4 tenets of story structure

The storyteller is both an Artist and Engineer. This letter breaks down the four structural components that great stories nail: Conflict, Causation, Progress, and Transformation. Conflict creates tension. Causation ensures events don’t just happen sequentially, but because of each other. Progress gives readers a sense of forward momentum. And Transformation gives the whole thing purpose.

2. The Great Library

I majored in engineering. Never wrote a single essay in college. But then I decided to write a book and realized I had no idea what I was doing. This letter curates 21 resources (books, essays, podcasts, and videos) to help bring out the storyteller in you.

A quick thank you to today’s sponsor

The majority of my business is ghostwriting for tech founders, and I’ve learned more from Nicolas Cole than anybody else. He put together a free 5-email series to help new ghostwriters land their first client. If that’s a path you’re considering, grab it here.

3. 11 quick ideas to tell better stories

I used to think of story in terms of rules. Now I think of it as a collection of small skills, principles, and practices. This letter shares 11 of them, including: If a story feels boring, it needs more conflict. Make your characters want something. And my favorite, leave people wanting more, not wanting less.

4. Story in reverse

Most story structures start with the beginning, but that’s not how we solve most problems. This letter digs into the 7-point story structure and how to build your story from the end first.

5. The most misunderstood writing advice

I used to hate the advice of “Show, don’t tell” because it lacks nuance. But I’ve come around to it being more misunderstood than outright bad. The real skill is knowing when to show and when to tell.

6. Why great stories sometime start at the end

A book kept me up until 2 AM. On page one, the author shares that the protagonist destroyed a sun and killed four billion people. Instead of ruining the story, this opening made me ask, “How could we possibly get there?” This letter explores story framing - how you control your audience’s interpretation through where you start your story - and introduces the concept of Narrative Debt.

7. You’re saying too much

The best stories leave intentional gaps for the Reader to fill in. This letter breaks down the concept of subtext. There’s what can be said (the full truth), what will be said (what the character admits), and what won’t be said (the suppressed truth).

8. Fewer ideas, but better

A friend edited a short piece for me. He said, “Fewer ideas, but better.” This letter is about simplifying the variables in your story and going deeper on the ones that matter. When you scrap a weak part, you give the important parts more room to shine.

9. The most important narrative tool nobody told you about

A guest post from Eric Falden that’s one of the best essays I’ve read on storytelling this year. He argues for the concept of Narrative Distance, and shows you how to use it to control your story’s pacing.

10. Narrative debt

Every story is a negotiation between you and your Reader. You raise questions and make promises. In return, they invest their attention. I call this Narrative Debt. If you owe your Reader nothing, they have no reason to stick around.

Have an awesome week,

Nathan

PS. What’s one topic you want me to write about this year? An aspect of story you struggle with, that maybe I’ve wrestled with too?

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11 quick ideas to help you become a better storyteller:

1. If a story feels boring, the writing quality is not the problem. It needs more conflict.

2. Specific almost always wins. I read a great idea from Alice Lemee recently. She says, “Use verbs that elicit a particular physical movement.

• Fight → Clawed

• Drank → Sipped

• Ate → Scarfed

• Take → Scooped”

One has dozens of possible meanings, the other paints a particular image.

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3. Write the end first. That way you know what you need to achieve, what you need to mention, and what matters throughout your story. The end drives the beginning and middle, not the other way around.

4. Treat your hook as a Promise. A hook is not only about capturing attention. It’s about capturing attention while setting accurate expectations around tone and plot. Ask yourself, “What promise am I making my audience?”

• Bonus: Watch Brandon Sanderson’s Youtube video on Promise, Progress, Payoff.

5. Read a Swim in a Pond in the Rain. George Saunders close reads 7 Russian short stories and, in the process, teaches you more about how stories actually work than any craft book I know. It’s less “here are the rules” and more “here’s how a great storyteller thinks and executes.” That’s more rare and more useful.

6. Causation > chronology. “This happened, then this happened” is a timeline. “This happened, therefore this happened” is a story. Every scene should cause the next. If you can rearrange your scenes without consequence, you don’t have a story yet.

Bonus: Watch this 2 min video from the creators of South Park on the idea of “But, Therefore.”

7. Make your characters want something. If you want to create characters people care about - not necessarily like, but actually care what happens to them - they need to want something. Anything. Can be a hamburger, self-actualization. People like people who are striving for something.

8. Write the ugly first draft. The story in your head is perfect. The story on the page will be worse. That’s the deal. Accept it early.

9. Try copywork. Take your favorite author (or other storyteller). Find their best work. Copy it, word for word. Do it by hand.

Something funny happens. Your brain starts to pattern match.

Oh, that’s how to write a great hook. There, they built tension. Ah, that’s an open loop.

Over time, you pick and choose bits of style from each writer to create your unique blend. Your hand gets used to what great story feels like.

Please excuse my messy handwriting.

10. Keep a story-log. Steal this idea from Matthew Dicks’ excellent book Storyworthy. Every night, write down one moment from your day that might be a story. Not a whole story, just a moment. Most won’t become anything. But after a few months, you’ll have a catalog of raw material, and you’ll start noticing moments as they happen.

Noticing is the skill.

11. Leave people wanting more, not wanting less. If you’re debating if something can be deleted, it can.

I’m curious which is your favorite. I’ll do a full newsletter dedicated to the most helpful ones.

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In the meantime, here are three more ways I can help:

1. A quick primer on the 4 tenets of story structure.

2. A free, 5-day email course breaking down everything you need to generate endless content ideas, write online with ease, & attract an audience of loyal readers.

3. My upcoming novel, The Pendulum Swings. Think of it as science-fantasy, Mistborn meets Red Rising. Technology falls, magic rises, an Age breaks. A story about deeply flawed people making questionable choices when the lights go out and the old powers wake up.

Cheers,

Nathan

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.”

That pause first showed me the idea of a ‘Freeze Frame’ in a story.

But first, a quick thanks to Sintra for sponsoring today’s World Builders

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Take a look at the entire paragraph:

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

Why pause when you have all the momentum?

Because Card wants to show that the decisive blow for Ender isn’t only physical, it’s emotional and moral as well. That pause brings Ender’s empathy front and center. What it reveals counters what’s happening in Ender’s physical reality.

That collision between what the plot demands (a fight) and what the character feels (love) is where the real conflict lies.

By ‘freezing the frame,’ Card transforms what could have been a one-note scene into a deeply paradoxical experience. Ender doesn’t simply win a battle. Instead, he grapples with love and responsibility and understanding, and that clash makes his triumph feel more like a tragedy.

The action on the surface might scream “Victory!” while the mind underneath whispers, “What have I done?”

In your writing and storytelling, watch for these moments of collision.

But how do you find these moments in your draft?

I’ve started to ask one question: “Where is my character doing the opposite of what they feel?”

Action one way, heart the other. Freeze it. Zoom in. Let your character doubt, dream, grieve, or tremble before they act.

Have a great weekend,

Nathan

PS. I wrote this with my friend David Perell for his site Writing Examples.

He also hosts the excellent How I Write podcast, which is one of just two pods I listen to. Here’s my favorite episode.

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The storyteller is both an Artist and Engineer. An Engineer to construct worlds, plots, and characters. An artist to breathe life into them.

Recently, I’ve thought a lot about the ‘Engineering’ side of that equation. How do you design a good story? Why do some structures work when others don’t? What are the underlying principles at play?

The art matters, yes, but most people either ignore the engineering entirely or randomly pick a story structure without understanding the principles it stands on.

I’ve spend an absurd amount of time studying different story structures. From what I can tell, underneath the surface they all share 4 foundational tenets:

• Conflict

• Causation

• Progress

• Transformation

Let’s talk a bit about each.

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The 4 Tenets of Story Structure

1. Conflict

Conflict is the engine of your story. It’s you (or your protagonist) versus… something. What can that something be?

You’ve got loads of options, but I break them into 3 broad buckets:

• You vs. Others

• You vs. Your Beliefs

• You vs. External Factor (Time, Money, Tech, etc)

For example, your protagonist going to therapy isn’t conflict. Your protagonist lying in therapy because they’re terrified the therapist will call the cops… now that’s conflict.

I see this in 90% of drafts. Characters doing things, but nothing’s at stake.

An idea to keep in mind:

The more your protagonist struggles, the more satisfying their eventual triumph is for the audience.

2. Causation

A story isn’t a bunch of random events tossed together.

“Sara goes to the store and then Sara sits at a red light and then Sara gets mad at another driver.” Event 1 and then Event 2 and so on.

Real life may play out like this, but stories can’t. Great storytelling is intentional. It doesn’t wander. It builds upon itself.

You need linkage between those events – Causation. Each event in a story flows naturally from what came before, like a line of dominos falling one after the other. If one is misplaced, the entire chain breaks.

• X causes Y to happen

• Because X happened, you need to do Y

• You want X, but you can’t get it now because of Y

Here’s the best explanation of story causation I’ve found (it’s less than 3 minutes):

You may also enjoy my friend Dan’s explanation of the difference between a story, anecdote, fable, etc here.

