Bobette Buster is definitely a storyteller. In “Do/Story” she tells stories about people in a way I wish I could about my life and my family’s. This book teaches you how. At the end of the book there are writing exercises that help you learn how to tell your own story. Using these exercises over and over have helped me start to tell my own story. This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.

In the interest of disclosure, I received a copy of this book from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest and fair review.

When I started Do Story, I was hoping I’d come away better equipped to write a memoir, tell a ghost story or blog about an adventure. While the ideas presented were useful, the book felt more like something you would read for work to improve your presentations and public speaking. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll definitely find this book handy. I enjoyed Bobette Buster’s many anecdotes, illustrations and quotes. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but Do Story was a worthwhile read nonetheless. ( )

If you are new to writing Do Story may provide you with useful information on how to write your own story. If you have written anything about yourself before, well, this book will frustrate you. You will continue to read page after page hoping for something new that never comes.

I read the book through the first third and then began skimming because I had heard it all before.

Only take the time to read this if you've never read another book about writing stories before. You will be disappointed otherwise. ( )

I was pretty excited about this book. I'm an amateur speaker and I was definitely interested in how to tell my own story and be more effective. I was about half and half on this book after reading it; for reviewer reader's benefit, I'll seperate the good and bad below. Of course I want to state that I could never write a book, so please accept this as constructive criticism only.

Good: The book was overall easy to read and didn't feel overwhelming. It had enough content to help explain the Author's content, but also didn't appear or feel like a textbook or manual that would drive you to Zz's. It held my interest. I really liked the Author's 10 points and I have no doubt that she is a very successful teacher of this topic. I will definitely be pulling ideas from this read. I also found myself at times sucked into the stories she used as examples of good stories. I'm not to sure if this is because I'm a history and biography buff or her writing. I will assume it is both. I like that she used these to break up otherwise pure definition and disscussion of content.

The parts I feel could improve: I have to be honest I felt a little lost the entire time I was reading the book. The chapters are labeled generally with one of her 10 tips for storytelling, but I couldn't seem to grasp anything outside of the basic concept of most of them. At times this was just due to thoughts not being more organized within the chapter I feel. Other times I think it was due to a little too much description without tie-ins bringing us back to the concept and I would forget what I was actually supposed to be focused on. So i often found myself in the middle or end of a chapter saying, wait what? And straining to review something earlier. Also, and maybe this is my own flaw, I felt there were a lot of words that I had to look up. I enjoy learning new words and do not mind looking up new ones while reading, but it got to the point in this book that I said "forget it" and just gave it my best guess. I felt like I was putting the story down every page. I think it would appeal and be more pleasurable to more readers with more lamens terms. Or maybe I need to flex my vocabulary more. While I enjoyed the stories, I honestly had difficulty following how a few were examples of her concepts at times. Certain times I could, other times I would return to the story again and again trying to understand. Bullet points around the story or discussion of concepts in the middle of the story (in italicsfor differentiation) could be helpful.

Overall, this is a DIY teaching book, and so I should expect that I would not understand the concepts on round one or without some application first. In general I feel this was a good book on the subject with just a few, more technical, possibilities for improvement. ( )

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 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). ( )