Category: writing tips

You Have a WIP Limit of One

Andrew Michael Miller1 Comment

From the time I started as a Scrum Master, I have had the opportunity to personally witness several different organizations' Scrum implementations, and discussed with others their experience with Scrum at their organization. Every organization does it slightly different, but that's OK. Some have been outstanding, and have inspired me to try many new things to solve problems on my Scrum teams. But, for every great example of successful Scrum implementations I have experienced, I've heard of several others where I'm baffled about how loosely their implementation follows Scrum. In those cases, I often hear people suggest switching to Kanban as a solution because they just don't think Scrum is working. Let me be clear: Switching to Kanban because your Scrum implementation sucks is a lazy and bad solution.

What is an Archetype?

Andrew Michael Miller1 Comment

Have you ever noticed how similar characters can be to other characters you've read or watched in other stories? Sometimes, we watch a movie or read a book and we barely come into contact with a character before we already know exactly what that character is all about. Why is that? In human nature, there are certain emotions and other commonalities that span through all societies that are instantly recognizable. When storytellers present us with certain triggers, such as the existence of a hunky small town bad boy love interest for our Hallmark big city girl who doesn't realize just what she's missing in life yet, we respond by not questioning who these people are because we're already well-conditioned to the type of people they are.

Need Writing Practice But Not Sure Where to Start? Try a Writing Prompt!

Andrew Michael MillerLeave a comment

Have you ever had the creative urge to write, but don't have any solid ideas at the time? One of the most difficult parts of writing is the conceptualization stage, when you start deciding what kind of story you want to write. We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be original. Often, we want to say something unique to ourselves as individuals when we write. We worry that the things we write will just be a re-hashing of the stories we've already told. We want to try something new, but all too often, we worry that we will just end up sticking to the same genres, the same themes, the same structure. How can we overcome this mental block and get back to our "zone" when writing? One way you can do it is by challenging yourself with writing prompts.

Character Dialogue: A Game of Goals

Andrew Michael MillerLeave a comment

In all forms of character writing, be it stage plays, screen plays, novels, video games or any other kind of medium where two different characters converse with one another, massive potential exists for fantastic dialogue. The act of putting two characters in the same space and seeing how they react to each other is the heart of good drama. When well-written characters who have their own histories, personalities, attitudes, strengths and weaknesses enter into a conversation with another character with a different background, there lies a great opportunity for a good scene. What makes the scene more powerful is when the characters have their own individual goals for the conversation. This is where we as writers really get to prove that we know our characters inside and out. Here are some things to consider when writing dialogue.