3. Progress

You want to create a visual in the mind of your reader to show progression.

Let’s say your story centers around running out of money. Throughout, you can signpost progress. “I have $10,” “Now I have $7,” so on and so forth.

This creates a visual ticker in the mind of your reader. They can see that number getting lower as the story continues.

A good tip is to search out numbers in your story. How can you show the change in those numbers? A few examples to get you thinking:

• Katniss faces 23 other contestants in the Hunger Games, but only 1 contestant comes out alive.

• Harry has to hunt down and destroy 7 horcruxes.

But what if you have zero numbers? Try to create a visual with any kind of map.

If you can tell your reader “I’m here” but “I want to go there,” they’ll visualize points A and Z. Then you update them when you’re at points F and M along the way. They’ll imagine you getting closer to your goal.

4. Transformation

Transformation is the soul of your story. It’s what gives it meaning.

Often, I think of this as the “SO WHAT?”

You had all this stuff happen, but what’s different now? Be it internal to a character or external to your world, something changes.

Pull that change out, latch onto it. A real transformation leaves evidence.

What evidence can you show your Audience to demonstrate the transformation that occurred?

• In the Lord of the Rings - spoiler! - Frodo loses his finger and leaves Middle Earth forever.

An editing tip:

Often, I don’t know the exact transformation I want to highlight before I write the story. It reveals itself as I draft, so editing becomes where I bring the transformation to life. How to bring it to life?

I like to use mirror scenes - one early in the story and one later - that show my Reader the transformation in action. Think of them as Point A and Point B, with your story connecting them.

To wrap it up:

Conflict sets the stage, Causation keeps it moving, Progress shows your readers how far they’ve come, and Transformation gives it all meaning.

Most people are capable of good prose, but the actual skeleton of their story is broken which leads to the story falling apart the deeper you get. That’s when you start blindly following one of the famous story structure frameworks without understanding the foundation those frameworks are built on.

Whether you opt for a version of the Hero’s Journey, Story Circle, or any of the thousands of other story structures out there, know they’re built on these four tenets and you can tweak them for your specific story.

Have an awesome weekend,

Nathan

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PS.

Below are 8 book cover options I’m considering for my upcoming fantasy novel. I can tweak my favorites with the designer, but I have to pick just 2 favorites first!

Which cover would convince you to check out the book? Reply or comment to let me know.

I have my favorites but I don’t want to bias your opinion!

For context, think of the story as a far future fantasy novel, Will of the Many meets Red Rising. Technology falls, magic rises, an Age breaks. A story about deeply flawed people making questionable choices when the lights go out and the old powers wake up.

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Semi monthly book updates sent here.

I learn the most from experienced story practitioners, so I’m bringing you a guest post from Renee Fountain. She’s a literary agent, has worked in the publishing industry for 25+ years, and writes the incredibly insightful newsletter, Gryphon Quill. This piece focuses on novels, but you’ll find the ideas applicable in other areas, too.

“Voice matters. Character matters. Excellent writing matters—but none of it matters if the story fails to carry it.”

Here’s Renee:

I recently requested a full read of a manuscript I didn’t expect to connect with, based on a pitch that wasn’t quite honed. The concept and time period weren’t quite in my wheelhouse, but I agreed to give it a shot. Within a few pages, the writing pulled me in. The voice was compelling. The scenes had emotional texture. The characters were interesting, and the overarching theme—one of my favorites. Excited, I kept reading.

Then I hit the 50% mark—56% to be exact—and I stopped.

The story that had been racing along hit a wall. The characters I’d grown to like were now just going through the motions. Internal monologues that previously provided insight felt repetitive; delaying the story, rather than deepening it. I hoped it would pick up again – two chapters beyond that I gave up. The narrative was treading water.

This experience illustrated something I’ve observed again and again: exceptional writing alone cannot sustain a novel. Even the most beautiful prose and compelling characters will lose readers if the momentum flags.

Why Great Writing Isn’t Enough

Writers are often told strong voice, emotional honesty, or solid writing will carry a story. And they might—for a while. But no matter how dazzling the prose, readers need movement. They need escalation. They need change.

When the story stalls, readers disengage.

The Anatomy of a Midbook Slump

Midpoint slumps often sneak in because the early chapters do their job: they introduce compelling characters, establish the world, and kick off the primary conflict.

After the excitement of beginnings and before the satisfaction of endings lies a stretch where many writers—even seasoned ones—lose their way. Here’s why:

• The honeymoon phase ends. In the opening chapters, everything is new. Readers delight in discovering your world and meeting your characters. But by the middle, that novelty has worn off. What once felt fresh—voice, banter, worldbuilding—can now feel repetitive.

• The character is reactive, not active. They’re responding to events rather than pursuing goals.

• Stakes flatten. If conflict doesn’t escalate, tension deflates. If your midpoint feels like a longer version of what came before, rather than a true turning point, you’re likely losing momentum (and readers).

• Scenes go static. Characters talk, reflect, wait—but don’t change their circumstances.

• Emotional arcs plateau. The character isn’t evolving in a meaningful way.

• Repetition creeps in. The same tools (like internal dialogue or other routines) are used too often, losing impact.

The mid-point must escalate, complicate, or surprise—not simply coast on what came before.

Diagnosing Your Midbook Problems

Here are five questions to diagnose a mid-book slump. Use them to figure out where the issues are, and restore momentum.

1. What’s changed at the midpoint?

The middle of your story should mark a pivot. For each scene, ask What changes here? Has the protagonist learned something that reframes their goal? Has the situation escalated or reversed?

2. What’s the new problem?

A great story is a series of shifting problems. If the goal remains the same, has the cost of reaching it gone up? What unexpected consequences are unfolding?

3. How is the character evolving—and does the story reflect that?

Internal change should lead to external consequences. Are your characters actively pursuing goals? Are they making new choices based on what they’ve learned? Or are they reacting, waiting, or wandering—or even wondering?

*4. The Repetition Detector: Highlight every moment your character rethinks the same worry or restates the same fear. If those beats don’t add something new, they’re not pulling their weight.

**5. The “So What?” Inquiry: For each plot development, ask Why should the reader care? What are they taking away from it that moves the story forward? If that answer feels fuzzy or unconvincing, you’ve got a clarity or stakes problem.

*This is a big one. Nothing makes me put a book down faster than the constant reiteration of some point, fear, worry or need restated OVER AND OVER AND OVER. The reader remembers. Stop beating them over the head with it.

**Again, this is not the time to “rationalize”… “But the reader will want to know Sally is changing the color of her bedroom to a soothing blue. It’ll be super fun to pick out all new furnishings while we’re at it, so the reader has something to do while they wait for the plot to pick up again.”

A strong voice will draw readers in. But what keeps them turning pages is momentum. Characters with desire. Conflicts that escalate. Stakes that rise. Beautiful writing is the wrapping—but the story inside still has to deliver.

Actionable Strategies & Suggestions to Fix the Middle

Once you’ve identified the weak points, here’s how to bring your middle back to life:

1. Create a Midpoint Revolution: The 50% mark should be a story-altering moment. An effective midpoint often includes:

• A major revelation or discovery

• A reversal of fortune (for better or worse)

• An emotional or ethical turning point

• A moment of deepened commitment or raised stakes

In the manuscript I read, imagine if instead of waiting passively, the protagonist stumbled across information that was earth-shattered or that threatened to take everything they’d gained. That kind of shift forces immediate, urgent action—no more waiting.

🌟 Tip: Don’t just throw in random events. They have to make sense, and mean something in the big picture.

2. Activate Subplots Strategically: Consider using subplots to complicate and deepen the main narrative:

• Introduce obstacles via secondary characters

• Weave emotional tension into personal relationships

• Force tough choices between subplot and main goal

The best subplots intensify the story. They should raise new questions and threaten the protagonist’s plans—not just provide filler.

3. Compress and Intensify: If your middle drags, the solution may not be to add—it might be to subtract.

• Combine redundant scenes into one sharper, more consequential moment

• Eliminate unnecessary “transit” scenes that only exist to get characters from A to B

• Trim “reaction” scenes unless they deliver fresh information or conflict

Look at every chapter and ask: Could this happen sooner? Could this be tighter?

🌟 Tip: Don’t spend 10 pages having a nightmare, explaining the details of the nightmare, then recovering from the nightmare (“I took multiple deep breaths telling myself over and over it was just a dream…”) – it’s an absolute waste of real estate.

Nothing is gained by drawing anything out. The reader knows what nightmares are. Focus on what matters to the story and let the reader infer/imagine the rest.

4. Escalate Through Complications, Not Just Obstacles: Obstacles are things in your character’s way. Complications change what they want, what they fear, or what they’re willing to do.

• Introduce dilemmas with no easy answers

• Create conflicting goals that test character values

• Let new information force your character into riskier territory

These moments deepen character and plot.

