Hello,
After reading a few books and internet articles, I noticed that I was not very good as a storytelling person, so I decided to improve myself. I really believe that as an Agile coach/scrum master, we need to have this storytelling “feature”. Having said this, I want to share something very interesting that allows me to start with improvements in my daily work.
Based on what I have learned, successful stories should have:
- Great beginnings
- Writing style
- Literary devices
Storytelling: Great Beginnings
Start your stories with one of the following three devices:
- A surprise
- A mystery
- A challenge
Storytelling: Writing Style
Write the way you speak:
- Use short sentences
- Use small words
- Use active voice
- Get to the verb quickly
- Omit needless words
- Find the automatic spell-check setting in your e-mail and word-processing programs. Turn them on and leave them on.
- Find the grammar checker in your word-processing software. Use it on every document before you publish it.
- Set the grammar checker to automatically run the readability score (ex. : Flesch-Kincaid grade level)
- Target a reading grade level of 8 to 10. If your document is higher than that, rewrite it and check again
Storytelling: Literary Devices
- Include dialogue
- Use real names of characters
- Repeat words or phrases
- Don’t announce or apologize in advance of a story. Just tell it.
As you can see, it is very simple advice that we can start to apply tomorrow. If you want to really work hard on this, I recommend the book “Lead with a story” by Paul Smith
Don’t hesitate to leave your comments/feedback
Thank you,
Omar