Bobette Buster

Hmmm...mixed feels about this one.

I love the idea of these little 'Do' series books. They feel good in your hand, they're gifty, accessible, and easily to read and digest. I'm not familiar with the author or her work, but this feels like a 'corporate-coach' style class on business storytelling - like the kind of 'story' that a CEO or founder of a business might develop to motivate and inspire.

There are lots of examples, but mainly of business, political, or non-profit icons: Steve Jobs, show more Scott Harrison who founded Charity: Water, Winston Churchill, Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia, etc. It's not that these men and women aren't interesting and inspiring, but they aren't 'regular folks.' They had publicists, platforms and media willing to interview them, lots of influence, and a huge built-in audience.

If you went to business school, nearly all the stories will be familiar to you.

While there are ten essential elements of storytelling, they almost seem retroactively applied to the stories of famous people, not crafted forward so you can understand how the stories were built. Many of the essential story themselves are subjective--not all stories illustrate them well enough for them to be clear and some don't at all. There are exercises, but they feel a little woo woo and new age-y not honing the craft of story and writing.

It's not a bad book, but it's not clear who the target is for these, exactly. It sounds like these are supposed to be the practical application lectures compared to the heady conceptual ideas shared in Ted. Great idea, but not quite right in execution just yet.

If you're looking for a book to motivate and inspire you to develop your personal story, this may be a contender. If you're looking for inspiration from a famous person's story, pick up a biography. If you want a masterclass on how to develop your own story, there are other books that do it better. show less

I am a storyteller. It is what I try to do when I blog, when I write and when I preach sermons. I don't always tell good sermons. Or write good blogs. But I am always amazed that the things that I write that resonate with people are often snapshots of my own vulnerable experience. A job interview where I felt exposed, a hard ending to a pastoral position, angst and worry about my vocation, and me feeling stuck. When I write a book review or musings on faith or the lectionary, I make far less show more impact than when people find themselves in my story. Not that all my stories are well crafted, and I can learn to do this better.

Do/ Story/ How to Tell Your Story So The World Listens is a short book on telling stories in a way that is compelling and engaging, regardless of the context. The author, Bobette Buster, hails from Kentucky (and the storied south), is the professor of Storytelling at Northeastern University in Boston, teaches and consults on storytelling all over the world, including with studios like Pixar, Disney and Sony Animations. Additionally, she has been awarded grants to collect the stories of Appalachia. She know storytelling and she reveals some of the tricks here.

The substance of Buster's approach to storytelling is captured in her 10 principles of Story Telling.

1) Tell your story as if you're telling it to a friend: this applies no matter where you are who your audience is.

2) Set the GPS: give the place, time, setting and any relevant context. Keep it factual, short, and sweet.

3) Action! Use active verbs or, as I like to say, "Think Hemmingway": spice up your verb choice but kept them succinct. . . .

4) Juxtapose: take two ideas, images, or thoughts and place them together. let them collide. Remeber German philosopher Fredriech Hegel here: that in posing two opposing ideas, a whole new idea is created (thesis + antithesis = synthesis). This tool wakes up your audience and it is the root of all successful stories.

5) Gleaming detail: choose one ordinary moment or object that becomes the "gleaming detail," something that captures and best embodies the essence of the story. Make the ordinary extraordinary.

6) "Hand over the Spark": reflect on the experience or the idea that originally captivated you and simply hand it to your audience as if it were a flame.

7) Be vulnerable: dare to share the emotion of your story. . . .

8) Tune into your sense memory: choose the strongest of the five senses in your story and use it to make a deeper connection with your audience.

9) Bring yourself: a story is as much about you as about anything else.

10) Let go: hand over your story, letting it build to its natural emotional punchline, and then end it and get out fast. Leave the audience wanting more. (from page 22-23)

In the rest of the book, Buster fleshes these out with stories and illustrations and exercises for practice. Some of these stories she tells come from her workshops. Other stories are from compelling individuals (e.g. Alice Waters, Steve Jobs, Doug Tompkins and Yvon Choinard, etc.

I liked this book a lot. Buster's approach to storytelling is simple and straightforward. It is short and not pretentious. It focuses on the elements of the story that best communicate truth (vulnerability, craft, the 'spark.'). I definitely will hang on to this one. I give it four stars.

Note: I received a copy of this book from a Library Thing giveaway in exchange for my honest review. show less

I requested DO / Story from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program because it looked like it might be a good guide to effective writing -- how to write a good novel, perhaps. This is not exactly that kind of guide, but still very useful.

Much of the focus here is about giving effective speeches and/or how to "sell" an idea -- i.e. how to hook your audience with a story or combination of stories. Audiences (whether listening or reading) tend to be emotionally touched if there is a personal show more aspect included. For example, why should we care about clean water? The author tells us how Scott Harrison (www.charitywater.org) makes us care and want to help. His personal story helps influence us.

The author introduces 10 Principles of Storytelling to us, and shows us how to apply those principles. She does this by sharing various stories (such as the one about Scott Harrison and his clean water mission; but also about others such as Steve Jobs), then showing how the 10 principles are applied to each of these stories.

These principles can still work in a general sense with novel-writing, or anything that is book-length. But as I pointed out earlier, this is really more about how to engage audiences that is not necessarily in print format (note: the author also consults with major movie studios in addition to her other clients and is also a professor of Story-Telling).

There are exercises at the end and I certainly am going to try them out.

Overall, this does pack a lot in this short book (131 pages), and in fact I think this would be a good one for my younger son to read -- he is going to be a high school senior this fall, and will need to effectively get his message(s) across while writing all those college application essays.

Final note: This volume is part of a series of how-to books by various authors that provide a wide range of subjects, such as DO Beekeeping or DO Lead (the latter is about leadership). show less

A nice little book that is easy to read and understand. There are ten steps to story telling, as Bobette Buster states, and lots of advice for telling a story. However, the examples given are from noted people who are famous in politics, history and business. What was promised was how to tell YOUR story. Having interesting stories about people you might meet everyday, such as teachers or truck drivers or grandmothers, would have been a better basis for the book. My mother wrote her memoirs show more as part of a project at her retirement home, and this was the type of thing I thought the author would show. The principles are good and the basic message is clear, it is just that explaining how Winston Churchill delivered nation-altering speeches fighting a war is not the same as teaching people how to tell the story of how grandmothers can fight the monsters under the bed of their three year old grandchildren.

A short book demonstrating a skill is a good idea, and I like this one. However, the best advice in the book was given at the very end of the book by Benjamin Disraeli, who died in 1881, and who said: "Be amusing, never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones." Good story telling advice for the ages. show less