5. Add Depth, Not Just Newness: Don’t throw in a brand-new plotline at the midpoint unless it’s organic. Instead, evolve what’s already there:

• Reveal hidden motivations or secrets

• Let characters surprise each other—and themselves

• Show consequences from Act I spiraling outward

Think of the midpoint not as a new beginning, but as a point of no return.

Let’s go back to the manuscript I mentioned earlier.

The Problem:
At the midpoint, the plot stalled. The main character was waiting—literally. To pass the time until “the big event” was to occur, they toured various locations, discussed assorted topics, and did fun things. Meanwhile, the story hovered in place. The characters’ activities were plot-adjacent at best.

The Potential Fix:
To get things moving, maybe there’s a revelation: the protagonist learns they’ve been pursuing the wrong goal or things are no longer what they seem. Whatever it is, forces a high-stakes decision based on incomplete information, thus triggering a confrontation, and a concern over who to trust. The outcome of this issue could affect the much anticipated “big event”. The middle now becomes a gauntlet instead of a holding pattern.

Voice matters. Character matters. Excellent writing matters—but none of it matters if the story fails to carry it. It’s why readers can love a book initially, and abandon it halfway through.

So, the next time you hit that wall—whether you're drafting or revising—don’t assume the answer is “more stuff” or “better dialogue.” Sometimes, it’s about sharpening structure, and deepening stakes, to keep the story in motion and the reader on the hook.

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I’ve come around to it being more misunderstood than outright bad.

In many ways, the missing ingredient is when to show and when to tell. Without those ideas, it sounds like we need to “show” everything. But that’s simply not true and leads to bloated, boring stories.

Let’s explore three examples, starting simple then getting more complex:

⛔ “I was nervous.”

✅ “I clicked the pen in my pocket, click click click, and tried to stop. I kept clicking.”

The trick is how “show, don't tell” forces storytellers to think cinematically and behaviorally. You have to ask, how do nerves actually manifest in the body? How do I put those actions on the page? Clicking the pen despite actively trying to stop shows the Reader everything they need to know about the character’s nerves.

But why is it more effective?

Because you’ve created emotional subtext — the underlying feeling behind your character’s actions.

This means the Reader gets to feel clever. They get to play psychologist and decipher what’s going on in your character’s brain and heart based on their external actions. The Reader — instead of being explicitly told — gets to make that interpretation. People love that!

Rule 1: Show to create emotional subtext.

Time for a more complex example…

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From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, hurried in. He was pale, and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.

“Is everything all right?” he asked immediately.

“The grass looks fine, if that’s what you mean.”

“What grass?” he inquired blankly. “Oh, the grass in the yard.” He looked out the window at it, but, judging from his expression, I don’t believe he saw a thing.

“Looks very good,” he remarked vaguely. “One of the papers said they thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was the Journal. Have you got everything you need in the shape of — of tea?”

I took him into the pantry, where he looked a little reproachfully at the Finn. Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the delicatessen shop.

“Will they do?” I asked.

“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he added hollowly, “… old sport.”

The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist, through which occasional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes through a copy of Clay’s Economics, staring at the Finnish tread that shook the kitchen floor, and peering toward the bleared windows from time to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were taking place outside. Finally he got up and informed me, in an uncertain voice, that he was going home.

This passage is NOT all showing. Take a look at what Fitzgerald ‘tells’ you.

• Gatsby sent a “greenhouse” of flowers before he arrived.

There’s no description of the flowers. You have no idea what they look like. You have no idea what species they are. You have no idea how the narrator arranged them or how much Gatsby paid for them. You know very little about them, and that’s the point.

The flowers serve as efficient characterization through telling. They establish that Gatsby is anxiously preparing for the evening, but Fitzgerald doesn’t waste time describing the flowers in detail because that’s not where the emotional center of the scene lies.

You do NOT have to show everything. Every story choice is a trade off. I think about it like this…

Showing takes up more mind space for the audience than telling. When everything is emphasized, nothing stands out. By compressing, you give yourself room to focus where your story needs it most.

Fitzgerald does just that. He jumps straight from the flower delivery to:

• Gatsby distracted in simple conversation (“What grass?”).

• Gatsby’s disheveled appearance (pale with dark signs of sleepiness beneath his eyes).

• Gatsby’s vacant eyes and uncertain voice.

Fitzgerald uses telling to quickly establish context and give us a hint at the character’s inner state, which then allows him to devote more narrative space to showing Gatsby’s actual nervous behavior when he arrives.

Show and tell work together to build voice. It’s not just what you describe, but how much space you give it and why.

Rule 2: Tell to compress.

Third and last example:

From Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

A week passed, but there was still no sign of Tariq. Then another week came and went. To fill the time, Laila fixed the screen door that Babi still hadn't got around to. She took down Babi's books, dusted and alphabetized them. She went to Chicken Street with Hasina, Giti, and Giti's mother, Nila, who was a seamstress and sometime sewing partner of Mammy's. In that week, Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

Another week passed.

Laila found herself caught in a net of terrible thoughts.

He would never come back. His parents had moved away for good; the trip to Ghazni had been a ruse. An adult scheme to spare the two of them an upsetting farewell.

A land mine had gotten to him again. The way it did in 1981, when he was five, the last time his parents took him south to Ghazni. That was shortly after Laila's third birthday. He'd been lucky that time, losing only a leg; lucky that he'd survived at all.

Her head rang and rang with these thoughts.

There’s a phrase I love — “The camera reveals the cameraman.”

What your narrator shows, tells, or skips entirely reveals who they are.

A narrator who describes every flower in a garden sees the world very differently than one who only notices the locked gate.

Your choices as the storyteller hinge upon:

• Your purpose with this specific aspect of the story.

• Your point-of-view character — be it yourself or someone else.

The Hosseini passage works because we see Laila’s specific fears (land mine, his parents’ scheme) rather than generic worry. If you or I were dropped in that same situation, we’d have different worries.

Your decisions around what to show and what to tell in your stories come back to the perspective your story is told from.

Rule 3: Your choices reveal your narrator.

This leads me to a set of guidelines on when to “show” and when to “tell.”

After years of wrestling with these rules, I’ve come to believe:

1. Show to create emotional subtext. This is about reader engagement. When you show a character’s external behavior (pen clicking) rather than stating their internal state (anxious), readers get to interpret and feel smart. This creates a more active reading experience.

2. Tell to compress. This is about efficiency and pacing. Use telling to handle necessary but mundane information quickly so you don’t bore readers with extended scenes of flower delivery (and the like).

3. Your choices reveal your narrator. This is about perspective and voice. What your narrator chooses to notice, describe in detail, or completely ignore reveals their personality and shapes the story’s tone.

I stopped hating the “show, don’t tell advice” when I stopped looking at it as a hard and fast rule, and instead as a tool. You need to both show and tell.

The skill is knowing which tool fits the moment.

Cheers,

Nathan

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PPS.

I went on a newsletter hiatus. If you forgot who the heck I am, I write about storytelling with the goal of helping you and I become better storytellers.

Here’s my favorite piece from this year so far.

And here’s more about the upcoming fantasy novel.

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I’ve found the biggest unlock has been to write the end of my story first. The end of your story has a mass to it. An element of gravity. It’s like a magnet pulling your story forward.

Until recently, I foolishly thought I was the only person to build stories like this. A few weeks ago, I came across a 2010 five-part lecture on story structure from author Dan Wells, which focuses on what he calls the 7-Point Story Structure. The structure itself isn’t exactly groundbreaking but how he uses it to build a story from the ground up is.

Let’s get into it.

How to use the 7-Point Story Structure to Create Your Story’s Foundation

Most story structures start with the beginning. Your “hook,” your characters, your setting, your normal world, whatever else you may need.

But that’s not how we solve problems.

Think about the best way to learn how to do something. Say you want to start a coffee shop. Where do you start? For me, I’d envision the final product then reverse engineer the steps to get there. I need to figure out where to source beans, where to rent a space, how much upfront investment I need to put down, what software to use for checkout, so on and so forth.

Yet, when telling a story, so many of us try to start at the beginning. A pilgrim on a journey with no map. We take step one, then blindly follow that path to its conclusion without a thought to whether it’s taking us to the right destination. There’s something romantic about this idea but, for me, I wander. My story wanders. Maybe you’re better at staying on track than I am. If not, give this method a try.

When using the 7-point story structure, Wells builds stories in reverse.

Step 1: Decide on your Resolution.

Your story has two resolutions — Character Resolution and Plot Resolution.

• Character Resolution = Where the protagonist ends emotionally. What outlook now guides their choices? Example: Finding out Darth Vader is your father.

• Plot Resolution = The actual events that close the central conflict. Example: Blowing up the Death Star.

You lock in the protagonist’s final external victory — or failure — AND their internal transformation, so every earlier beat aims at that target instead of wandering. Personally, I decide on my Character Resolution first and let that dictate how the character acts, which in turn shapes the plot. This kind of thinking also helps you create an “active” protagonist.

Step 2: Create a Hook to juxtapose with the Resolution.

Wells says, “A good rule of thumb is to start with the opposite state.”

For example, if the Resolution shows courage, the Hook might show cowardice or avoidance. Just with those two scenes nailed down, you have a strong start to both your character arcs and plot.

Think of this story structure as a narrative chiasmus: A-B-C-C-B-A. The beginning and end mirror each other while the middle serves as the story’s hinge point. The mirrored shape helps readers feel the story’s symmetry even when they can’t name it or explicitly call it out. Your opening image anchors one end of an emotional spectrum while the closing image answers or inverts it.

Here’s a great essay on Tolkien’s use of this technique with Frodo.

Step 3: Split the story in half with your Midpoint.

The story pivots from reaction → action as your protagonist decides to take control.

I missed this point while drafting my novel and couldn’t figure out why the protagonist felt so… dull. My developmental editor pointed out a simple idea: “he never makes any decisions.” He reacted to events, yes, but he never caused any events. This has led me to think of story structure first in terms of character arc, then figure out the actual events from there.

A heuristic I find helpful:

Scenes leading up to the Midpoint challenge the protagonist. Scenes that follow the Midpoint show the protagonist challenging the conflict.

Sticking to Lord of the Rings, the Midpoint of the first book comes in Rivendell. Until that point, Frodo simply does what Gandalf and Aragorn ask of him. But he’s not invited on the quest. Instead, he volunteers himself. It’s his first true moment of agency.

Step 4: Write the Plot Turn 1.

This beat links Hook to Pinch Point 1. A catalytic event forces the protagonist out of the ordinary world and toward the central conflict. They gain a goal, a new environment, or information that removes the option of retreat. It is the “point of no return.”

Think of Star Wars. Stormtroopers murder Luke’s aunt and uncle, removing every tie to the farm he’s known since childhood. Luke leaves Tatooine with Obi-Wan.

Step 5: Write the Plot Turn 2.

This beat links Midpoint to Pinch Point 2. Here the hero acquires the missing tool, truth, or resolve that makes victory possible. Often it is a revelation that reframes earlier failures. In my opinion, the most compelling of these turns focus on the protagonist’s internal state. What about themselves has kept them from succeeding? How can they overcome that? And if they do, what does that enable them to do?

If we stick to the Star Wars example, Luke finally learns to trust the Force. The key being he learns to trust, which then enables the external action of actually using the power.

Step 6: Apply pressure with the Pinch 1.

This beat links Plot Turn 1 to the Midpoint. I like to think of this moment as a time to remind your audience both of what’s at stake as well as your protagonist’s weaknesses. Nobody wants to hear a story about someone who’s constantly thriving. Make your protagonist confront something they’re scared of, something that’ll expose where they struggle.

A fun example comes from Pixar’s second best movie ever, Finding Nemo. When Marlin and Dory set off on their quest, they run into a terrifying anglerfish followed by a trio of sharks.

You may ask why I think this is so effective? Because Marlin is a coward. Ever since a barracuda ate his wife and kids — yeah, Disney is hella dark — he’s avoided the predators of the sea. The scriptwriters thus force him to come face to face with a few of the ocean’s most dangerous creatures to remind the audience how much of a coward Marlin is, thus setting him up for massive growth later in the story.

Step 7: Apply pressure with the Pinch 2.

This beat links Plot Turn 2 to the Resolution. I like to think of this moment as similar to the protagonist’s “Dark Night of the Soul.” They get pushed to the brink. They hit their lowest point, and are faced with a decision. They can either change by accepting the learning from Plot Turn 2 or stay the same. That choice leads to the Resolution, and to either victory or defeat.

For examples, think of Katniss losing Rue, Vader cutting off Luke’s arm, or Gandalf seemingly falling to the Balrog. The lower you push your characters, the higher they must climb, and the more your audience will cheer them on.

That’s the order in which Wells outlines, but here’s what the actual structure looks like once you stitch it together:

Wells uses the first three points — Resolution, Hook, Midpoint — as his ‘three-legged stool.’ A stool with two legs topples over, while one with three legs stands steady. You know how it ends, how it begins, and how the protagonist changes. From there, you test different connective tissue to see what rings truest to you, and how you can most effectively pull out the emotional notes you want to hit.

Of course, I think it’s worth sharing that there’s no specific story structure you have to use. Rather, figure out what works best for you through a process of iteration. Try the 7-point structure, then try Hero’s Journey, then ask yourself what you enjoyed and disliked from each. Combine the parts you like. Throw away what doesn’t work. Do the same for Three Act, Story Circle, and all the rest. Each structure is a tool in your toolbox. Just another lens to view the same concepts.

The end of your story drives the beginning and middle, not the other way around. Very curious what you think of this approach.

—Nathan

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I should celebrate. Instead, I flip back to page one and start reading. I’m mildly horrified. Mistake here, mistake there, mistakes everywhere. I take a breath and shut my laptop.

The next day I start compiling those mistakes into a big ‘NEED TO FIX’ list.

I’ll spare you the entire list. But I pulled out seven themes of writing mistakes that are holding back that story. Hopefully, they save you the pain and hundreds of hours that come from making similar mistakes.

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7 Writing Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

Mistake 1: Winging structure

Humans gravitate to structure. Subconsciously, we need it.

Yet I wrote this draft without a coherent structure. A big goal of the next draft is to focus on following the 4-Act Structure pretty tightly.

Here are some other structures to keep in mind — helpful for both fiction and non-fiction writing:

• Promise, Progress, Payoff

• The Eight Shapes of Stories

• The Underlying Power of the Hero’s Journey

I also like the idea of the beginning and ending as mirrors of each other. I’ll dedicate a future post to this technique, which is called ‘chiastic structure.’

Mistake 2: Forgetting open loops

Your writing asks questions. Those questions form “Loops” in the mind of your reader. Implicitly, you’re promising to answer those questions later in the story.

• Here, you know there are 7 mistakes. But you won’t know the 7th until you get down to the bottom. That’s a loop. This works with short-form non-fiction writing (like this newsletter!) or fiction.

Make sure to always have one open. But don’t forget to close them, either. One trick I like:

Keep a journal next to you and write down whenever you open a new loop. Then, just make sure you close them before the end of your story or edit them out later on.

Mistake 3: Losing sight of rhythm

The best stories have a flow to them. They feel unrehearsed, poetic. But that’s often because the writer took time to look at every sentence, every paragraph, and how they weave together.

I don’t have much more to say, because this idea from Gary Provost says it perfectly:

Mistake 4: Worrying about grammar

“The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.” — Stephen King

I spent too much time making sure my sentences had perfect grammar. Then, on re-read, I realized I should just delete entire chunks of the story. It’s better that way, but I can’t help but think about the time lost.

Lesson: Don’t worry too much about grammar until your final few drafts of something.

Mistake 5: Not capturing enough ideas

The truth (that I often don’t like) is that the majority of my ideas for a story, essay, tweet, and really anything else are bad.

Ed Sheeran says, “Your mind is like a dirty tap.” What he means is the first flow of your ideas comes out dirty. Then, after a while, the ideas become cleaner. Finally, after longer, they become like the water gurgling down streams in Alaska. Crisp and clear.

Julian Shapiro calls this the ‘Creativity Faucet.’ One of my favorite essays.

Mistake 6: Giving context before the hook

Have you heard someone say, “The first 50 pages were slow, but then the book got a lot better”? I’ve said it, and I bet you have too.

Here’s the thing. You and I have Attention Spans but we also have Consideration Spans.

So, as writers and storytellers, what do we do about this? You maximize impact of the Consideration Span. I think this varies by medium. If you’re on Twitter, it’s insanely short. You get a line, maybe two, to hook me. But if you’re writing a book, you get a few chapters. And most mediums fall somewhere in-between.

Cut the fluff. And if the fluff’s needed, move it to later in the story. Ask yourself, “What’s the minimum amount of context my audience needs to connect with this story?”

Mistake 7: Not separating writing and editing

You cannot be the Critic and the Creator at the same time.

When I’m writing well, there’s almost no analytical thinking going on. Just vibes. Pure flow. Any distraction, and I lose that flow as quickly as it came.

Here’s what’s working for me:

• No editing a first draft

• Drinking buckets of coffee (this is key)

• Writing and Editing on different mediums

• Blocking socials on both my phone and laptop

• Not using the backspace button until a draft is written

I’m reminded of this idea from Terry Pratchett, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

As always, thanks for reading. I’d love to hear what stood out to you or any ideas you’d add from your own experience.

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—Nathan

You owe your Reader.

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked onto a dim stage and said, “This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years.”

For the next three minutes, Jobs reflected on the history of Apple, the evolution of phones, and the limitations of current smartphones. He dropped hint after hint about a “revolutionary product.” The audience leaned forward, waiting for the reveal.

Meanwhile, the Hunger Games begins with, “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”

From a technical perspective, these openings do drastically different things. Jobs uses costly signaling to tell you — hey, I’ve invested so much time into this, it must be valuable!

While Suzanne Collins gives you a small mystery — who, or what, typically warms that side of the bed?

But to focus on the surface-level mechanics misses the crucial point. There’s a deeper narrative principle at work, what I call Narrative Debt, and both Jobs and Collins are masters.

In previous newsletters, we’ve talked about promises, curiosity gaps, and open loops as storytelling tools. They’re useful, yes, but I think they’re incomplete.

Let’s step back for a moment. What’s really happening in a story?

Every story is a subtle negotiation between you — the storyteller — and your Reader. You raise questions and make promises. Then, in return, your Reader invests their attention, trust, and, most importantly, time.

But here’s the catch. Those promises aren't free. Each one creates an obligation, an invisible expectation in your Reader that you’ll deliver a satisfying payoff.

This obligation is what I call Narrative Debt.

And it leads directly to the first principle of managing Narrative Debt: Always Be Owing.

Principle 1: Always be Owing

When I graduated with student loans, the loan provider sent emails every month. But now that I paid it off, I get zero emails.

Readers behave similarly. If you owe them nothing, they have very little reason to stick around.

In story, you always want to owe the Reader.

• Every desire creates a debt. Will they get it?

• Every investment creates a debt. Will it pay off?

• Every fear creates a debt. Will they overcome it?

Always. Be. Owing.

Both Jobs and Collins knew this. Notice how they deliberately withhold information to create Narrative Debt:

• Hunger Games: “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”

  • Small debt → Who usually keeps the bed warm?

• Jobs: “This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years.”

  • Big debt → What's he been secretly working on?

Readers won't wait forever for you to pay off your debt. Narrative Debt decays over time, and the size of the debt dictates how long they'll stay patient.

Principle 2: Debt Sizing & Time Decay

Once you've created Narrative Debt, your job is to delay paying it off as long as possible without losing your audience.

Which begs a crucial question:

• How do you know when to pay it off?

Let’s extend our two examples.

Hunger Games

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim’s face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.

This functions as cascading debt.

• Cold bed? (Paid in 2 sentences: Prim left)

• Why'd she leave? (Paid in 3 sentences: bad dreams)

• Bad dreams about what? (Paid immediately: the reaping)

• What's the reaping? (This one... she makes you wait)

• What kind of world beat her mother down? (Again, she makes you wait.)

Small debts, repaid quickly, that build to the larger, delayed debts that drive the main part of the story.

Jobs’ 2007 iPhone Product Launch

This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. You’re very fortunate if you get to work on one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these to the world. In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry.

Jobs takes on a large debt upfront, promising “a revolutionary product that changes everything.” From there, he methodically unveils the features, paying off the debt throughout the rest of his 80-minute talk.

Same narrative principle. Completely different execution.

Both Jobs and Collins understand debt sizing and time decay.

• Small debt: Pay quickly or interest fades.

• Big debt: Give gradual, carefully timed payoffs.

• No debts: No reason to keep reading.

Time decay simply means readers lose interest if debt remains unpaid too long.

This is why Collins has three sentences to answer “why is the bed cold?” but makes you wait chapters to understand a term as ominous as “the reaping.”

Your brain instinctively categorizes smaller debts as needing immediate payoff while it has more patience for bigger debts to be paid over a longer period. When Collins finally reveals The Hunger Games, the payoff lands with maximum impact. Then, of course, she opens her biggest debt yet — will Katniss survive the Games?

Jobs’ “two and a half years” signals massive importance in his first line. After such a promise, he doesn’t need to take on much more debt to keep you around for the next hour, so he shifts more quickly toward payoff.

The “debt arc” might look like this for each story.

I don’t think either method is necessarily superior to the other. Instead, I want to push you to consider what your “debt arc” might look like. Do you take on a huge debt upfront like Jobs? Or do you cascade upwards like Collins?

Principle 3: Narrative Debt Portfolio Management

I’ve noticed great stories tend to focus better than others. They don’t take debt out from hundreds of accounts. Instead, they have a few major credit lines that they constantly draw from.

For example, I’d rather owe $100 for one debt than $1 for 100 debts.

Below is the outline JK Rowling used to plan the fifth Harry Potter. Notice how it only tracks six plot threads (the columns starting with ‘Prophecy’ and to the right). For a story of that size, it’s remarkably focused:

Think of those six columns as lines of credit. Take the Hagrid & Grawp column. It outlines one long subplot thread, which Rowling stretches into months of suspense by creating smaller debts along the way:

• Where's Hagrid? (Chapter 11)

• Why does he look beaten up? (Chapter 15)

• What's he hiding in the forest? (Chapter 20)

• Who's Grawp? (Chapter 30)

One thread. Four months of debts.

I think this points to a kind of ‘Narrative Debt Portfolio Management’ — finding the balance between no debt and too much debt.

This varies by the length of your story and, like most story principles, you’ll find examples that break it. However, this kind of focus helps avoid the dreaded narrative sprawl that creeps into so many stories.

Think about the different levels of Narrative Debt:

The Major Question is your mortgage. It drives everything. Will Harry defeat Voldemort? Will Katniss survive the Hunger Games? Will Jobs’ product actually ‘revolutionize everything?’ This debt stays open until your final Act and its payoff defines the entire story.

The Subplot Threads are your car loans. They run for multiple scenes, generating smaller debts along the way. They might be romances, secrets, betrayals, or really any other technique you use to create debt.

Scene-level Questions are your coffee purchases. Tiny debts that open and close within the same scene. I like to think of them as the tiny mysteries that keep your Reader moving from sentence to sentence. Who’s at the door? Why did her expression change? What’s that scraping sound?

Look back on the first paragraphs from the Hunger Games for a great example of this.

Mentally run through your debts. Are they varied in size? Is one always open? Do you pay them off at the right time?

The moment you're debt free is the moment your Reader is free to go.

So ask yourself:

• What am I borrowing?

• How will I pay it back?

• How long can I keep them waiting?

Always be owing.

Thank you for reading.

-Nathan

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PS. If you want to practice, take a story, any story, and mark it up. Circle where it takes on debt, and pay attention to when and how it pays that debt off.

“You need to read this,” the text said. I popped open the essay and found myself nodding along. Here was an idea on storytelling I’d never heard before, explained beautifully.

I reached out to the writer, Eric Falden, and he agreed to let me share it with you. I’m a reader of his newsletter, and it’s consistently excellent. You can check out Eric’s newsletter here.

Now, I’ll get out of the way and let Eric take over:

Some stories pack a punch with just a few lines. A heartbeat, a choice, a moment of poignant reflection that hits you in the gut.

Other stories feel like you’re hearing it second-hand: same events, same people, but the impact just isn’t there.

The difference? Narrative distance.

It’s one of the most important considerations for storytelling in any genre, through any medium—but so many storytellers don’t even know what it is.

I’ve even watched very established authors twist themselves into knots trying to describe it, but fail, because they don’t know this single term.

Once you understand it, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

It’s like a secret weapon.

What’s Narrative Distance?

Narrative distance is the perceived separation between the reader and the unfolding story.

That distance is controlled by the narrator, whoever they are.

A close narrative distance is one where the audience sees what the characters see, senses what they sense, understands their emotions, and can read their thoughts. There tends to be vibrant description and a clear sense of place and time.

A far narrative distance is the opposite: this story is from a bird’s eye view, and the reader might know things the characters do not. There will be more summary, and more “telling” rather than “showing.”

On the furthest possible extremes, a close narrative distance describes every detail, every thought, every emotion, every action, and is probably rooted to a particular in-story narrator. The furthest possible narrative distance is an encyclopedia summary.

As someone who writes epic fantasy in 15-minute short stories, I live and die by narrative distance. If I go too close, the story balloons to novels the size of cinderblocks. If I zoom out too far, it reads like Wikipedia…

How do you use it, then?

Close narrative distance is good for action scenes, emotional beats, and moments of big decisions.

But most stories will need moments of “far” distance, simply because time passing in reality is different than what a story’s pacing needs.

Take this (admittedly generic) example:

The next few weeks were tough for Johnny. He laid awake every night thinking about the breakup. But his fortunes began to turn one afternoon when he passed through the door of Neptune’s Diner. He could hear bacon sizzling and smell the fresh coffee. Darlene was behind the register, jabbering with another regular. Johnny plopped his sorry self onto an empty stool. Then, for the first time, he saw her face. In the space of a heartbeat, he already knew he would never forget her.

This passage starts at a very far distance, detached from a specific time and place, and tells the audience only a small amount of information. The distance helps speed things along and sets expectations for the coming scene in the diner (“his fortunes began to turn…”).

But then the distance closes in: we get sensory details, a specific moment. It continues to zoom in until we’re even getting Johnny’s interior movements. The distance closes until the entire narration is linked to his subjective experience.

Far distance is helpful for summary; close distance is helpful for emotional rootedness.

Distance =/= Voice

“Wait,” I hear you saying, “isn’t this just point-of-view? Isn’t this just narrative voice?”

Not quite. But narrative voice and narrative distance are intrinsically linked.

Every story is told from some perspective. You might have a first-person or third-person narrator, and that narrator might have a more limited or more omniscient perspective.

This—plus tense—is the narrative voice.

Narrative voice will, in some way, limit narrative distance.

• First-person narration is generally closer than third-person

• Present-tense is generally closer than past-tense

• A limited voice is generally closer than semi-omniscient or omniscient

There are all sorts of variations and overlaps in between, of course. But even a simple comparison of two of these variables can show how limited or expansive narrative distance can be.

That distance depends on the point-of-view quite a lot.

That’s why it’s important to understand the distance you want in a given story before you settle on a narrator.

Why Go Close?

Stories with a close narrative distance usually rely on a single point of view narrator. We’re locked into one person’s perspective the entire time.

The distance gets even closer if the narrator is also the protagonist (like Katniss in The Hunger Games or Uhtred in The Saxon Tales); but even if the narrator is an observer to the story (like Watson to Sherlock Holmes or Nick Carraway to Gatsby), the narrative distance is still locked in pretty close.

Many stories are third person but still adopt a single “POV character,” whose mind functions as the surrogate camera for the reader.

Why do this?

Emotional investment, that’s why.

A close narrative distance makes it easy for the readers to understand and empathize with that POV character, whoever they are.

Take The Hunger Games as an example again.

The story is told exclusively in first person present, the voice with the closest distance. This means that Katniss, the narrator, is much more likely to resonate with the audience because we understand her fully.

She’s more “real” to the reader than the other characters, whose thoughts we never see.

The third-person-limited POV is really common for this same reason: by experiencing the story through one character's eyes, we instinctively relate to that character and get to learn all about them.

A close narrative distance can also help with immersion, since we’re not passive observers of the world. Instead, we’re walking through it with a character.

So Why Go Far, Then?

If close distance is so great, why use a far distance?

Because a close distance comes with serious tradeoffs. A far distance gives you tools that a close, claustrophobic distance can’t.

• Narration Variety: If you’re going to lock the reader in one character’s head, you better hope they like that character. For instance, if you don’t like Katniss, you really really won’t enjoy The Hunger Games.

• Dramatic Irony: Do you want the readers to know about the bomb under the table before the hero does? You can’t do that if you’re locked too close.

• Concision: A close narrative distance, with more detail per moment, takes a hell of a lot longer. Zooming out = speeding up.

• Pacing: More distance allows more summary, so you can move to the next important thing. If a story is in present-tense, for instance, things can only happen “right now.”

That’s only four tools, but many of them are foundational to the structures of the story you want to tell.

To put it another way: some stories simply need a farther narrative distance.

You’re Not Locked In Unless You Want to Be

The other thing to remember about narrative distance is that you don’t need to choose one distance and then stay at that distance the entire story.

Remember Johnny in the diner? That anecdote started far and then zoomed in. The ability to oscillate between near and far is vital for stories set in limited, omniscient, or semi-omniscient perspectives.

The sort of sliding distance is something that most writers will do intuitively anyway, but thinking about it deliberately gives you another tool in your toolbox.

On the other hand, you can be locked in if you want. To look into my forte of epic fantasy: Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones all use a fixed narrative distance.

It’s popular for a reason: emotional investment, depth of world, clarity of character.

But let’s be real: those stories are LONG. That fixed, close distance makes it hard to skip, condense, or jump. There’s no flexibility.

Experiment with narrative distance. Learn how to zoom in and out. Find the best distance for your story.

Then, choose wisely.

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Thanks again to Eric for letting me share this essay with you.

If you're interested in more perspectives on craft, our next story workshop is tomorrow (June 10th). We'll be talking with Nat Eliason who received a $275k advance from Penguin for his debut nonfiction and just released his debut sci-fi novel - covering his journey from nonfiction to fiction. The following sessions are June 20th and early July.

Membership ($10/month or less annually) includes all workshops, recordings, and essays I share exclusively with members. Thank you for your support.

I definitely didn’t write any stories.

Then I decided to write my first book, and quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. I went in search of books on writing and story craft only to find that these are far more common than the stories they proclaim to teach you how to write (much like this newsletter, fwiw).

I tried dozens – no, hundreds – of these. Most of them, if I’m being honest, were nothing more than glorified procrastination.

But a select few I open so often that the spines are in danger of falling apart. I feel great recommending these, and beneath each recommendation I’ll include a note on what you’ll learn from that specific resource to give you an idea of whether to invest your hard-earned time and money.

Let’s start with the top echelon of craft books.

Quick note: This pile of resources comes not from a selection offered by the entire world, but only a curation of what I’ve read and listened to. I won’t recommend anything I haven’t tried myself.

Books

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain – George Saunders

It’s not so much the short stories but Saunders’ analysis of them that may make you fall in love with storytelling. His whimsy but insightful style feels like your grandpa just so happens to be the world’s leading expert on story.

Steering the Craft – Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin is the most influential writer you may have never heard of. Much of modern speculative fiction owes her a great debt, and this book focuses solely on story craft, not the woo woo stuff you get in many of the writing-memoir style books. It’s short, full of exercises, and focuses on actual techniques.

You’ll enjoy it if you want to go deep on things like information density, sentence structure, and voice.

The Elements of Style – EB White and Wiliam Strunk Jr.

This little book is why half my sentences get shorter every time I edit. It's basically your strict but loving writing coach in paperback form. Strunk and White will beat the fluff out of your writing until only the good stuff remains.

This is for you if you need the barebones fundamentals. It sits on my desk.

Into the Woods – John Yorke

Ever wonder why every story feels familiar? Yorke breaks down the five-act structure that he claims hides in everything from Shakespeare to Pixar. He's got this way of making you go “ohhhh, so THAT'S why that worked” about your favorite stories.

This is for you if you want to go deep on story structure.

This Craft of Verse – Jorge Luis Borges

A short book made up of a series of lectures Borges gave at Cambridge in the 60s. He never wrote a full novel, but became known as one of the great storytellers of the 20th century because of his poems and novellas.

Nobody could do more with fewer words, and this book will help you do the same.

Meander, Spiral, Explode – Jane Alison

A departure from the tyranny of the 3 Act Structure. Alison explores narrative patterns found in nature (think waves, spirals, radials, networks) and shows how to use them in your writing.

This is for you if you’d like to venture outside of the traditional story structures.

Storyworthy – Matthew Dicks

A fun, quick read that leaves you brimming with ideas on how to tell better personal stories. I recommend this book all the time.

If you want to tell better personal stories — at dinners, at work, with friends, on the stage — this is where I recommend starting. A top quality book.

Bird by Bird – Anne LaMott

Part writing craft, part memoir, this is the most woo woo book on the list. LaMott has a special way of talking about writing and story that makes me want to put pen to paper which, honestly, is more valuable than any tactical advice.

This book is for you if you need inspiration to overcome the resistance you feel to actually doing the work.

The Science of Storytelling – Will Storr

There's actual science behind why we can't put down a good story. Storr will teach you how to hack your reader's brain (in the best way possible). The engineering side of me loved this book.

This is for you if you believe the storyteller is both an artist and a scientist, and you want to explore the science.

Several Short Sentences About Writing – Verlyn Klinkenborg

Forget everything you learned in school about topic sentences and five paragraph essays. Each page of this book will make you rethink how sentences actually work.

This is for you if you're ready to unlearn your bad habits.

Conflict & Suspense – James Scott Bell

A tactical approach to creating conflict and suspense in your stories. What I liked most is how Bell applied the ideas at all levels of story — from the overarching structure all the way down to the sentence.

This is for you if you want to add extra umph to your story’s conflict.

Articles + Essays

The Art of Fiction No. 45, John Steinbeck

This is a collection of letters Steinbeck wrote to himself or colleagues while writing East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and his other novels. They’re informative, entertaining, and above all else, inspiring.

One of the letters includes his ‘6 ideas for better writing.’

The secret architecture of great essays, Michael Dean

Michael by trade is an architect, and his point of view on writing aligns very strongly with mine. I believe there is a secret architecture of great stories, and Michael convincingly makes this argument for great essays.

The Bibliography of a Writing Life, Dylan O’Sullivan

Dylan’s collection of literature is the reason I read This Craft of Verse as well as The Art of Fiction No. 45. He’s done an incredible job curating a wide swath of literature across genres and time periods.

Videos + Podcasts

2025 Creative Writing Lectures, Brandon Sanderson

One of the best-selling fiction authors in the world has a full lecture series on YouTube, for free, that you can watch. All about creative writing and storytelling.

It is incredible.

How I Write, David Perell

A podcast where David interviews writers on their process. He’s obsessed with writing, and it comes across in the quality of the questions, the depth of the answers, and the eagerness of the guests. My favorite of late is this interview with Eric Roth, who wrote the script for Forrest Gump, the Dune movies, and more.

How to Journal (Like a Philosopher)

Journaling is the closest thing I’ve found to time travel. In this video, Jared Henderson focuses on a simple but helpful routine to get you journaling daily. He focuses on the idea that “human beings are narrative creatures.”

Lessons from the Screenplay

This channel feels like you’re getting a degree in screenwriting without having to spend a dime. Each video focuses on a specific topic, such as Creating a Villain, the Control of Information, or

The clues to a great story

A <20 minute masterpiece from the guy behind Finding Nemo and WALL-E.

I’ll leave you with this note I highlighted, “The audience wants to work for their meal. They just don’t want to know they’re doing that. Meaning, we want to be given the clues to understand the whole story. We want to be told, what is 2 + 2? But we don't want to be told, 2 + 2 = 4. It’s this well organized absence of information that draws us in.”

Pick any handful of these and you’ll have a better foundation than the majority of folks out there. But beware, do not bog yourself down in writing and story craft forever. I’ve been there, and it’s addicting.

You must move to the next step.

Pair your learnings with practice. Pick up your favorite book, read it not for fun, but to pick apart how the writer tells the story. What promises do they make? How do they introduce characters? What about conflict? How do they make the story feel logical? How do they get you to ask, ‘what happens next?’

See the patterns. Pay attention to what works on you.

Then tell your own stories. Fictional or personal, doesn’t matter. Apply your learnings. Develop your own style. Put pen to paper.

If you have more resources to add, let me know in the comments.

- Nathan

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Reminder:

I'm introducing a membership.

This Friday I'm hosting a workshop with an author who got a $275k advance from Penguin Random House for his debut nonfiction book. We're talking fiction vs. nonfiction storytelling - what actually transfers and what doesn't.

$6/month (or less annually) gets you this workshop, all future ones, recordings, and essays I don't share publicly.

Tuesday at midnight the introductory price almost doubles.

In it, Tolkien argues for the merits of speculative fiction, specifically fantasy, but hidden within that argument are insights into how he thought storytelling itself works.

Today, we’ll explore three of those ideas and attempt to apply them to story more broadly.

On Fairy Stories

548KB ∙ PDF file

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The entire lecture. If short on time, you can start around "The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present" and get the most valuable parts.

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Idea 1: World building is the art of keeping the reader immersed.

In writing fiction, especially speculative fiction, you hear the term ‘world building’ tossed around more than the all important terms ‘plot’ and ‘character’ and ‘theme.’ But nobody knows what it means. Some say culture and language. Others give you a million plants or a specific style of clothes. Basically, people use the term as a catch all for the visual apparatus that makes up the periphery of your story.

Tolkien, who could spend three pages describing a leaf, argues that world building means something else entirely:

“The story-maker proves a successful ‘sub-creator’. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.”

Tolkien saw world building as the art of keeping the reader immersed in your story. The moment a reader thinks “That doesn’t make sense” you’ve lost them.

Tolkien again:

“The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.”

You establish the laws of your story. But violate them, and you lose your reader’s belief.

Idea 2: Stories are built on logic.

The engine driving reader immersion is story logic.

Tolkien argued that a story can have elves, dragons, or time travel – or none of the above – but that wouldn’t matter if the logic of the world, the logic of the characters, or the logic of cause and effect didn’t line up.

“[Story] is the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll.”

Tolkien calls this logic “the inner consistency of reality.” The internal laws you, the writer, set up. Break them, and nothing works.

Again, this applies to all stories. Not just fantasy fiction.

If your character acts out of convenience instead of motivation, the spell breaks. If a plot twist happens without setup, the spell breaks. If the tone of your story shifts without reason, the spell breaks.

Idea 3: The joy of a happy ending.

In his classic talk, Kurt Vonnegut diagrams the emotional arc of Cinderella.

“We’re gonna start way down here,” he says, drawing on the chalkboard. “Worse than that, who is so low? It’s a little girl… the shoe fits, and she achieves off-scale happiness.”

Vonnegut is saying that many great endings require the story to end in a place with more joy than it started with. Not because real life always happens like that – remember, stories do not follow the logic of real life; unlike life, you pick the starting and ending point of a story – but because this framing is encouraging to readers.

Tolkien agrees:

“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending . . . is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure. . . . It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief… I will call it Eucatastrophe.”

The “poignant as grief” line gets me. Your reader earns that joy, what Tolkien calls their ‘consolation,’ because of the sorrow and failure that came before.

The end of The Lord of the Rings is not triumphant in the usual sense. Frodo is too wounded, too altered, to return to his old life. But Tolkien gives him the Grey Havens. That final scene, Frodo boarding the ship, Sam watching from the shore, is Tolkien’s version of a happy ending.

The joy in that moment only works because it hurts. This, I think, is what Tolkien meant by eucatastrophe.

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Thanks for reading. Thanks for your support.

Nathan

Reminder: This week, I launched a new membership for people who want to tell better stories. It’s just a few dollars a month.

Here’s a look at the first four private workshops:

• Billy Oppenheimer (writer + research assistant for Ryan Holiday & Rick Rubin) — How to Use Stories to Illustrate Big Ideas

• Renee Fountain (President of GH Literary) — The Most Common Mistakes in a Novel’s First 10 Pages

• Nat Eliason (author of Crypto Confidential and the upcoming sci-fi novel Husk) — Nonfiction vs Fiction: What Great Stories Have in Common

• Alex Petkas (host of The Cost of Glory podcast and former Princeton classics professor) — Ancient Storytelling: Lessons from the Masters of Rhetoric

You’ll also get member-only essays, a private chat, and access to the full workshop archive. If you think about story more than most people, you’ll probably like it here.

Subscribe now

Nathan’s Three Notes

1 Sentence I Wish I Wrote

Author James Islington on the ladder of compromise:

“They ask something small of you. A thing you would prefer not to do, but is not so terrible. You think you are working your way up, but in fact they are changing you. Moulding you into what they think you should be, one compromise at a time.”

From The Will of the Many

1 Thing I’m Reading

What matters in the age of AI is taste, and my new favorite newsletter focuses on just that.

1 Odd Thing I Found

F. Scott Fitzgerald died while writing this book. The published work includes Fitzgerald’s notes he left in the margins of the draft, showing what he had planned to change in the story if he had had the time. (Shoutout James McCabe for the recommendation.)

In simple terms, I wanted the ending to be surprising yet inevitable.

I think that’s the description for a well-executed twist in any story.

That is, when looking ahead, the Reader has a hard time predicting what comes next. But, after the twist drops, the Reader can look back and see the breadcrumbs the Storyteller has been leaving for them the entire time. Surprising yet inevitable.

As easy as that sounds, in practice writing a twist felt like playing chess against myself. I knew what I was trying to do but, no matter what moves I made, I just couldn’t win.

I want to unpack both parts of that equation.

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The surprising nature of a great twist

This side of the equation is more obvious so let’s start with it. Your twist needs to surprise your Reader. Otherwise, well, it’s not a twist.

But how you actually do that is not by withholding information; it’s by intentionally ordering how you reveal information to your Reader.

If you don’t give the Reader enough info to figure out the twist, you’ll end up with an upset Audience. This happened to me. My first beta readers told me the story’s ending “came out of nowhere.” They did not mean that as a compliment.

While surprising, that version of the twist broke the beta readers’ trust.

So, if the twist can’t come out of nowhere but it also has to be a surprise, how do you make that happen?

I spent many hours pouring over that question. If you’ve seen other ways work, hit reply. It’s fun to talk through these things.

First, focus on the order of the promises you introduce in your story.

Remember Anchoring Bias from last week? Here, you see the same idea. Readers give more weight to the first thing they’re shown. Whatever comes first, sticks in their brains.

You can use this to your advantage to create what I call a Diversion Plot. It’s a misdirection built on human bias.

Essentially, Plant Idea 1 in your story first (the Diversion), then quietly introduce Idea 2 – the real twist – later. That way, your Reader expects the first but isn’t upset when you twist your story toward the second.

I love finding patterns across stories. Regardless of medium, that’s one I keep seeing. To create surprise, place the true direction of your story second.

That Diversion helps you create the surprise. Which leads us to…

The inevitability of a great twist

You don’t want every Reader to see the twist coming. But the most careful Reader? The one that pays attention to every word? They should have a chance to guess the true direction of your story.

As Gillian Flynn puts it, “One of my biggest peeves is when the writer hasn't given you enough information to figure everything out. You should be able to go back to the beginning of Gone Girl, after you've already read it and you know everything, and say: Check – check – yes, she gave us that information.”

(Flynn’s Gone Girl features one of the most famous twists ever.)

This, I think, is where trusting your instincts as a Storyteller matters. No foreshadowing, and your Reader gets mad at you for a twist that comes out of nowhere. But too much foreshadowing and you kill the suspense.

Here’s the heuristic I like:

Can my most attentive reader logically piece together the twist beforehand? If so, then I feel like I’m in a good spot. If not, I’ve likely hidden the clues too deep.

Or, another heuristic I also like (because there’s no one way to think about anything story related):

Would the Reader, upon experiencing the twist, be able to look backward and see how the story was leading to that point?

If so, I’m likely happy with it.

My goal with a twist isn’t to trick the Reader. Rather, I want to play fair but still surprise them.

This is also one of the reasons I suggest writing the end of your story first. When you know the end, you can cleverly foreshadow throughout the middle. The end acts as a magnet pulling the rest of your story forward.

I’ve seen one more common mistake with twists worth talking through.

Resist the urge to explain the twist after the fact.

There’s no easier way to ruin a Reader’s experience than by explaining the story to them.

You know that feeling when you have to explain a joke? How you feel it becoming less funny the longer you explain it?

It’s the same here.

Let the story speak for itself. Trust the Reader. Trust the story. Trust your instinct.

One final thought

For me, the most effective twists force the Reader (or Viewer, Listener, whoever) to recontextualize the entire story.

To take a famous example:

For six and a half books, Severus Snape toes the line between good and evil. You have no idea which side he’s on. In fact, by that point in the series, the prevailing thought for the Reader is that he’s likely evil.

But then it’s revealed he’s been good the entire time. No waffling, always good.

The character instantly goes from treacherous scumbag to the single most courageous character in the series. Every single action he took takes on a different light.

In one moment, the story doesn’t change, but the Reader’s understanding of the story shifts.

That’s an awesome twist. Any examples that come to mind for you? Anything you find makes for a great twist?

Hope you’re having a great week,
Nathan

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PS.

Here’s a fun Reddit Thread on the best lines that reveal major plot twists.

PPS.

Of course, there are exceptions to these ideas. One that comes to mind is The Outsider by HP Lovecraft.

Story is the interface we use to make sense of the world, ourselves, and others. But I also sense our understanding of story has eroded. Why?

You may expect me to say tiktok, AI, or something of the sort, but I don’t think we can blame one specific thing, rather the endless scroll of shallow content. We crush our imaginations with information and wonder why the world dulls, why creativity feels impossible. This does not lend itself to story, and yet the stories you tell yourself lead to the person you become.

That’s why I started World Builders in 2022 – to explore the art and science of story. Today, that goal is the same but it requires a change in form.

What’s changing with World Builders?

A little and a lot.

First, you’ll notice this email comes from a new platform.

I spent the last 3 months testing Substack and, to my surprise, found it delightful. Instead of getting off and wondering what fried my brain cells, I feel like I learned something.

That's why we're here. Substack allows us to actually talk to each other. You can comment directly on essays, reply to one another, ask questions, and share your perspective and experience. I'm hoping you’ll try it out. In the comments below, let me know two things:

• Where are you from?

• What draws you toward storytelling?

Leave a comment

We’ll focus on exploring story in literature – both classics and contemporary – because I believe written storytelling is the foundation for nearly every medium. Together, we’ll explore topics like:

• Building narrative tension without exhausting readers

• How great stories both capture and keep attention

• Revealing character through choice, not description

• Tolkien’s powerful arguments in ‘On Fairy Stories’

• Making your nonfiction voice as vivid as a novelist’s

• Fiction vs nonfiction: overlaps and differences

• The subtle art of subtext: how to say everything without saying it directly

• How to find the universal inside the specific

• Why great stories live in scenes, not chapters

Increasingly, I find interest in storytelling across domains. Writers and creators, of course. But also marketers, entrepreneurs, and even engineers like myself. I love this. The more perspectives, the richer our exploration of story.

Second, I’m introducing a paid subscription (in addition to the free one).

For the price of a morning coffee in Austin ($6), you get:

• Monthly private workshops: Conversations and lessons from incredible writers, authors, screenwriters and professional creators on story and adjacent topics.

• Workshop archive: Full recordings, accessible anytime.

• Subscriber-only community: Private Q&A, behind the scenes, and resource sharing via the Substack Chat feature.

• Bi-weekly deep-dive essays exploring the art and science of storytelling.

For the next two weeks only, you can subscribe for just $6 per month or $60 per year. After that, they’ll move to $10 per month or $100 per year.

Your lower rate stays locked in as long as you’re subscribed.

Subscribe now

Let’s level set — What are we trying to accomplish?

The exceptional jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins said, “I start out playing things I know to get the blood flowing. Those things are often described as ‘clichés.’ You begin with the cliché so you can get the process in motion. Once the process is in motion, ‘thinking’ gives way to ‘playing.’ At that point, you get out of the way and let the music play.”

That’s what storytelling feels like to me. We gather techniques and ideas, not to abide by rules, but to use as starting points. Ingredients in a recipe. Sometimes they fit perfectly. Other times, they don’t. That’s okay. The act of testing them sets the process in motion, which then lets you play the music.

Thanks for being here. I’ll send the first essay Sunday morning at 6am ET for you to read over coffee.

-Nathan

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PS.

This is my first full post on Substack! If you enjoyed it, consider sharing it (‘restacking’) to help others find World Builders.

The next morning, over a massive cup of coffee, I decided to figure out how the book hooked me so quickly.

The answer is both weird and simple:

The author spoiled the end of the story on page one. But instead of ruining the story like you might expect, this framing device made me wonder how in the world things could possibly end up there.

For context, the book was Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio (it is, if you’re interested, the best sci-fi I've read in years). The story starts with the main character telling you he destroyed a sun and subsequently killed four billion people. But then it returns to the protagonist’s childhood.

Stay with me. I think this technique works in all kinds of stories.

What is Story Framing?

Story framing is how you, the Storyteller, control your audience’s interpretation of your story.

It’s like deciding which window your Reader looks through into your story. I don’t often see this talked about, but it’s a massive decision. The viewpoint you give your Reader shapes their interpretation of every detail that follows.

Psychologists call this “Anchoring Bias.” Basically, we humans are simple creatures. You tell us something first, and we assume it’s super important. Our brains automatically anchor themselves to the first interpretation of events. As storytellers, this is a powerful tool.

Let’s return to the example above. I think it’s important to start with the potential downsides to this technique.

In my head, the author takes two big risks:

1. Overpromise, underdeliver

The bigger your hook, the higher the expectations you set for your audience.

With this “reveal the end first” framing, you’re promising your audience that the journey is more important than the destination. If your destination is inherently more interesting, stick with classic story structure.

Only make promises you plan to keep.

2. Nullifying the traditional tension

In this type of sci-fi story, a big question is often, “Does the protagonist survive?”

Well, here you already know the answer is yes. There is no ‘survival tension.’ Instead, this frame shifts the tension to mechanical and ethical unknowns. It becomes a question of how and why, not what.

The Hidden Craft Choices that Create the Frame

So, despite these risks, how does Ruocchio pull this off? Three decisions stand out.

First, he takes on what I call Narrative Debt — when a storyteller makes a promise early that compels the Reader to stick around to see how they’ll pay it off.

In this case, the protagonist destroyed a sun and killed four billion people. But when we meet his younger self, he seems… like an okay guy? Definitely not a genocidal maniac.

That dissonance creates a powerful curiosity gap. Ruocchio’s story moves slowly at times, but the narrative debt is so compelling that the pace hardly matters. Hence how he got me to stay up to an absurd hour reading his book.

Second, he uses first-person past-tense point of view. This makes the entire story feel like a confession. We’re not just watching the story unfold, we’re hearing someone wrestle with what it all meant.

Pick whatever point of view enhances your story, but pick it intentionally. This piece is the best I’ve seen on picking your POV.

Third, he shifts the tension. Once we know the main character survives, traditional stakes (Will he live?) disappear. But new, deeper questions get asked:

How could anyone justify this? What kind of person would do it?

3 Examples from 3 Different Mediums

I have a challenge for you. Start looking for this technique throughout your day. I’ve started to see it all over the place and wanted to give you three examples from different mediums to show you how versatile this idea is.

1. This newsletter you’re reading.

I started the newsletter by telling you I stayed up far too late because of a book, and that the author used one technique to hook me.

I’m being meta here, but by starting with that tiny anecdote instead of jumping straight into the technique, I’ve framed the entire thing for you. This implicitly promises to teach you how to do the same thing.

2. This Instagram post

Do you see it? Subtle, simple, and incredibly effective even in a short video.

3. This novel

The Name of the Wind begins with a seemingly old, beat up bartender. Except, when he tells the story of his youth, he’s this mythical hero.

The entire premise is, “What broke that hero? How did he become this bartender?”

Patrick Rothfuss, if you’re out there, I am begging you for book three.

Storytellers:

This is the magic of a well chosen frame. Your question doesn’t have to be simply, “What happens?” You can also ask, “How on earth did we get here?”

And that can be such a fun question to explore.

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Have an awesome Easter,

Nathan

PS.

My debut novel drops this fall. It’s fast-paced, dark, and perfect for fans of Mistborn or Red Rising. Join the waitlist here.